The Ecosystem of Open-Source Music Production Software – A Mining Study on the Development Practices of VST Plugins on GitHub

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.