I rather buy YouTube Premium than getting a subscription plugin.
Never.
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The price didn’t change but you never got the spectral stuff for free. You pay for it with less features in other areas. There are no free lunches!
I accept market forces play some part in this, but there are enough good companies not doing it to prove that it isn’t necessary. U-He (who I think are great) make quality plugins, support and update them over many years and only occasionally do sales. They charge fair prices for good software and they’ve been in business for a long time.
I agree that people are ungrateful and expect too much though. They expect a lot for very little cost and of course that makes life hard for those making products (of all kinds).
I never used cracked software. Stealing is stealing and I’m not entitled to something for nothing. I write code for a living and I expect to get paid for my efforts, I don’t see why it should be different for anyone else.
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That’s the key. In terms of market forces, as you put it, that’s called a first mover advantage. And 2000 was a good time to be a first mover in plugins.
Or maybe it was just dumb luck and circumstance they found an audience and built a brand. That usually the more likely scenario in these situations!
But regardless, of the hundreds of plugin makers that charged fair prices for good software, which category has more entries:
- Thriving and fully capitalized to continue development and pay salaries
- bought out, folded, or collapsed
My estimation is the latter. And market forces aren’t charted by plotting the course of the most successful outlier in a field. Rather, they look at the pile that has the most bodies and say, “That didn’t work.”
…i see and feel and share ur point of view…but let’s not start to discuss the new feudalism spread in the fourth industrial revolution and all the shortcomings of the information age…
let’s praise the code and what we can actually DO with it…
and back to topic…15 bux to RENT on monthly bases is an absolute NO GO, dear minimal audio…
while between 120 and 160 bux a year to OWN bitwig forever at it’s actual state is a fair offer…
which, by the way, enables u to DO exactly everything and way more on top, what oh so brand new current likes to promise…
don’t get fooled…
and for the record…bitwig keeps on developing in a very smart and smooth way…and after a little once in a lifetime learning curve of a week, how to keep and stick to marketing promises, they continued to do so and every user can do spectral treatments eversince and it did NOT slow down their as frequent as impressing update history at all…
in fairness, I don’t think people wanted a subscription for a fraction of a penny a song, they wanted to download the entire of recorded music for nothing.
The subs model only exists because the “it’s all free” model happened first. If they could have, the majors would have reinstated fifteen pounds/dollars/euro for a CD…
and tbh, I don’t know that that rampant profiteering in the 90s wasn’t a little bit responsible for people being so prepared to pirate it all in the first place…
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I agree, this more cynical take could be the more accurate description of humanity’s motivation. It ends us in the same spot, though, in music and plugins.
Sure, and I think in both places old world capitalism is struggling to catch up with changes to the world that may end up just derailing it entirely eventually.
The lag is kinda “old world” money trying it’s best to keep things exactly the same. I’m not sure it’s possible though, I think they might be patching holes in an increasingly unstable dam in the longer term.
I don’t think it’s that complicated or systemic. Intangible goods have always been devalued. People will pay for a record or a concert, not a download. People will pay for an instrument, but not software. People will pay for a comic book or novel, but not a web comic or blog post. Tangibility is the ultimate arbiter of value, and always has been.
The key to “adding value” to intangible things is to make them seem tangible. So instead of selling “software” you sell a “service than maintains software”.
To those who already value software, of course, this looks like a bait and switch. But to the others, it takes something worthless and gives a reason to pay for it.
all of those intangible things were invented about ten seconds ago in the timescale I am thinking about tbh.
But yeah, I do kinda agree;
Two hammers obviously take twice as much material and work to make as one.
Two copies of a piece of software definitely do not.
wheras “working on software for a year” is something that is the same work every year.
But I don’t know whether that makes people more prepared to pay, or just makes it harder for them not to pay tbh. A bit of both I guess!
It really comes down to this: If there is a market of customers who value this particular plugin highly enough to pay $15/month in perpetuity, Minimal Audio’s experiment will be a success. If there isn’t, they’ll have to change their plans and offer a standard perpetual license.
