Reimagining The BeatBuddy Premium Library
by Goran Rista
BeatBuddy Premium Library is (NOT) Dead
If you purchased individual beat or song packs or additional drum kits for your BeatBuddy in the past decade, you likely did so at the BeatBuddy Premium Library. And if you tried to revisit URL library.mybeatbuddy.com in the past few months to buy more BeatBuddy songs, check for the 2024 edition of the BeatBuddy Complete Collection, or re-download any of the content you previously purchased, you may have wondered: “What happened to the Beat Buddy Library?” “Is BeatBuddy Library dead?” You may even wonder, “How did I end up in Beat Boutique?”
What Happened to BeatBuddy Library?
GoranGrooves, the exclusive producer of the former BeatBuddy Library’s content, and Singular Sound parted ways in May 2024. The original BeatBuddy Premium Library content is no longer hosted in the domain it used to be in.
It has undergone a metamorphosis and migration to the GoranGrooves Library. To get to the GoranGrooves original content you were used to seeing at the old BeatBuddy Premium Library, you can do that right now:
If you are curious about what transpired before this move, keep reading below for the details.
Background and History Of BeatBuddy Library
My name is Goran Rista, and if you are a BeatBuddy user, you are undoubtedly familiar with my work. I am the producer and copyright owner of all content distributed on BeatBuddy and BeatBuddy Mini pedals. I created the sound that has come to define BeatBuddy’s identity.
For almost a decade, I not only produced nearly all of the content sold at the BeatBuddy Library under my brand GoranGrooves, but as a partner, I also ran the BeatBuddy Library’s everyday operation and managed all aspects of it, both technical and creative. I designed the overall concept, look, and functionalities of the online store and supervised its web development. The BeatBuddy Premium Library was my baby under Singular Sound’s web domain, and I enjoyed a reasonable degree of autonomy. I personally built that business from the ground up and invested a great deal of myself over the last decade in doing so.
While running the BeatBuddy Premium Library operation, I had a small team of trusted professionals who helped with song transcriptions and MIDI editing. A great drummer and friend, Ludwig Afonso, contributed with his talents to the Jazz Drum MIDI beat pack we released. We worked hard to meet customers’ needs by producing content that BeatBuddy users requested. We aimed to release new beats and drumsets regularly. More intricate projects, such as the Brazilian Percussion Beats, required many weeks or months of full-time production to put together.
Other large-scale endeavors, such as my remake of the Default Content 2.0 for BeatBuddy in 2019, took many months to complete, delaying the development and release of GoranGrooves Handy Drums plugins for DAW.
All content produced by GoranGrooves and made compatible with BeatBuddy was sold exclusively at the BeatBuddy Library. This library includes generic MIDI drum loops, popular song packs, and drumsets. Likewise, GoranGrooves was the exclusive content producer for the Beat Buddy Library.
Introduction of the BeatBuddy Complete Collection
At the tail end of 2019, we introduced a bundle containing all of the GoranGrooves content for BeatBuddy that had been produced to date. To users, it has been known by a few names: Premium Library Complete Collection, BeatBuddy Complete Collection, or BeatBuddy Premium Library SD card. We introduced it as a digital download at the BeatBuddy Premium Library and Singular Sound websites. We also offered customers who purchased it at the Singular Sound website an option to ship it as a physical product on an SD card.
The Complete Collection was an instant success and continues to be popular with BeatBuddy customers. See the latest edition of the Complete Collection for BeatBuddy.
As GoranGrooves produced new content, we added it to the Complete Collection. As a courtesy to existing Complete Collection customers, we offered yearly upgrades for $50, which included whatever was produced in a calendar year. We also provided free updates for the remainder of the calendar year for whomever purchased the bundle.
Some customers preferred downloading only the new content as it came out, unlike the entire Complete Collection bundle. Therefore, I implemented a custom downloads solution I originally designed and built for the GoranGrooves Library website. The integration allowed customers to pick what they wanted to download and install in an organized and neat way. As GoranGrooves Library, BeatBuddy Library, and Singular Sound websites were all built on the same underlying web platforms, that implementation was possible and practical for all three.
That convenience was tossed out of Singular Sound’s window when they migrated their main website to the Shopify platform.
The Decline of the BeatBuddy Premium Library
After developing Handy Drums, virtual drum instruments for DAWs, for several years, we, GoranGrooves, launched them in 2022 on the GoranGrooves Library platform. The quality of drum samples and drum loops that have been critical to BeatBuddy’s success since its launch has been rapidly gaining interest and popularity with music makers who utilize DAWs.
In the months following the launch of Handy Drums, I noticed something intriguing and worrisome.
