Musikmesse 2012: Propellerhead to share "exciting news"

[liquidsound]

Imagine if Props had made RE for Reason act as 'native' VSTs essentially, with their nice online store, once-stop shop, and allow any plugin to be used as a VST in any host, cross-platform on Win/Mac, including Reason's native plugs. Reason would instantly become the darling of every single DAW user, I would buy it in a heartbeat and use the plugins in my choice of DAW, and shop at their store exclusively out of the sheer convenience. They probably would get nearly every VST developer on board since they would become one defacto standard that would work anywhere, and they would still have compelling reasons for users to work within Reason. Imagine loading a Reason VST and selecting any patch from any VST based on some filtered search, but do it in Cubase, FL Studio, Reaper, or whatever. I think they are missing an incredibly great opportunity, like they are part-way there but are missing the most critical element out of stubbornness and misplaced self-interest. It would be the next step beyond Rewire and really give them the whole market to garner that 30%.

Maybe this is the plan though, call it something else besides VST, call it Rewire 2 maybe, but if Reason instruments could work as a plugin in other hosts I would be totally on board with the whole concept. Hosts are so user-specific to the preference of how different people work, having to use the old rewire is just a PITA for me, not exactly a elegant way of working from any host that I've seen.

You're kidding right?

[nix808]

I think both me & braj understand why the proprietry format is. He wasn't putting it in a derogatry way.
And no, I don't own a business- I have an interest though(in audio soft).

[braj]

Imagine if Props had made RE for Reason act as 'native' VSTs essentially, with their nice online store, once-stop shop, and allow any plugin to be used as a VST in any host, cross-platform on Win/Mac, including Reason's native plugs. Reason would instantly become the darling of every single DAW user, I would buy it in a heartbeat and use the plugins in my choice of DAW, and shop at their store exclusively out of the sheer convenience. They probably would get nearly every VST developer on board since they would become one defacto standard that would work anywhere, and they would still have compelling reasons for users to work within Reason. Imagine loading a Reason VST and selecting any patch from any VST based on some filtered search, but do it in Cubase, FL Studio, Reaper, or whatever. I think they are missing an incredibly great opportunity, like they are part-way there but are missing the most critical element out of stubbornness and misplaced self-interest. It would be the next step beyond Rewire and really give them the whole market to garner that 30%.

Maybe this is the plan though, call it something else besides VST, call it Rewire 2 maybe, but if Reason instruments could work as a plugin in other hosts I would be totally on board with the whole concept. Hosts are so user-specific to the preference of how different people work, having to use the old rewire is just a PITA for me, not exactly a elegant way of working from any host that I've seen.

You're kidding right?

No, I'm not. Rewire already defacto lets you use Reason instruments as 'plugins' in each channel of a rewire host, just it is clunky and dated, behaves differently in different hosts because the way they route things, if they streamlined Rewire into a plugin format that worked like VSTs ie. simple, no routing nightmares, I would be more than happy to buy Reason, buy my plugins through them, have a nice rack of synths in a manageable UI, and happily work in the host of my choice.

[liquidsound]

Imagine if Props had made RE for Reason act as 'native' VSTs essentially, with their nice online store, once-stop shop, and allow any plugin to be used as a VST in any host, cross-platform on Win/Mac, including Reason's native plugs. Reason would instantly become the darling of every single DAW user, I would buy it in a heartbeat and use the plugins in my choice of DAW, and shop at their store exclusively out of the sheer convenience. They probably would get nearly every VST developer on board since they would become one defacto standard that would work anywhere, and they would still have compelling reasons for users to work within Reason. Imagine loading a Reason VST and selecting any patch from any VST based on some filtered search, but do it in Cubase, FL Studio, Reaper, or whatever. I think they are missing an incredibly great opportunity, like they are part-way there but are missing the most critical element out of stubbornness and misplaced self-interest. It would be the next step beyond Rewire and really give them the whole market to garner that 30%.

Maybe this is the plan though, call it something else besides VST, call it Rewire 2 maybe, but if Reason instruments could work as a plugin in other hosts I would be totally on board with the whole concept. Hosts are so user-specific to the preference of how different people work, having to use the old rewire is just a PITA for me, not exactly a elegant way of working from any host that I've seen.

You're kidding right?

No, I'm not. Rewire already defacto lets you use Reason instruments as 'plugins' in each channel of a rewire host, just it is clunky and dated, behaves differently in different hosts because the way they route things, if they streamlined Rewire into a plugin format that worked like VSTs ie. simple, no routing nightmares, I would be more than happy to buy Reason, buy my plugins through them, have a nice rack of synths in a manageable UI, and happily work in the host of my choice.

