Hello! I'm a creator behind Vortex. Here are some thoughts we want to share.

They say in a gold rush, sell shovels. This is good advice, and many other producers have used this as motivation to make music software products. Instead of digging for placements and opportunities (which is difficult and risky), it is more profitable to sell the tools required for success. So you've likely seen dozens of new VSTs and software products marketed toward producers, each of which claims to be a massive tool promising big things.

The problem is, we are not in a gold rush. Quite the opposite, actually. Getting placements has not been made easier in the past 5 years; in fact, it actually is harder for the average producer to stand out in 2026 vs 2021. Therefore, because AI has encouraged many new software products to pop up, the situation is closer to shovel salesmen convincing producers that there is gold when there isn't.

We are not naming any names; in fact, we believe many VSTs and software services are doing great things for the music community. But we encourage producers to think critically about where these new benefits actually lie. Every major placement up to this point has not required them, so why are they such a game-changer now?

Vortex isn't selling shovels. We never mention placements in our marketing, because at the end of the day, that is up to you. Rather, we are selling coal. It's less sexy than the "all-in-one placement finder 3000", but if you are a producer with motion, Vortex actually makes you burn faster. And ironically, this has actually led to more industry adoption than if we had chosen to sell shovels, because top producers have identified the specific, non-sexy benefits of Vortex, and used them.