MEMBER PROFILE
Interview With Dr. Bill Gardner - President of Wave ArtsDr. Bill Gardner is the president of Wave Arts, which is a small software development company based in Arlington, Massachusetts. Wave Arts focuses on professional grade audio processing software for embedded systems and professional audio applications.
Bill, could you please tell us about yourself?
I’ve always been interested in computers. I started programming in grade school, writing COBOL programs for a gigantic Honeywell computer circa 1970.
I went to MIT and got a degree in computer science, and after a few jobs landed at Kurzweil Music Systems which was a fun and exciting place to work. That got me interested in audio DSP and I returned to MIT in 1990 to study at the Media Lab. I was interested in spatial audio and acoustics and spent a lot of time developing 3D audio systems and reverbs. After getting my doctorate I decided to start a company, Wave Arts, doing audio DSP consulting. Over time we developed a line of software plug-ins. Between the company and my family (wife and two kids) I stay pretty busy.
<<Bill Gardner (right) and Senior Software Engineer, Rob Martino (left)
How did you get involved with Music and music products industry?
At MIT, a friend of mine had a brother who was an outrageously talented guitarist. Watching him play was a sublime experience that got me interested. So I taught myself how to play guitar.
I know that you are very busy with running the company, but do you still find time to play music?
Yes, I couldn't live without it. I get together with a group of friends every other week and we jam for an evening. We play mostly Real Book tunes, basic wedding band jazz, usually without a vocalist. It's funny in this context because the Real Book is technically a copyright violation. I've bought a bunch of the legal ones, but there's really no substitute.
How long have you been in the music software business?
11 years at Wave Arts.
Which other M. I companies have you worked at in the past?
I was at Kurzweil Music Systems for 7 years. I worked on the K250, the K1000, and helped design the chips that later become the K2000 and beyond. I also worked at Lexicon for a few summers, developing pitch shifting and harmonization algorithms for the PCM-80.
How does Wave Arts approach the software piracy problem?
With humility. We've settled on challenge response as a compromise between serial numbers which offer no protection and dongles which I've always thought were a pain. Apart from copy protection issues, challenge response has an advantage that you get a follow-up registration visit from customers. It helps track down whether serials have been used and you can gather some demographic info. We have not devoted lots of effort to defeat piracy; our attitude is to make it attractive to buy a valid license.
Our licensing policy is to be extremely nice to our customers. So for example we let them install on multiple machines and if they need new authorizations we always give them out. And we offer pretty nice upgrade options so if they have an older version they can get a new version at a huge discount. We also spend considerable effort on customer support. We try to answer all support emails the same day, often on weekends, and there have been times when we have been able to fix a bug and reply with an update on the same day. When he's not programming, Rob Martino handles customer support and he does an outstanding job. Many of our customers react with astonishment when they get a prompt and informative reply. Clearly there are low expectations for customer support in the music software industry.
What is the reason that you joined IMSTA?
To be completely honest, out of respect for IMSTA director, Ray Williams.
How can a company such as Wave Arts benefit from its membership in IMSTA?
I found the recent survey to be very interesting, and I'd like to see you continue with those. The opinion surveys may help companies find a "sweet spot" to choose a price, license model, and copy protection method that works for both the customers and companies. Looking at the music industry as an example, it appears the iTunes model is working pretty well, basically a buck a tune with no copy protection and convenient access. Is there a similar low cost model that will work for music software? I think that software is very different than music because it is so specialized and hence has widely varying value based on the usage circumstances. Plus the user base is relatively tiny. So I don't think the solution is to simply lower the cost to rock bottom, though clearly piracy is putting downward pressure on prices.
As you know, IMSTA uses education to face the software piracy problem. Do you have any suggestions for IMSTA?
Your educational effort is certainly worthwhile. It is important to point out that while software can be replicated at no cost, the original design and implementation is very costly, and of course it costs money to maintain a business and provide customer support, updates, web site, etc. So, focus on the "value proposition".
Having spoken to others in the industry about copy protection, I am often struck at how everyone is pretty convinced they have the proper copy protection strategy. People who use dongles are sure they work best. People who use simple serials are convinced that is the best solution. But nobody really knows because its a hard thing to test experimentally. You get some data when you switch from one CP scheme to another and see if sales go up or down. Perhaps a bold question to ask the members is what data they have to support the use of one CP scheme over another in terms of maximizing sales. It's clear that customers prefer simple serials (your survey showed this) but in our own experience when we switched from serials to challenge response our sales increased.
My cynical self believes:
1) Piracy is here to stay and the net effect is a substantial reduction in software revenue, just as recorded music revenue has decreased. It's classic parasitical behavior, weakening the host but not killing it entirely.
2) Some fraction of users will only buy legitimate copies, some will only use cracks, and some will go either way depending on circumstances. The business strategy of CP, pricing, licensing policy, etc., is to win these customers over to paying for a legitimate copy rather than using a crack. That's about the best we can do.
We ask this question of all our interviewees. Is there anything you want to say to the pirates out there reading this article?
Clearly there are very bright and motivated people, with some amount of organization, working pretty hard to crack software. I'm personally curious about their motivation, methods, and organization. So my message to the crackers is: find an author and write a tell-all. I'd be willing to buy (err... illegally copy?) that book.
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