I saw some teasers about this a few days ago and I got quite excited, but they’ve gone with a subscription-only model. It looks like a great product but why do they have to go this way?! There’s has been tons of negative backlash with other companies that take this option so it just feels like they’re just not paying attention to the sentiment of the target audience.
Although I never normally do this sort of thing, I sent a long message to their support to give congratulations but stress my disappointment with the subscription. I’m a polite person so I wasn’t rude or anything but they’ll never know how (potential) customers feel if nobody tells them. I also did the same when Bitwig had a “paid” upgrade for their DAW which had already gone to a subscription-style model (they were already making me pay yearly, I wasn’t going to then pay extra for some allegedly premium add-ons) and they ultimately reversed that decision because it was a bad one.
I wouldn’t pay $15 a month for Pigments or Phase Plant plus a load of presets and I almost certainly won’t be doing that for this new synth. Just let me buy the damned thing if I like it!
I don’t mind paying. I’m a software developer and I know full well how much work goes into something like this, I just want to pay a one-off price.
There is an argument that they do this to help guarantee ongoing revenue and I understand that, but if they keep developing the product and it’s good quality then they will attract new customers over time and the revenue will come.
Yeah I agree it’s a shitty model. But there’s no shortage of great wavetable softsynths out there at the moment, just grab Dune or Serum or Phaseplant or Pigments or whatever.
first of all, subscription models ain’t all the same…this one looks like one of the baddies, i’ll give u that…but some sort of constant and guaranteed cashflow is what every software company needs to succeed and to survive in modern days…no way around it…
and from what i’ve seen so far, nothing but classic advertising…show heaps of fancy hardware, some elektrons and some modular rax will do, then show a software synth with the promise and the words of a dude that has it, this can cover it all…
don’t fall for that…
bitwig (great and more than fair subscription) can already do, serum (classic single purchase) can already do…aaaaaand the list is endless…
get a decent daw, learn it inside out, add vital (pretty much the xact same thing as current, but for free) and there is nothing u could not achieve, what current is promising u…more likely u can go way beyond, since those tools have already prooven they actually really can deliver…and free ur creative juices for the better…
That on screen piano keyboard is going to have Teenage Engineering feeling like they’ve got deja vu. Lol. Eff subscriptions. I own their FX outright and would have possibly paid for the synth, I won’t sub for it though.
Probably a bit off-topict but afaik, bitwig doesn’t make you pay yearly…
For some reason, you feel entiltled to renew you subscription…
But ultimately, you don’t have to as long as you enjoy what you have without any “critical for you” features or bugs ( which are corrected even when sub runs out).
But you are still paying for the spectral stuff even if you don’t use it. It’s just bundled. It’s weird that so many people complained about not being made to pay for stuff they don’t use.
Yeah that was just poor wording on my part. It’s actually why I don’t mind the Bitwig model. I recently stuck with my existing “outdated” Bitwig version for over a year before renewing again (no updates during that period) as I wasn’t interested in the updates, and then I paid for another year when I saw something I liked.
At least that way I was still able to use the software!
Maybe you were, in the past, buying all the things you liked, not waiting for bundles or sales, accepted them for what they were at the time you bought them and never once complained, demanded updates (or, if you did, were willing to pay full price again for the update), or used cracked copies. Maybe you cherish that one $500 plugin that actually meets your needs rather than collecting 200 $10 plugins that you never use.
But sadly, that would make you very unlike the rest of humanity. People have shown plugin makers over and over they’re unwilling to pay. Subscriptions are just the natural response to this.
Look at music, which is upstream from plugins a whole level or two. People could just pay 99¢ to own a whole goddamned song for life, but that was too much. They wanted a subscription for fractions of a penny per song.
Now this particular plugin is giving me heavy “run away” vibes for a whole number of reasons unrelated to subscriptions. But subs, themselves? That’s just what we’ve trained software developers they have to do.
Yeah, nit only software company, all workers of the world need this. Then, what they are looking for is not customers but sponsors.
If i enter a bakery and the guy tells me the bread is free if i agree to sponsor him 10/month, i will start to make my own bread.
They already chain us with monthly rent, yearly car insurance or phone subscription, i don’t need any more of that in my life.