In this study we shed light on a unique and interdisciplinary domain, where music, technology, and human creativity intersect: music production software. Today software technologies are the predominant means of music production, with a vibrant ecosystem for commercial and open-source products.
In this work we target VST plugins, the de-facto standard for developing and prototyping music production software. We analyze 15,847 data points over 299 GitHub repositories containing VST plugins. Our results include a systematic quantification of the (i) characteristics of open-source VST projects in terms of, e.g., duration, size, contributors, stars/watchers, licensing, (ii) most used technologies for developing VST plugins, and (iii) code quality and testing practices in VST projects.
Our findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of the practice in VST plugins development, highlighting successful projects, opportunities for improvement, and future research directions for software engineering researchers.
Erfan Raoofian University of British Columbia, Fatemeh Hendijani Fard Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Ifeoma Adaji University of British Columbia, Gema Rodríguez-Pérez Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus
