Upgrade to Live 9 (10) Suite for £191 OR get Bitwig for £265 (on sale)?

[Reefius]

If you want to keep your DAW up-to-date, Bitwig is VERY expensive. You will have to pay $170 every year to keep receiving updates.
For Live 10 you now pay $200 for the upgrade and then you get free updates untill Live 11 arrives. Knowing that Live 9 had a lifespan of 5 years, that is less then $50 a year.

So in the long run:

Bitwig: $170 every year, which makes is $850 over 5 years

Live 10: $200 once and free updates untill Live 11. If Live 10 will have the same lifespan as Live 9 this means you pay $200 for 5 years of updates.

Even if Live 10's lifespan is only 2 years it is still cheaper than Bitwig.

[jacqueslacouth]

If you want to keep your DAW up-to-date, Bitwig is VERY expensive. You will have to pay $170 every year to keep receiving updates.
For Live 10 you now pay $200 for the upgrade and then you get free updates untill Live 11 arrives. Knowing that Live 9 had a lifespan of 5 years, that is less then $50 a year.

So in the long run:

Bitwig: $170 every year, which makes is $850 over 5 years

Live 10: $200 once and free updates untill Live 11. If Live 10 will have the same lifespan as Live 9 this means you pay $200 for 5 years of updates.

Even if Live 10's lifespan is only 2 years it is still cheaper than Bitwig.

Not actually the case. If you buy Bitwig today, you will get all your updates for the next 12 months. If you are working happily with it at that point, you may not feel the urge to upgrade for another 4 years (just to equalise the figures) at which point, you may choose to pay your upgrade fee of $170 to give you everything that has been done over the previous 5 years and all the updates for the next 12 months...a total of 6 years updates for $170 at approx. $28 a year.

I really don't get all the fuss, it's not that much different from how Propellerheads have operated for years.

[Reefius]

That's why I started my post with "If you want to keep your DAW up-to-date".
Following your logic, the OP can simply NOT upgrade and keep using his current DAW, which will cost nothing.

[xbitz]

Live 10.0.1b1 was released yesterday and has quite long "New features and improvements" , I would wait the last day of the BWS winter sale(BWS should get at least one big update till its end) and compare both products then

btw. BWS 2 was released February 28, 2017 so many people will lose their update subscription soon, not hard to tell that something big is coming ... at least a subscription discount

[Daags]

If you want to keep your DAW up-to-date, Bitwig is VERY expensive. You will have to pay $170 every year to keep receiving updates.
For Live 10 you now pay $200 for the upgrade and then you get free updates untill Live 11 arrives. Knowing that Live 9 had a lifespan of 5 years, that is less then $50 a year.

So in the long run:

Bitwig: $170 every year, which makes is $850 over 5 years

Live 10: $200 once and free updates untill Live 11. If Live 10 will have the same lifespan as Live 9 this means you pay $200 for 5 years of updates.

Even if Live 10's lifespan is only 2 years it is still cheaper than Bitwig.

Not actually the case. If you buy Bitwig today, you will get all your updates for the next 12 months. If you are working happily with it at that point, you may not feel the urge to upgrade for another 4 years (just to equalise the figures) at which point, you may choose to pay your upgrade fee of $170 to give you everything that has been done over the previous 5 years and all the updates for the next 12 months...a total of 6 years updates for $170 at approx. $28 a year.

I really don't get all the fuss, it's not that much different from how Propellerheads have operated for years.

uh ... you are assuming that the same subscription terms will apply in 4 years, and it hasn't even been in place for 1 ? that's quite an assumption to make about a fledgling startup that has already broke major promises from BWS 1 -> 2 (opening up the modular environment in version 2 was an explicit selling point they promoted during the entire lifecycle of 1. it never happened.)

Sorry, but you simply can't make such assumptions about BitWig at this point. We can certainly rely on a thriving behemoth like Ableton though.

Also, the big problem with this yearly opt-in/opt-out subscription system that BitWig are currently employing is: bugs. You are living in cloud cuckooland if you think you are not going to end up with some bugs when your subscription runs out. Upgrade to Live 9 (and get 10 free, which seems to be the OP's situation), and you have a mature software in Live 9 - and with your Live 10 license you can at least rely on the fact that for all intents & purposes any bugs you encounter will be fixed without you needing to put your hand in your pocket, or ultimately finding yourself trying to decide which version to roll back to at the sacrifice of which current features as would be the case with BWS if you didn't want to pay for another year just to access the bugfix.

sorry, but I wipe my ass with these licensing schemes. I hope every company that adopts such a scheme fails. Little pip-squeek startups producing a product for a saturated market shouldn't expect to be able to pull off something like Adobe can pull off .... Adobe brute forced the scheme because they have an absolutely monumental market penetration.

[tooneba]

It's like money grabbers who are selling never ending Early Access game in Steam.

[samsam]

If you want to keep your DAW up-to-date, Bitwig is VERY expensive. You will have to pay $170 every year to keep receiving updates.
For Live 10 you now pay $200 for the upgrade and then you get free updates untill Live 11 arrives. Knowing that Live 9 had a lifespan of 5 years, that is less then $50 a year.

So in the long run:

Bitwig: $170 every year, which makes is $850 over 5 years

Live 10: $200 once and free updates untill Live 11. If Live 10 will have the same lifespan as Live 9 this means you pay $200 for 5 years of updates.

Even if Live 10's lifespan is only 2 years it is still cheaper than Bitwig.

Not actually the case. If you buy Bitwig today, you will get all your updates for the next 12 months. If you are working happily with it at that point, you may not feel the urge to upgrade for another 4 years (just to equalise the figures) at which point, you may choose to pay your upgrade fee of $170 to give you everything that has been done over the previous 5 years and all the updates for the next 12 months...a total of 6 years updates for $170 at approx. $28 a year.