Agree with the advantage of Reason as a VST, but thinking of a possible complete turn of power to the PH by the VST developers is not the same like the Apple store. Reason is not an iPhone or IPad power player. Giving a third of your business to a salesperson? Which in turn eventually it's your only bridge to mainland?

[CT]

Yea .. While im very excited about the possibilties with extensions (particularly for modular madness), PH are not market makers or power players like apple. 30% is way too high. It should be 10-15% at most.

[bmrzycki]

Reason is not an iPhone or IPad power player.

Correct. It took Apple 4 years of running the store and building the platform to make it what it is today. Go back and read the "expert" blogs in 2008 when the store was announced -- a lot of them questioned if they could get developers on-board.

Giving a third of your business to a salesperson? Which in turn eventually it's your only bridge to mainland?

It's not "giving". The Props lay the groundwork, make the SDK, support the SDK, store and run the servers, manage cross-platform code, manage copy-protection, manage billing. Ask current plug-in devs how much money Share-IT takes from each sale just for processing a credit card. If Props can make it easy to buy, install, and manage everything and developers price apps in impulse ranges that means potentially more sales of both Reason (the platform) and the apps themselves. That's what they are betting the farm on with Re. And it just might work.

What if, say, Urs decides to price the Re only version of Diva at $60 and you can pay the difference to upgrade to RE/AU/VST. What if this generates 300% more sales of Diva Re-only? He's making less per sale but more overall due to volume. And before you think that could never happen, you might want to read a bit about Valve's pricing experiments with the popular Steam platform:
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiment ... be-newell/

... we did this different experiment where we did a sale. ... We do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40.

In the end, the market will decide if the Re gamble will pay off for developers and PHead.

[liquidsound]

Reason is not an iPhone or IPad power player.

Correct. It took Apple 4 years of running the store and building the platform to make it what it is today. Go back and read the "expert" blogs in 2008 when the store was announced -- a lot of them questioned if they could get developers on-board.

Giving a third of your business to a salesperson? Which in turn eventually it's your only bridge to mainland?

It's not "giving". The Props lay the groundwork, make the SDK, support the SDK, store and run the servers, manage cross-platform code, manage copy-protection, manage billing. Ask current plug-in devs how much money Share-IT takes from each sale just for processing a credit card. If Props can make it easy to buy, install, and manage everything and developers price apps in impulse ranges that means potentially more sales of both Reason (the platform) and the apps themselves. That's what they are betting the farm on with Re. And it just might work.

What if, say, Urs decides to price the Re only version of Diva at $60 and you can pay the difference to upgrade to RE/AU/VST. What if this generates 300% more sales of Diva Re-only? He's making less per sale but more overall due to volume. And before you think that could never happen, you might want to read a bit about Valve's pricing experiments with the popular Steam platform:
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiment ... be-newell/

... we did this different experiment where we did a sale. ... We do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40.

In the end, the market will decide if the Re gamble will pay off for developers and PHead.

My comment was not about Re as it is intended now, but on someone else idea to make the PH the Apple Store of the VST period! Are you kidding me? In the name of what. More business for the VST developers? How? Is the Internet down? Do we have computers built by PH (Apple's Power)?
Wouldn't Amazon be better then?

[braj]

I'm talking about how PH could make RE compelling to me. A closed system isn't compelling, rewire as it stands is not compelling, but being able to use Reason devices in my DAW like VSTs and manage them all within one environment would be compelling to me, and I imagine very successful for PH and developers. You asked if I ever owned a business, no I haven't, but i have bought products and I'm speaking from a user perspective of what I find useful. Please get a grip, I'm entitled to my opinion without a wag of your finger.

[liquidsound]

I'm talking about how PH could make RE compelling to me. A closed system isn't compelling, rewire as it stands is not compelling, but being able to use Reason devices in my DAW like VSTs and manage them all within one environment would be compelling to me, and I imagine very successful for PH and developers. You asked if I ever owned a business, no I haven't, but i have bought products and I'm speaking from a user perspective of what I find useful. Please get a grip, I'm entitled to my opinion without a wag of your finger.

i understand what you mean as a user. Well on that I have also special wishes and so no conflict there. I use Reason and I'm happy that I can probably use now some of my favorite VST in projects I never completed due to certain sound I could not create in Reason. I'm not a sound designer but here and there I can get what I need.
Re sound great mostly for Reason users in particular but it's never a clear cut. We'll see.
Going back to my wag finger... As a user standpoint I give you this then

[braj]

