"It always felt like most producers didn't want to give away their best sounds," Ryan Dunsmuir says. "Almost everything I kept buying felt second grade."

So he started designing sample libraries for his own productions. He enjoyed a short stint as a Drum and Bass artist. But somewhere along the way, he discovered that he connected more with creating music than performing it.

That realization sparked a dream.

What if he could make sound libraries as a full-time job?

Spend each day producing music, inspiring other producers, and actually put 100% of his best work into every pack?

KAN Samples was born from that question.



Sound libraries as building blocks







If you asked Ryan to explain his business to a ten-year-old, he'd keep it simple: "I make sound libraries for music producers, mainly Drum and Bass. Think Lego for songs: drums, bass, and melodies you can drag into music software to build tracks and find inspiration faster."

That Lego analogy captures something important about how Ryan thinks about his products. Each sample pack isn't just a collection of sounds but a toolkit designed to spark creativity and accelerate the production process for musicians selling their own work online.

The work itself is all-consuming. When Ryan starts on a new product, it takes over everything.

"I undoubtedly spend most of my time making and refining products," he explains. "When I'm working on a new product, I get really into it and it consumes all my time and attention."

His process is methodical. Days in the studio working on preset libraries. Building Spotify and Soundcloud playlists as "mood boards" for inspiration. Arranging recording sessions to refresh his library of original drums, percussion, and ambient sounds. Then come the intense periods of actually making samples.

Throughout it all, Ryan maintains rigorous quality control, constantly listening through everything and testing how sounds work together. "Throwing away what doesn't work or feel like the best," he says. It's a level of curation that distinguishes KAN Samples from the generic packs that frustrated him in the first place.

Free resources as a growth engine

Ask Ryan about the smallest thing he does regularly that makes the biggest difference, and he points to something that generates zero direct revenue: free resources for subscribers.

"There is a running initiative where I source the original Vinyl for classic breaks and try my best to restore them and process them for Drum and Bass," he explains. "I have gotten a lot of amazing positive feedback from customers and even the biggest artists in the scene that appreciate them."

These free classic break restorations started as a passion project. Ryan would track down original vinyl records, carefully restore the audio, and process the breaks for modern Drum and Bass production. The packs honor the genre's history while providing genuine value to producers.

What began as a labor of love became a powerful marketing strategy. The free packs helped grow a cult following for the brand and serve as a gateway for new customers to eventually invest in paid products once they experience the quality firsthand.

Today, KAN Samples has grown to over 20,000 newsletter subscribers with an impressive 35% open rate on engaged subscribers. The community reads his emails, downloads the free resources, and increasingly becomes paying customers.

The forum post that started everything

Ryan's very first customer came from a simple act of generosity on a producer forum.

"I posted a tiny free pack with a direct download, no email wall, and a simple note: 'If this helps, I'll make bigger ones,'" Ryan recalls. "That honesty worked. I got feedback, and a few hours later, my first sale pinged for a paid pack at the store."

Offering genuine value without strings attached resonated more than a complicated and aggressive 'sales funnel' approach. It's an approach that continues to inform how Ryan builds his business, even as it has grown to include 40 products, over 14,000 unique samples, and nearly 600 synth presets.

When things go wrong

Every digital product seller has their "oops" moment. For Ryan, it was releasing a pack with missing stem files.

"The fix took minutes; the fallout, emails, re-uploads, comms, took days," he says.

The experience taught him to build systems that prevent problems before they happen. Now he runs a pre-launch checklist: file diff, naming rules, integrity hash, and a "missing file" search across the project. It's the kind of quality control process that separates professional digital product businesses from hobbyist operations.

Finding the marketing channels that actually work

Ryan has tested essentially every marketing channel available to digital creators: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, Google and SEO, influencer partnerships. His conclusion is blunt.

"Marketing a digital business is a science of statistics, but first you need to find the channels that work for your product," he explains. "After testing every channel, I found the ones that worked and the ones that are a black hole that make money disappear."

He won't specify which channels work and which don't. Every business is different. But he does share his filtering mechanism: "Does this work improve product quality or contribute towards a working marketing strategy in the right channel?" With that mantra, he says, most of the noise gets cancelled out.

It's a framework that forces clarity. Product quality comes first. Marketing that works comes second. Everything else is a distraction.

Balancing perfectionism with output

When asked about the problem he still wrestles with that other solopreneurs might relate to, Ryan is refreshingly honest.

"Balancing perfectionism with output," he says. "In audio, there's always a better transient or a cleaner tail. And I'm sure every market has its own details to get lost in."

His solution is to rigidly stick to deadlines and accept that quality evaluation is somewhat subjective. What feels perfect today might feel like it needs improvement at another stage of life.

"If you spend too long trying to make something perfect, months go by and then suddenly the brand is losing momentum and interest," Ryan warns.

It's advice that applies far beyond audio sample packs. Every creator struggles with the tension between shipping and perfecting. Ryan's answer: set deadlines and honor them, even when your perfectionist instincts resist.

The path forward







If Ryan had to double his business in six months with zero budget, he knows exactly what he'd do: diversify into new genres and expand his network of sample creators.

"This would increase the rate that I can release new products and open the business up into a few new niche markets," he explains. Collaborative "artist series" packs, where the entire product is outsourced and branded by a known producer, could accelerate growth even further.

It's strategic thinking that comes from years of building something real: understand what makes your business work, then find ways to do more of it without sacrificing the quality that built your reputation.

For Ryan, that reputation was built on a simple foundation: actually putting his best work into every pack, unlike all those disappointing sample libraries he kept buying years ago.

Turns out, that frustration was the best thing that could have happened to him.