I really don't get all the fuss, it's not that much different from how Propellerheads have operated for years.

uh ... you are assuming that the same subscription terms will apply in 4 years, and it hasn't even been in place for 1 ? that's quite an assumption to make about a fledgling startup that has already broke major promises from BWS 1 -> 2 (opening up the modular environment in version 2 was an explicit selling point they promoted during the entire lifecycle of 1. it never happened.)

Sorry, but you simply can't make such assumptions about BitWig at this point. We can certainly rely on a thriving behemoth like Ableton though.

Also, the big problem with this yearly opt-in/opt-out subscription system that BitWig are currently employing is: bugs. You are living in cloud cuckooland if you think you are not going to end up with some bugs when your subscription runs out. Upgrade to Live 9 (and get 10 free, which seems to be the OP's situation), and you have a mature software in Live 9 - and with your Live 10 license you can at least rely on the fact that for all intents & purposes any bugs you encounter will be fixed without you needing to put your hand in your pocket, or ultimately finding yourself trying to decide which version to roll back to at the sacrifice of which current features as would be the case with BWS if you didn't want to pay for another year just to access the bugfix.

sorry, but I wipe my ass with these licensing schemes. I hope every company that adopts such a scheme fails. Little pip-squeek startups producing a product for a saturated market shouldn't expect to be able to pull off something like Adobe can pull off .... Adobe brute forced the scheme because they have an absolutely monumental market penetration.

Well said.

[samsam]

Dubz

[Acid Mitch]

Although there have been 5 years between Live 9 and 10 , there wasn’t anywhere near that amount of time between other Live versions. Usually it’s only a year or two before your being asked for an upgrade fee.

[SLiC]

Although there have been 5 years between Live 9 and 10 , there wasn’t anywhere near that amount of time between other Live versions. Usually it’s only a year or two before your being asked for an upgrade fee.

Yup 5 years between Live 9 and 10 - I have had almost no useful updates to my Live 9 suite and none of the most request features were impairment in the last 5 years (STILL no in clip editing, MPE etc).

I want a DAW company that concentrates on software not hardware, that's why I switched to BitWig. I would much rather pay for updates that actually happen (and 160 bucks a year is sod all even if you do it every year if you are getting good value and a lot of updates) than be stuck with a DAW that hardly ever updates due to the company moving focus to hardware.

If your music production is based around PUSH I would back Live, if not, I would (and did) back Bitwig as the 'DAW' is developing much faster and in my opinion already has more useful features for general music production.

[ericj23]

Although there have been 5 years between Live 9 and 10 , there wasn’t anywhere near that amount of time between other Live versions. Usually it’s only a year or two before your being asked for an upgrade fee.

Yep the Live annual fees used to be ridiculous - much worse (!) than Cubase and others. The 5 years of Live 9 was in order to head off a rampaging mob wielding pitchforks complaining about bugs never getting fixed. I guess money from hardware has allowed them to keep this going.

The idea that Live users will get another 5 years support without paying for Live 11 assumes that there business model is changed permanently - I would not be so sure.

[Reefius]

Even if it takes only 2 years for the next Live version, it will still be cheaper than 2 years of Bitwig.

Bitwig users will also run into trouble with major OS updates. OSX is known to break a lot of stuff with every major update. How will Bitwig fix this for users whose 1 year of free updates has ended? Leave them with a non-working product, so forcing them to pay for another year?

Because of these OS updates, users are kinda forced to keep paying every year.

[kiezum]

I've got Bitwig 2 and Live Suite 9. The modulators in Bitwig are interesting, but Max is fully integrated in Live 10... Max has endless modulation possibilities. Workflow in Bitwig is a bit different, but not much better. The biggest drawback of Bitwig is the subscription plan. And they promised all sort of things for version 2 (max-like programming, collaboration), but they never delivered.

[ThomasHelzle]

Sure, budget is a topic, but I personally find it more important if a DAW suits my style of working than if it costs a bit more or less.
Ableton Live is simply too inflexible for my needs and I don't need all the stuff it comes with, especially since I don't like being chained to one DAW and it's tools, so I use third party plugins and libraries 99% of the time.
Just because Live is dragging along slowly doesn't make it "cheap" in a value for money sense to me.

If your DAW doesn't make your heart sing and your creative juices flow, it's not worth a penny, no matter what it can do.
If it does, it's invaluable.

Cheers,

Tom

[pdxindy]

Yeah, Live 8 -> 9 gave the user 5 years of updates... people are describing that as a good thing... but in that time, the core app did not change much. Not much of what I would like to have seen improve was. It was mostly Push, M4L, new devices and content.

And during those 5 years, Bitwig came along and is offering stuff I wished Live would have. Foremost for me is MPE support. But also hybrid tracks (would not want to live without BIP at this point), user defined key commands, Bitwig modulation system, Remote Controls, multi-clip edit, inspector with histograms, and lots more.

If one is basically happy with Live as is, stick with it. I wasn't. Live 10 has added a few things but still no MPE which is essential for me and so now it might be 5 more years before it gets added. I kept my Live 9 Studio license in case 10 was extra cool... but after waiting 5 years for 10, it aint much at all.

I am more confident that the Bitwig Devs will add the things I would like over the coming years than I am with Live. Bitwig is young and still fresh and innovative. They are forward thinking - for example the recent update made Bitwig excellent as a DAW to integrate with hardware modular (eurorack) via CV.

My time and enthusiasm is worth much more to me than a few hundred dollars over some years.