I'm talking about how PH could make RE compelling to me. A closed system isn't compelling, rewire as it stands is not compelling, but being able to use Reason devices in my DAW like VSTs and manage them all within one environment would be compelling to me, and I imagine very successful for PH and developers. You asked if I ever owned a business, no I haven't, but i have bought products and I'm speaking from a user perspective of what I find useful. Please get a grip, I'm entitled to my opinion without a wag of your finger.

i understand what you mean as a user. Well on that I have also special wishes and so no conflict there. I use Reason and I'm happy that I can probably use now some of my favorite VST in projects I never completed due to certain sound I could not create in Reason. I'm not a sound designer but here and there I can get what I need.
Re sound great mostly for Reason users in particular but it's never a clear cut. We'll see.
Going back to my wag finger... As a user standpoint I give you this then

The think as it stands now is we can't really use our favorite VSTs 'in reason' unless they happen to get ported, Diva may not according to Urs, so even the devs that are on board are not necessarily moving everything over. But if PH did either of two things, ie. a 'dumb' wrapper to allow any VST in with some limitations (no cv/gate for example, they could still sell in their markey and get a cut, why not? just like any other music store) or allow RE to act as a plugin in other hosts, then we would have the best of both worlds, PH could happily have my cash, and all would be groovy. Just this particular implementation isn't copacetic for me, i'm right on the edge of buying Essentials but the closed system stops me. Reason is great by itself if you like that environment, but in 2012 Rewire is just too much of a PITA for me to want to invest in Reason-only modules. And going Reason-only doesn't guarantee at all that the plugs I want will be available to me. I'm mostly saying this all because I know they are listening I'm one of the people that would impulse-buy constantly if I were drawn into the store and prices were reasonable. You should see how many apps I have on my phone

[kmonkey]

Some of you guys are analyzing this too much imho.

Anyway i love to think that Softube is going to release Tubetech CL1B , FET or their Vintage strip in Reason. That would be absolute killer given that sound is going to remain same as we expect from them..

Then some Impulse reverb...then some decent synth..oh well..

I would gladly pay all over again to have Valhalla reverbs and chorus in Reason.

[Daan22]

Geez..this thread..some people have complicated minds..

New tools r coming to Reason. I like it! Much of it will definitely be interesting, useful. If I like it, I buy it, otherwise not.
Looking forward to it.

[christianmusicmaker]

... we did this different experiment where we did a sale. ... We do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40.

WOW!

In the end, the market will decide if the Re gamble will pay off for developers and PHead

.

True. Maybe the Props are hoping devs charge less and sell more of RE plugs. That would be very interesting indeed but...they need IMO...


1. More devs on board (a lot more)

2. At least one major improvement...that Reason UI. It needs to work better at least optionally at higher resolutions. For me it just does not work very well at all. I am surprised it remains the way it is frankly. I like Reason but always struggle with that UI so it never gets a good run out here. I keep waiting for an update.

3. If points 1 and 2 are addressed I think RE and the new Prop Shop could stand a chance, perhaps a good chance of succeeding.

4. They really need some creative marketing from devs to push RE pretty hard to their own smaller user bases. They need devs to risk lower prices. A big ask but it might be the only way forward and might work.


Props are asking a lot from devs...

Props are effectively asking devs to start again. Change the way they and their user base think plugins should be sold, re educate your user base as to what a plugins purchase means e.t.c It is a lot to ask but it might work, I just don't know if Reason as a host is a big enough draw for what appears to be a good idea in theory - ish.

The UI IMO is just dated. I love the rack concept but way too much is going on in use (yes this and that can be hidden IIRC) but I think the UI IMO is too narrow in taste for a huge uptake for RE.

If the Props can get that UI into 2012 (sorry) then Reason which is the key player as the host for RE plugs, would fare much better. Maybe R7 with RE with a better UI would have been better. We might even see a Steinberg or Cakewalk take on this before the year is out. Props want to drive users to Reason (long term) with RE but the destination IMO needs to be much more desirable.

[v1o]

I'm guessing alot of the doubters have never used Valve's Steam. That platform has been really good for indie developers even though its a completely closed system. And for end users its led to lower prices - they are always having sales and promotions.


You can compare the Rack Extensions to something like Steam, Xbox Live, Netflix or a better version of the App Store. It's a solid idea and I think Prop's has mega-hit on their hands. Hopefully they will get the user experience 'right' on the first release. And finding what you need and navigating the store will be super easy. It's easy to get it 'wrong' like the Wii's Online store which is totally rubbish.

[EvilDragon]

The problem is that gaming population is quite bigger than those of DAW users. And of those DAW users, Reason doesn't have a really big cut, since other DAWs that support the de-facto standard VST/AU plugins get a lot more use overall.