A conversation with Sudara, the developer behind Melatonin

Sudara launched his plugin “Sine Machine” in 2025, using Moonbase to power the hard parts of running a business.

What's Sine Machine?

I make a software instrument called Sine Machine. It's a "purist" additive synth, that means that all it does is emit ridiculous quantities of sine waves (more than 10,000). The people most interested in it are synthesizer enthusiasts or producers looking for new and interesting frontiers in sound. There's not a lot of additive synths out there, and traditionally additives are quite tough to use.

When you were getting ready to sell, what did you need to figure out?

As a solo dev, it can feel scary to emerge out of that deep R+D flow state and be plunged into the cold water of sales and marketing. I made a list of all the tasks a plugin dev does when they go-to-market. It is a ridiculous list: from assembling beta testers to dealing with code signing to creating a website and figuring out licensing, there's dozens of things to handle before launch. So the main thing I needed to figure out was how to keep things simple, straightforward and reliable.

What options did you consider for handling payments and licensing?

I was initially leaning towards going with a homemade licensing and payment solution. I've seen C++ devs who try to write C++ licensing backends. That seems like the scariest way to approach things (wrong tool for the job), but of course I felt like I could do it justice given my web dev background.

So I wrote user stories, kicked off a project, and even wrote a database schema. I contacted a friend of mine who is the best web dev I know and considered investing $10,000-$20,000 into it.

But as I approached launch, taking a big detour like that sounded risky. I don't want to get into the payments and licensing business, so why would I spend 3-6 months or a bunch of money reinventing that particular wheel? There's no way I would end up with something as battle-tested and feature complete as Moonbase.

How did you find Moonbase?

I think I saw a mention of Moonbase on the JUCE forum first? I've seen a few solutions show up there over the years and always look them up. Most existing solutions seem pretty crusty or corporate.

What made you decide it was the right fit?

The fact that Moonbase has a JUCE module and caters to plugin devs made it VERY attractive. That's just such a cool idea to pursue and says a lot about the company itself.

I actually was initially put off a bit by having to have an intro call with Tobias! Like most devs, I just wanted to get in there and try things out myself. But actually, having a short chat with him instantly sealed the deal for me. He clearly knew my needs. He's supported other people in my situation. It immediately felt like he was personally there for me. He was willing to hear what I thought was missing on the platform and even built some of that out before I launched!

What was the setup process like?

The JUCE module licensing was added and working within a day. I did end up customizing the UI completely down the line, so I spent another couple days writing and testing that.

I really liked how nice and smooth Moonbase's single click online auth is. It's much better UX than having users juggle esoteric files like it's the 90s or try to log into some hastily thrown together user/pass fields.

The embedded storefront was ridiculously easy to add to my existing website.

A fun surprise: I wanted to try a pay what you want pricing so that a user can pay anywhere from $50 to $150. I figured I would have to ask Tobias to build this somewhat niche feature and maybe it would have to wait for more devs to show interest. But it turns out that Moonbase already had something called "pricing variations" that are pretty flexible. So I cooked up a really fun and fully working pay what you want solution myself in just a couple hours!

Oh, and taxes, lol! I didn't even remember that, but not having to deal with international sales tax is key. I just take that for granted completely these days.

How did launch go?

I had built up a mailing list of about 600 people from building in public over the years. So it was critically important to me when I emailed them and opened the floodgates that I wasn't testing a payment platform at the same time as my synth! I've seen some of my other plugin dev friends do that and it seems stressful.

So I love that I could just sit back and trust the platform to handle everything. I didn't worry at all on launch about payments going through or troubleshooting esoteric licensing issues. I didn't even think about things like that. I 100% took it for granted that Moonbase was solid and had my back, which I think is the best compliment a dev can give a service.

Any unexpected benefits?

The Moonbase backend is super helpful with support, which was an unexpected bonus. When support emails come in, I like to immediately jump over to Moonbase to see if they are on a trial, when they became a customer, etc, to have better context. I had a few account email mixups that were trivial to fix by popping over to the Moonbase admin.

I also sent Tobias lists of small wording and UX tweaks and he was always patient and diligent. One example: I was building my plugins in CI on GitHub Actions and mentioned that I wanted a way to automate uploading those builds to Moonbase. Tobias wrote an example GitHub Action plus docs within a matter of a few days.

What's next?

My next step is to bring my synth out of early access and launch it for real. After that, I'm not sure. I've been doing plugin dev for many years, but this plugin business is only a few months old. So I have to be patient, settle in, let some time pass and give it some room to grow. Maybe I'll do a fun free effect next, that's a popular move for a new indie plugin biz?