You edit the image that represents the sound, then either apply the modifications to the original sound using my program or just synthesise the modified image (but that one's a lossy process). The program in question does all that, and it's indeed quite novel, I suppose that's how I manage to make a living out of it.

That's how.

it looks like you need Photoshop to get the most benefit out of it

You'd be surprised but according to many users it's the main selling point. They'd rather edit with something powerful they're used to like Photoshop or GIMP than have to deal with a new app's clunky way of doing things (and my spray tools are definitely clunky, they need some work).

I'd be more likely to load up Coagula

Coagula doesn't load sounds.

how about slowly ramping that up from 1/10th to 1:1 over the first minute of the track?

As it is that wouldn't work for Photosounder even if you could automate the knobs the way VST allows you to because it needs to resynthesise the whole sound when you do that. I have plans to make it possible to change those things live, although it will take obscene amounts of CPU power.

In general, the closer you can get to something that's usable 'live', the more situations it can be used in.

I have an idea for something that could be used live, however that would pretty much require a multi-touch screen.

You've got good points though, it's just that actually following your suggestions for this actual product would take it far from where it's headed.

Well originally it was meant to only be used to turn pictures into cool sound effects, and even my mom could use it for that, but no one used it for that and instead people only cared about the complicated processing they could do with it.

But you're perfectly right, my product as it is is very niche and it's actually over the head of a lot of people who may be interested in what it does, to their own admission. What I plan to do is using the same technology and code base making simple spin-off programs that would do one thing but do it right and very simply without requiring any external program. It should greatly broaden the appeal. This being said I don't think I'm anywhere near having saturated the niche market with my current product so I still think it's worth a more serious marketing effort.

Don't take it the wrong way but I know for a fact that in my case it's bullshit. I have good code that solves problems that my competitors can't solve, the problem is that in my case most people are only aware of what I demonstrated. In a way, my program is worthless if I don't tell you what you can do with it, because it can do a lot, but has no self-evident use until you tell people what it's for.

I wish that having my program just out there would be enough for people to realise all it can do on their own, unfortunately it's not like this. Even showing people what to do with it doesn't solve my problem, because such niche programs have a limited virality, even if you make the best program ever you'll have to get the word out. People won't do it for you, sure they'll talk about it every once in a while, but that's very far from the snowball effect you might expect. People only hear about it as much as you talk about it, and that's why I need someone to do some of the talking for me. I need apostles to spread the good word, if you will.

I wrote it to make a living. It might seem like an absurd move but I couldn't find a job for the 6 months I looked (I'm young and without any prior experience) and that was before unemployment in the country I live in started sky-rocketing. And that's most likely all I'll have until I return to college in over a year and get a student loan.

I guess so, so I suppose I should try contacting again music magazines then? I tried a while ago to little avail, although back then my program seemed much less compelling.

This being said I wanted to be told how to find someone to take care of the marketing, not how to market better ;-). I'm sure anyone decent with marketing would pull the aforementioned strings though.

Yes, that's what I've concluded too. Besides someone actually argued to me that an old pirated version out there might be helpful to popularise a poorly known program, I'm not sure about that, but that's an interesting point to consider.

Not really. Getting my answers to my questions is worth a lot more than a couple of missed sales. But if you're really after a spectrogram editor then the link is my homepage link.

"One-man orchestra" is a name I just made up today as a metaphor for the situation I'm in. I didn't want to give out too much about the actual program because then usually the discussion drifts towards "I tried the demo and how do I do this and that?" when what I really want is an answer to my questions.

I really don't need that when already a majority of answers tell me how to do the marketing myself better when I was asking how to not do the marketing by myself ;-).

Yeah I guess I have to start using such words on the website. I actually never used the term spectrogram editor before I wrote this Ask Slashdot question.

Yes, that's the program. I considered making it a VST, the problem is it isn't very well suited to being a VST. It doesn't do anything live, so I don't think it could be a VST effect (I'm myself not so familiar with any of that, I actually don't use any DAW or anything, I only "eat my own dog food"), and I'm not sure how it would make sense as a VSTi. Also, it's meant to require a lot of screen real-estate, I believe much more than most plugins out there. Lastly, I'm not very comfortable developing a VST (actually looked into the VST SDK 2.4) as I've never really done it before, plus I don't code in C++, so while I could do it, I'd be in foreign territory.

I however could see myself collaborating with a confirmed VST developer, but I doubt it would really make sense to turn Photosounder into a VST, or at least I have yet to be explained how.

As for the Musik Messe, it sounds interesting, but I'm not sure exactly what I would do there.