Personally, in a market where you not only have the likes of Pigments, Phase Plant, Serum, and Massive X, but also free offerings like Vital and Surge, I can’t possibly see how they’re going to find customers, but we shall see.
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The name is so ironic.
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Considering that Reason+ is a thing, paying almost as much per month for a single plugin doesn’t make much sense to me. There’s probably a target market there somewhere, but I just can’t see it.
I wouldn’t mind if a streaming platform likeTidal decreased their monthly subscription by 50 percent and limited track play to max 10 and after that you could buy an own or even resale a track with a set percentage to the copyright holder, Like digital cratedigging: This makes the whole experience different and force listeners to curate their personal preferences better. Just my personal thoughts but it would benefit both the artist and the audience. It’s nice to have full acces to almost every track out there but it has strong resemblance with the “throw away” society.
Precisely, or Studio One+ for another example. Kilohearts offer a subscription, but every year they offer a voucher to buy some of their wares and convert the sub to perpetual licences and I must admit I’ve nearly subscribed to it before now.
Someone from Minimal Audio replied to my email with a very pleasant response and a quote of the official company response which is, I believe, from the CEO. They’ve clearly had a lot of negative backlash and sadly I’ve seen over at KVR (which these days represents all that’s bad about the internet) some genuinely unpleasant behaviour and suggestions from the developers that they’ve had real abuse and people wishing them harm etc. Apparently someone said they should starve.
What the hell is wrong with people?! We’re all entitled to an opinion and to give feedback but this sort of thing just leaves a really unpleasant taste in your mouth. And we’re talking about a piece of music software here. There are wars happening. This simply isn’t that important and people need to grow up and get some perspective.
Thankfully this place isn’t like that most of the time, as far as I can tell. Long may it stay that way.
Regarding the subscription, apparently the plan is to continue to bundle whatever new FX etc they release into the synth so you’d always get the latest stuff, and of course add new oscillator and filter models etc, for the ongoing subscription price.
We’ll see I guess. I don’t like it, but it doesn’t warrant personal attacks and abuse. If you wouldn’t say it to a person’s face, don’t say it online.
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I don’t even understand how anyone is angry over this.
If a product you already use goes subscription-only, that’s a fair reason to be upset and (respectfully, without stooping to abusive behaviors) make your voice heard. But this is a new product. There is no rug being pulled out from under anyone. Everyone is in the same position of having nothing invested yet, and is thus free to ignore it.
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Entitlement means there’s no such thing as a product you don’t already use.
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Insulting people, wishing them ill will and like over a product or service is never acceptable let alone abuse or threats of violence. I can’t wrap my head around that. Whatever the reason, it’s unacceptable and inexcusable.
I posted in one of the KVR threads (pretty sternly) that I’d never subscribe to a single product like a synth. I’ve subscribed to a suite of products but feel like that’s quite different. Those were products available today and not a vague promise in an undisclosed future. I believe you should buy something based on its current merits and not what may come later on.
I like Minimal Audio a lot and own three of their products which are great. I genuinely hope they succeed overall, but IMO it’s pretty clear they missed the mark with this release. I think a lot of people, myself included are very much tired of this ever increasingly ‘everything is a subscription’ world and just won’t do it if there are reasonable alternatives.
I really can’t understand how they thought it was a good idea regardless of the quality and their vision of expanding it in the future. It’s like they were really in a vacuum and didn’t spend any time asking their customers or at least a focus group what they want. I can’t imagine spending years developing a product, especially as subscription only without feedback.
Anyone who has been in this game for a minute knows the toxic troll farm that is KvR. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior and language, but it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Similar behavior happened during the Bitwig spectral suite saga.
I have the morphEQ plugin. It’s ok. I never bothered with other other plugins. In today’s world with many options, their synth better be an absolute paradigm busting game changer to justify a perpetual sub. By the looks of it, it’s very similar to pigments, and I bought that synth for $69.
Put it in another perspective. Over 5 years, Currents costs $600, and I still wouldn’t own it. And yes, I’m still using plugins that are many years old. I would rather put that to a hardware box.