Warning, long post.
Alright, with all the discounts going on, I thought I'd share what I did to take advantage of the various promos I could find...
Saving Cash --- Being Cheap & Going from Humble to Premium:
As some of you may know, in Humble you are able to get 2x Special Editions (normally worth 80 CAD). This grants you 2 instruments in addition to the 3 free instruments, and 6 soundpools plus the 7 free sound pools. This may seem like a lot, but if you are trying to do something commercial with this, it means you really only have 5 instruments to select out of. But hey, it is a great start!
So, I chose to leverage the hefty discount for Premium currently on the website (you'll see why later on the Samplitude end). In addition to the current promo, you can get a further discount by applying for the upgrade pricing instead. Altogether, this gets you 5 more instruments, 3 more sound pools and 1 sound pool collection. This also includes Samplitude which comes with another 6 or so instruments (it is more reliable than Music Maker, seems like an old Cakewalk Sonar age product, but doesn't seem to sound as good with MIDI devices).
Note my caution below so you don't make the mistake I did, don't buy any instruments or soundpools until all the software is installed with the default packs they come with - or like me you'll end up paying for instruments you get for free in this process.
You can potentially get a total of 14 instruments, and 19 soundpools for non-commercial use with this.
Coupons:
If you buy premium, at the top it says you will get a 45 dollar coupon --- this is not true. You will get 3 x 15 dollar coupons, but hey coupons are coupons. Coupons are not stackable, so you'll need to find a bunch of 15 dollar things to buy (there isn't any really).
In addition, if you put something in your cart, the MAGIX website will eventually try and add the MGXSOFTWARE coupon a single time to get up-to 20 dollars off on a coupon. Yes you can use this to buy a 20$ product and pay nothing. Useful for another soundpool.
Finally, if you sign-up for the newsletter (this didn't work the first time for me, I had to signup a second account to get the coupon) you get an additional 15$ coupon --- HOWEVER this one only works on their website, not in the MAGIX Store inside Music Maker. This means you cannot use it on instruments - the only thing that really matters to me anyway.
But, this stack will give you about 80 dollars in various coupons.
Tips for other Premium Purchasers:
Do NOT select any soundbanks or instruments until you have installed ALL the software - this will take days, their web-downloader is terrible. There are faster ways to install the trial versions - I won't share those here - but installing everything first, and running it to install even more of the included content is very important before proceeding.
The software that installs with the premium version is Samplitude - it will unlock a bunch of instruments. You want these to install before you begin purchasing, otherwise you will do what I did and waste credits on a bunch of instruments you get for free anyway. When you finally launch Music Maker, it will request a Serial for the Instrument (it will appear locked), simply use your Samplitude product key, and the annoying nag will go away (for now).
Note as well that I found PREMIUM does not include enough credits for all the features, nor does it provide enough credits for all the presets. All the Soundpools provided are non-commercial use - and you cannot use your coupon codes for the commercial versions of for those. So if you go the soundpool route, be prepared to start forking out a lot of cash. To license all 19 soundpools you unlock with this, you would need to spend an additional 949.81 and spend a lot of time searching to find the real names of the soundpools - only to have your tunes sound like everyone else. So if you can, get a cheap midi keyboard, and just add write the tracks yourself :)
Anyway, that is it for me, but I feel like I did pretty good on the haul - so big thanks to Magix for the options and hopefully they sort out making coupons a bit more useful in the future.
Did anyone else take advantage of all the offers to upgrade to premium? Did you find a smarter path than I did?