The developers and designers are people with lives, families, and responsibilities - you can help them meet those responsibilities and make some great music at the same time.

So to get back to your question: what are the disadvantages? If some internet stranger's hard work is worth enough for you to use his/her stuff but not pay for it you're a pretty big jerk. I have spent one-hundred hours on just a single product so if I found out someone was stealing it I would be profoundly insulted. Right now I just want it to pay for itself, later I plan on making a living out of it. I price my stuff very affordably so people will buy it. I doubt my products are being torrented currently, but if they were I'd be really disappointed. I'm just starting out and am in a niche market (primarily Reason, just getting into Ableton, about to branch out to Kontakt) so I don't have a ton of sales/clients to speak of. We/I are currently selling 5 digital products and giving away two. I'll answer this as a business owner and sound designer. I know that sounds super corny, but that's really just how I think about it. It's really a matter of your own personal and musical integrity. Very few DAWs release cracked copies with watermarking or other counter measures, and even if they do, they're often patched out by the community. I'm certainly the last person that would be able to tell with no evidence short of seeing the actual torrent files. That said, if you torrent your VSTs and DAW, I doubt most people would know. I have infinitely more respect for the person that buys what they can afford and makes something beautiful out of the tools on hand.

People Google what the best synth VST is, and they go and pirate Serum and Omnisphere and browse through the presets and fire it up in their cracked copy of Ableton Suite and throw a couple samples from highly rated Dubstep sample packs and think they're making 'music'. To him, those musical instruments and equipment were playthings.

You ever see a kid whose parents give him everything? Did you ever know or see a high school kid that had a vintage Les Paul or PRS custom, boutique and bountiful pedals, and a Blackstar head and cab set, all just given to him by his parents?

Torrented vst