- Prominent links to the BeatBuddy Premium Library vanished from Singular Sound’s website menu and the forum.
- Traffic and revenue to the Beat Buddy Library dropped as BeatBuddy users struggled to find their way there.
- A promotional offer shipped with BeatBuddy pedals that regularly brought new visitors was no longer bringing them.
- At GoranGrooves, we started receiving support inquiries for BeatBuddy content from confused customers, even though we sold or promoted no BeatBuddy content at the GoranGrooves Library at the time.
As it turned out, Singular Sound had deliberately removed all links to the BeatBuddy Premium Library to tamper its traffic and GoranGrooves’ presence, even though they were simultaneously selling that same GoranGrooves content on the Singular Sound website, and despite the facts that:
- BeatBuddy Library was under Singular Sound’s web domain,
- BeatBuddy Library sold no GoranGrooves plugins,
- GoranGrooves sold no BeatBuddy content, and
- The drop in traffic to the BeatBuddy Premium Library was causing Singular Sound equal financial damage as it did to GoranGrooves.
Although the $ figure number of the damage was the same, the actual damage was not, since it was solely GoranGrooves that invested significant time, skill, talent, and monetary assets in building the content and the BeatBuddy Premium Library business over the many years.
Customers were affected by the inability to find and enjoy the premium offerings, most of which were produced based on customers’ requests.
The reason for the sabotage?
When I raised those issues in my email correspondence with SS, the CEO admitted to them and tried to justify them by claiming that this was a response to perceived competitive behavior regarding the release of GoranGrooves Handy Drums plugins.
Revealed to me at the time was that Singular Sound had been working on a BeatBuddy plugin, which they were soon to release in beta. They decided to treat GoranGrooves, a partner for almost a decade, as a competitor for a product they did not yet have, despite GoranGrooves’ efforts ensuring no conflict of interest for products related to BeatBuddy. So, it is quite perplexing that somebody would undermine an existing successful business partnership on the ambition of a questionable future product venture.
When Handy Drums was launched, GoranGrooves offered Singular Sound an overly generous (50%) commission for affiliate referrals, which appears to have been shunned.
It is unclear whether it was an emotionally driven decision or something else.
In any case, Singular Sound’s leadership made an ethically and strategically deplorable decision. It is one in a long line of poor and costly choices.
We at GoranGrooves do not see BeatBuddy Plugin as a threat to our business. And more importantly, when competing, we do not resort to the pitiful covert tactics of sabotage of our partners. In fact, I have used and have written a detailed review of the BeatBuddy Plugin.
The End Of The Old BeatBuddy Premium Library As We Knew It
Singular Sound unilaterally decided to “merge” the BeatBuddy Premium Library platform into their main website. They planned to turn into a marketplace, Beat Boutique (cool name), selling their own content and introducing other 3rd party content, effectively shuttering our previous agreements.
Since GoranGrooves owns the copyright to everything it ever produced and made compatible with BeatBuddy (including the Default Content for BeatBuddy), Singular Sound had nothing to merge with their main website.
In light of sabotage revelations and the fact that GoranGrooves owns the biggest catalog of content for BeatBuddy, there was no reason for us to capitulate. The trust was permanently broken, and as of June 2024, GoranGrooves and Singular Sound are no longer affiliated.
Now you know.
The New Home Of The BeatBuddy Premium Library
Everything that was once available in the old BeatBuddy Premium Library is now exclusively available in GoranGrooves’ Premium Library for BeatBuddy, along with Handy Drums, some of the best-sounding VST drum plugins.
At GoranGrooves, we offer a superior customer experience in all aspects, from fantastic products to a lightning-fast website, deep, searchable documentation, a frictionless purchase experience, cleanly organized downloads, and outstanding, knowledgeable customer support.
All of our songs, beat packs, and drumsets for BeatBuddy come with installers that reliably place the content directly into an existing BeatBuddy project on an SD card. We provide a solution for many users who want to load premium content without using the BeatBuddy Manager software.
Our VIPs who purchase the Complete Collection for BeatBuddy have a choice to either install the entire project directly onto a blank SD card or only add the premium content to an existing BeatBuddy project. Dedicated installers offer seamless solutions for both scenarios and are available for both Windows and MacOS systems.
Discounts For Previous Customers Of BeatBuddy Premium Library
If you have previously purchased any of GoranGrooves content at either the Beat Buddy Library or Singular Sound website (including bundles, individual songs, song packs, or drumsets) and wish to upgrade to our current Complete Collection for BeatBuddy bundle, we’ll credit you for what you have previously spent on our content. Limitations apply. See the details here.