Musikmesse 2012: Propellerhead to share "exciting news"

[musikmachine]

Any other questions, keep 'em coming and I'll answer what I can.

Any chance of a rack-only cheap or free Rewire version? How about improved Rewire, are you guys working on that? I have zero desire to work in the Reason sequencer and think you guys could have a good business going back to the basics, Reason as a rack with a RE store, at least with a part of your product. It would go a long way towards making Reason relevant to the users of other DAWs.

+1

Not sure if the Props will do it but that is a good FR!

Maybe a stripped down version (no FX or similar) for instance would be cheaper than Reason Essentials. That would let buyers fill their own rack with Re plugs. The entry cost could be half of Essentials or Free. That would likely speed up the uptake of Re.

+1. I'd love a rack only version to use with Maschine. MaschineR has just been released so the control and integration is already there.

[headquest]

I personally think we communicated the merge of the two products quite clearly but if it wasn't clear to you or festeringheap, I'm sorry about that. That was definitely not our intention but luckily the vast majority of our users both understood the merge and took advantage of the PWYW upgrade. I wish we'd have informed every single user of course, everyone benefits from that, but apparently we didn't succeed.

Truly you didn't, and I hope you will communicate that back to Ernst, etc.

The sticking point is really how you inadvertently define "loyal users".

My understanding - and it seems fairly clear in Ernst's public statement in the video - is that a "loyal user" is somebody who previously invested in your products. People like me, who bought all your software over many years, including Reason 5 and Record Duo. And who repeatedly gave up hours of our time to beta test for you. And who promoted your products to many other users.

You know exactly how many people bought the duo, who we are, and where we live. It's in your registration information. So you can easily reward "loyal users" if that were your GENUINE intention.

What you actually did if reward loyal users who were also early adopters, i.e. during the first month of release. Does this mean that anyone who didn't immediately upgrade, in spite of buying everything else over the years, is no longer loyal?

Not worth debating further I think, because it speaks for itself. This was really a publicity stunt, not about loyalty at all. The way the deal was set up makes that clear, no?

[braj]

Any other questions, keep 'em coming and I'll answer what I can.

Any chance of a rack-only cheap or free Rewire version? How about improved Rewire, are you guys working on that? I have zero desire to work in the Reason sequencer and think you guys could have a good business going back to the basics, Reason as a rack with a RE store, at least with a part of your product. It would go a long way towards making Reason relevant to the users of other DAWs.

I'm not a ReWire user. Just "improved ReWire" is a bit vague. Care to leave any example on what you feel need to be sorted with ReWire or what you feel is missing?

Well, in many hosts, at least Live from my recollection years ago, sening midi to Reason required multiple tracks, manual routing, it was basically a pain in the arse so that kept me from seriously considering Reason. If Reason modules could work as simply as VST plugins that would be wonderful, no need to have multiple tracks or manually route audio and midi in the host. Maybe Rewire isn't the issue really, but a new rewire client from PH that hosted just combinator patches. That would work.

[headquest]

Braj: The rewire issue is down the the way the HOST implements it, not Propelerhead or Reason per se. In Live you can now do audio+MIDI on a single track lane using their "external instruments" device. Tracktion always allowed a single track for this too if you remember

This is one of those things where Propellerhead have provided a great tool but other developers haven't always implemented it intelligently

[Dogboy73]

I personally think we communicated the merge of the two products quite clearly but if it wasn't clear to you or festeringheap, I'm sorry about that. That was definitely not our intention but luckily the vast majority of our users both understood the merge and took advantage of the PWYW upgrade. I wish we'd have informed every single user of course, everyone benefits from that, but apparently we didn't succeed.

Truly you didn't, and I hope you will communicate that back to Ernst, etc.

I don't know how much clearer it could have been to be honest, less for the Props knocking on your door & telling you about it in person!! As a Reason user how could you NOT know?!

And who repeatedly gave up hours of our time to beta test for you.

You've got to be kidding?! Nobody twisted your arm to get involved & you know as well as I do that most Reason users who sign up for the beta testing do so in order to get a look at the new stuff ASAP I like the way they run the public beta testing. It makes a lot of sense. I think it's a good deal for both user (should they choose to get involved) & Props.

[braj]

Braj: The rewire issue is down the the way the HOST implements it, not Propelerhead or Reason per se. In Live you can now do audio+MIDI on a single track lane using their "external instruments" device. Tracktion always allowed a single track for this too if you remember

This is one of those things where Propellerhead have provided a great tool but other developers haven't always implemented it intelligently

Well, if you took the implementation away from the DAW makers, 'wrapped' it in a way that just worked the same way regardless of the host's implementation, that would be in Propellerhead's interest. I have a feeling it could be 'rewired' through a VST wrapper, something like that, or just an updated Rewire standard. I don't know, all I can say is I always hear complaints about rewiring to hosts, regardless of the fault of the host, the standard hasn't been updated in a while, no? With Re racks it seems like the perfect opportunity.

