unplugred census 2025

hello all.
last month i asked you some questions, as promised here are the results!

disclaimer:
all questions were optional, as well as the form itself.
the answers are completely anonymised.
as always, i do not collect any personal data, and this was my way of anonymously and consensually get to know my audience.
if you have any concerns, you are welcomed to reach out at [email protected], or via discord (@unplugred).
thank you to all responders !!!!!

starting off with beverages

the most important category.


beverage of choice. 214 responses. pick a monster. 217 responses.

very happy to see the amount of chocolate milk drinkers in my audience.
surprising marketshare for mango loco as well as regular, i would have expected pipeline punch to rank higher.

next up, audio setup preferences

preferred daw. 217 responses.

in the other category: many people typing ardour and studio one, surprising amount of people are using a daw called waveform (never heard of it!), and also, "fl studio but cooler"

operating system. 217 responses.

linux is very over-represented here compared to my downloads counter,
with 11.5% of responders using linux compared to linux versions getting 4.8% of downloads.
27.6% of responders are using mac compared to 25.7% of downloads,
and 60% of responders are using windows compared to 69.6% of downloads.

windows version (if relevant). 186 responses.

comprising of 1.6% of responders, i can comfortably drop support for windows 7

mac version (if relevant). 149 responses.

i have failed 2.7% of responders who cannot use my plugins as they are only supported on macos 11+

linux distro (if relevant). 143 responses.

surprising marketshare for ubuntu and mint among my audience

preferred plugin format. 212 responses.

interesting to see the preference for audio units (6.1%) is lower than the preference for logic (8.8%) in a phenomenon i can only describe as plugin format dysphoria.

preferred sampling rate. 215 responses.

very surprising to see 48 getting the majority considering all streaming services only support 44.1.

commonly used buffer size. 200 responses.

amongst the other category: many people expressing general confusion, one person picking 192, and one person picking 16 ???

discovery and reach

patreon tier. 210 responses.

paid users are greatly overrepresented in responders, with 3.3% of downloads being of the paid version compared to 27.6% paying responders.
thank you so much for your support !!! and even if u cant support me, i love and appreciate you for caring about my silly software.

i make music. 214 responses. i use unplugred plugins. 215 responses. i use audio software for my job. 215 responses.

a surprising 27.9% of responders have managed to make a living off of audio in some capacity.

when have you first heard about me (roughly). 216 responses.

very happy to see a large percentage of newcomers, very much so hoping this trend continues!
to the 4 people who knew me before i was making plugins, hi! i probably know u personally.

how have you first heard about me?. 214 responses.

very large amount of people who know me from youtube, followed by a personal recommendation, instagram, discord server, and reddit.
if you ever recommended my plugins to others, thank you !
notable among the typed responses: many people coming from linux related websites, google searches, one person coming from free99 (go listen to free99 !!!), one from ewan bristow (go download !!!), and one from "famous musician alexander guy cook"

i often discover new plugins from: (select multiple). 207 responses.

was not aware the reddit plugin community was this big
notable among the typed responses: google, linux spaces.
"piracy websites" and "qbittorrent" also showed up, which i guess is an edge paid plugins have over me.

the plugin i first heard about:. 206 responses. personal favourite. 201 responses.

prisma taking quite a bit of marketshare, with crmbl following.
by subtracting the two charts we can see that prisma is the most overrated plugin, with pnch being the most underrated one.

demographics

i have education in music / audio. 216 responses. age. 212 responses.

majority of responders are young adults, with a surprising percentage in the higher age ranges.

gender. 209 responses.

13.9% of responders are non binary, greatly overrepresented over the general population.
we love and respect you!

sexuality. 207 responses.

my userbase seems very bisexual, which somehow feels correct.

gender alignment. 201 responses.

with 59.7% of my audience being cis, we are a very gender queer community. trans rights are human rights !

neuro diversity. 207 responses.

a very large percentage of neurodiverse people, with people being frustrated they couldnt pick both adhd and autism.

location. 209 responses. race / ethnicity. 209 responses.

at 78.5%, we are a very white community.

income. 204 responses.

with a surprising amount of high earners and a large majority of low earners, the income among responders seems polarised.

ideology. 203 responses.

with 5 conservative responders, my audience heavily leans left.

height. 200 responses. religion. 203 responses.

very small representation of religious people.
did not expect other to have such a share... what is your belief system?

diet. 210 responses.

this is perhaps the most disappointing graph of them all.....no comment.

takeaways