[EnochLight]

Regarding upgrade paths for their loyal customers?? You can't be serious, right? Every version that has come out has been offered at a substantially discounted rate to users who had a previous license. Maybe our idea of affordable is different, but I've always felt the price they asked for upgrades between major versions was fair and affordable.

$169.00 to upgrade from Record 1.5 / Reason 5 Duo to Reason 6 (almost the same product)...? Seriously?

Having freely given a considerable amount of my time to beta testing for them free of charge I can tell you it's not worth that

I'm guessing you were an early adopter who bought during the short-lived PWYW period? Did you pay $169.00? Ah.... right.

If you paid $169.00 then I'll accept that you have a legitimate point about the cost of me upgrading. If you paid less than that then you already decided it isn't worth $169.00

For starters - it wasn't the same product by a long shot. Not in the least. Between audio transpose, the Echo, Alligator, and Pulverizer - these alone were easily worth $169. It's nice to hear you helped out with testing though!

Again - you and I should just agree to disagree as I suggested earlier. I'll never agree with your perspective, and you clearly don't agree with mine.

[noremorse]

damn all this reason discussions, i just bought reasons essentials from the prop shop:P so, come on all this re-stuff better be worth it;)

[Flandersh]

I experience the road much of the audio industry take as a road more and more to "one hit buttons".

I started with electronic music back in 1999, after been a piano player for several years. I started with what was seen as toys; ejay and then magix music maker. Then I soon got an eye up for Reason, a software which was not any toy but a professional music tool. Of that reason I was really proud when I was able to afford a version of it, and I was proud that I was able to use something so professional and technological advanced. With the new game, where Reason and many others software only the professionals used before, are made so complete and so easy that who ever who wants to be a real musician; without even needing skills, can succeed in some hours (only money is needed), I feel that the professional aspect of those software has faded away.

Proportionally with this, I have found lesser and lesser unique music (and more and more music that sound nearly the same), and I have found more and more squashed, noisy music with little technically quality inside it. We have surely the tools to make music sound both unique, and with a high technically quality; both in software and hardware, but something; which I hypothesis may come of the "all-in-one" and "presets" paradigms, goes wrong.

Of that reason, which sure may be a wild hypothesis (its a reason that it is a hypothesis and not research), I feel it very important to ensure the possibilities for the user to have independence in choice of all tools, even the cables, in their studio, and I feel that the user should do some real work to get a great sound if they not prefer to send it to external engineers. A user who don't know what a compressor really does shouldn't handle it; or even more download many different versions of it and add them to the mix, and so "since they are well known as good plugins or RE" think their music is of great technically quality. Music production should be its science as well as its art, not something which everyone who have money can resemble and make it sound seemingly great cause their tools has a good reputation and is available through impulse purchases.

[headquest]

For starters - it wasn't the same product by a long shot. Not in the least. Between audio transpose, the Echo, Alligator, and Pulverizer - these alone were easily worth $169. It's nice to hear you helped out with testing though!

So you paid $169 for it as an upgrade from the Duo, during the PWYW phase ...?

Again - you and I should just agree to disagree as I suggested earlier. I'll never agree with your perspective, and you clearly don't agree with mine.

Sure I agree to differ. You have your opinion, I have mine. We're taking part in the same healthy adult debate, and certainly as far as I'm concerned there no disrespect to you in the process, so I hope it didn't come over that way. But I do have an opinion, and I will continue to express it, here and elsewhere. As I'm sure will you. And it's all cool

[headquest]

I don't know how much clearer it could have been to be honest, less for the Props knocking on your door & telling you about it in person!! As a Reason user how could you NOT know?!

They communicated a clear upgrade price for Duo owners throughout the time I was beta testing: 99 euros.

Sure, I knew they did the PWYW deal. It was stated across their forum that the price then went back to 99 euros. In fact they raised it to 149 euros (the same as for Reason only owners) ignoring the loyalty of all those who previously invested in both Record and Reason 5.

As I was out of the country during the initial release month, and as I was happy to pay 99 euros anyway, it was no biggie - I just decided I would buy it for the 99 euros once I was ready. It was never clearly stated that the original announced price and the upgrade path for Duo owners would be completely dishonoured just four weeks after discontinuing the Duo and bringing out R6.

[festeringheap]

Whew, back from Musikmesse and just read through the thread. Interesting reading!

Peace Anosou! Mattias? Propellerhead?

I am a big Reason fan , and nothing would please me more than to have Propellerhead and Reason relevant to my music making forever. I probably use it 90% of the time.

A few months ago, I wasn't so sure of Props future, especially in light of Logic going for half price. In fact, I thought that Propellerhead could go vapourware eventually. How the heck do you compete with massive price reductions like that? (And more in the future too?) Even on the forums, people said they were buying Logic at that price. Even Propelerhead users.

The last few days have made me realize that you guys are on top of things from a business perspective and I really believe that RE will be a major success.

A few things for devs and you:

Going forward as a mostly Reason user, I will not be buying any plugin formats except RE. Some devs may choose not to port to RE for whatever reasons. From a money perspective, you can choose to continue to sell axes to people in country A, where 90% of the trees have been chopped down. Or in country B, where not a single tree has been cut down, even if it's for a few dollars less? Sean, you'd be offering valhalla to a bunch of plugin virgins - not sure what that makes you exactly lol...

Sean was mentioning Paypal earlier. I hope that that will be an option in RE shop. I only use PayPal when I buy online. According to Sean, there is a transaction fee for each purchase. I'm curious. Who will bite the cost of this? Dev or Props?

Just a reminder that financial transactions are a serious affair. There was a messy situation last year regarding a lapsed security certificate on the Prop web-site, which didn't instill a great deal of confidence to some.
Maybe someone can write on the big board there that your security certificate expires Dec 2013 and to renew before it expires

Going forward with your Essentials strategy will entail making sure that everyone knows that Reason is what it is NOW, not what they think they remember it to be, up to Reason 5. That was the point I was trying to make with the very last line ("And a lot of other folks in DAW land are clueless too") at the end of my original post.

Cheers

[BMoore]

I don't know how much clearer it could have been to be honest, less for the Props knocking on your door & telling you about it in person!! As a Reason user how could you NOT know?!

They communicated a clear upgrade price for Duo owners throughout the time I was beta testing: 99 euros.

Sure, I knew they did the PWYW deal. It was stated across their forum that the price then went back to 99 euros. In fact they raised it to 149 euros (the same as for Reason only owners) ignoring the loyalty of all those who previously invested in both Record and Reason 5.

As I was out of the country during the initial release month, and as I was happy to pay 99 euros anyway, it was no biggie - I just decided I would buy it for the 99 euros once I was ready. It was never clearly stated that the original announced price and the upgrade path for Duo owners would be completely dishonoured just four weeks after discontinuing the Duo and bringing out R6.

Your butt-hurt is doing nothing for you. What ever PHeads did to you, you're slipping in both arguments, and reason (no pun).
Suddenly, everything PHeads does is bad. Ha-ha.

PWYW is a frakking great way to reward loyal users in my book.
It lasted 1 month!

And I've personally never seen €99 for a Reason 6 upgrade for Duo owners.
The press release is the official, and correct statement.

[bmrzycki]

I qualified for PWYW and got a newsletter telling me to do it. About 20 days later got a second newsletter reminding me it was about to expire. I'm not sure how much more you expected headquest.

And I paid > $1 too. The Props are good people and I didn't feel all the work they put into Reason 6 was worth the same as a can of soda.

I'm looking forward to the RE store and like the audio/cv style of thinking. Now Props need to make a super Combinator to accommodate all the new hair-brained schemes us users come up with.

[EnochLight]

For starters - it wasn't the same product by a long shot. Not in the least. Between audio transpose, the Echo, Alligator, and Pulverizer - these alone were easily worth $169. It's nice to hear you helped out with testing though!

So you paid $169 for it as an upgrade from the Duo, during the PWYW phase ...?

Again - you and I should just agree to disagree as I suggested earlier. I'll never agree with your perspective, and you clearly don't agree with mine.

Sure I agree to differ. You have your opinion, I have mine. We're taking part in the same healthy adult debate, and certainly as far as I'm concerned there no disrespect to you in the process, so I hope it didn't come over that way. But I do have an opinion, and I will continue to express it, here and elsewhere. As I'm sure will you. And it's all cool

I didn't buy it during the PWYW phase (brilliant upgrade program, BTW). That said, had I bought it during the PWYW promotion, I would have felt that $169 USD was quite fair. I'm not sure what people choosing to pay for it during the PWYW promo has to do with what you perceive as my opinion being legitimate, though. I have a friend who chose to pay $5. He felt it was worth at least the $169 USD being suggested, but he chose $5 for reasons which elude me. More than likely it was "because he could". It doesn't make the features any less valuable IMHO.

And no - I never felt disrespected during our prose. I do feel you evaded addressing many of my retorts to your accusations, but that's cool. We're all good. I hope you never felt disrespected either.