Used sales of reason are SO high, it is time for props to take notice - serious topic, LONG post

[headquest]

Just a simple question, then: why you are not happy about Reason anymore? Honestly. Because of the dongle?...

I think I actually answered this plenty of times elsewhere... including in this thread where I gave a list of additional reasons to expand on ttoz's original post. I've also explaind this at length in other threads about the crashes I experienced in Reason, lack of crash recovery, arrogance of PH, poor customer support, and my own needs to move faster than Reason is developing.

VST isn't something I've ever requested for Reason. I just wanted it to be more capable in its own right.

[liquidsound]

I don't think there is a third way, just accept reason lacks of vst support and that is why 99% of people are selling it in the market place.

With respect, I think this is complete and utter nonsense.

There are LOADS of reasons why people would walk away from Reason, and while expandability via VST might be one of them it's only one thing on a considerable list. And right now, in the advent of Re, it's probably not even in the top five.

More to the point, as ttoz said in his OP, I think many users are simply beginning to realise that Reason is turning into a bit of a crap deal overall.

True.
My reason for slowly drifting away from it it's not much the lack of VST but the RE rules and the fact that the future devices upgrades will probably offered as RE and the rest perhaps some sort of cosmetic changes and SLOW improvements to keep the dreamers hanging on as long as possible.

You'll never see again a Synth as powerful as Thor included with an upgrade, you will have to pay for it. Why? It's going to be a RE costing half of Reason program. A fine FM from PH? RE of course! A better sequencer? Stick around for..... V10?

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[myrna]

Just a simple question, then: why you are not happy about Reason anymore? Honestly. Because of the dongle?...

I think I actually answered this plenty of times elsewhere... including in this thread where I gave a list of additional reasons to expand on ttoz's original post. I've also explaind this at length in other threads about the crashes I experienced in Reason, lack of crash recovery, arrogance of PH, poor customer support, and my own needs to move faster than Reason is developing.

VST isn't something I've ever requested for Reason. I just wanted it to be more capable in its own right.

I am sorry for you then. My experience has been totally different: propellerhead staff was always very kind and correct to me, never had any issue and I don't see any arrogance at all. Customer support always perfect. Reason never crashed in 10 years (unless you consider "crash" the "computer too slow" message). For me it is just a question of needs: i don't give a damn about "rock solidity", since i don't consider a crash something tragic. What I NEEDED was vst support and DON'T WANT to open two daws using the messy rewire (which i simply HATE). I hate dongles, too, but honestly i survived with it for 2-3 years. Sorry, but yours seems kind of a "war against propellerhead", rather than an explanation of Ttoz question... Of course i've been banned from PH forum because of fanboys, but those were stupid, not PH staff, which is great.

[FaX]

**Please read topic before voting, thanks, otherwise the poll options don't make sense anyway**

Hi i am posting here because i know props are reading the host forum.. I am being quite serious about this, so i would appreciate intellectual discussion about it rather than cats, jokes, and trolling. Thanks in advance:)
All are welcome to vote, even non reason users of course, but please read the topic if you do vote. Don't take the opportunity to disagree with me just for the sake of it, please, as tempting as it may be

Around 37 days ago but who's counting I downloaded Reason 6 demo and initially thought bleh.. but for some reason persisted with it as i just wanted to know what all this talk for so many years was about.

48 hours later i was hooked but thought the plugin choice *may* leave me wanting for more.. Even though the idea of stability and a closed system appealed to me, i just wanted a *little bit more* to make it complete.

I then watched the entire musikmesse rack extension video, all 40 minutes, with great excitement.

I could not test any of these devices in the demo, but the names and plugins mentioned were generally ones i knew and trusted.

A week later i took the plunge and bought the program directly at propellerheads.se for $449 and became the proud owner of Reason 6.5.

Just 3 days later it arrived in my mailbox from sweden and i had my ignition key and dvd. I was happy.

Then the authorization dramas started, where for days i couldn't authorize the key but occasionally could not even run the program online. I consider, from internet research, propellerheads to be a reasonably sized "player" in the audio market. Not NI or Cakewalk and certainly not Avid, but, somewhere in the middle. So i felt comfy that things would get ironed out with authorizations. And they did.. seriously, it shouldn't have happened in the first place, but they did.

Then of course i started hitting limitations like the lack of PDC, and unfortunately it's the very best plugins that have latency (Neptune, Vocoder,Softube Trident, FET, Polar, Ozone 5 limiter, etc) .
Never mind i thought, people using pro tools worked around it for decades, and there is no reason why someone might not make a latency compensation rack extension device, just as mellowmuse did with ATA adjuster for Pro Tools.
Furthermore propellerheads have said they are actively listening and looking into the pdc thing (but seriously, an RE can't come soon enough.. the simplest way would be an RE that can put a negative sample value in on the track that has the latent plugins..it won't work on busses, but we don't HAVE to use these latent plugins on busses do we? ).

In fact, there are actually in entirety only a few things i do not like about the program.
1) Lack of PDC
2) Lack of automatic bussing and fader grouping with automatic solo ability
3) When tempo is changed, clips do not realign correctly length wise, RELATIVELY to the timeline.. like in every other host.. They just get chopped or extended and the clip must be manually resized to be the size of the audio data again. This is very annoying. (unless the tempo is already correct and stretch is enabled, but sometimes even so we do not want to stretch!)
4) It needs a better GUI curve adjustable EQ with analyzer
5) Lack of Rewire master.(i'd like to use melodyne and live as a rewire slave and use reason's efficient engine rather than live's as the master - plus i would like to sync NON REX loop preview to tempo this way)
6) lack of multiple midi clip editing on the same piano roll
7) Only -40db noise floor in gate which means bleed can leak, but this will be taken care of with a 3rd party inexpensive RE gate very soon

I think for all the love i have, those things can be overlooked. Cause that really is IT. i *adore* everything else, including all of the onboard processors (especially scream, RV7000, The Echo, Mclass comp and Stereo, Thor, NNXT, ARPG8 and Matrix), the midi editing with floating function window, the regroove mixer, the fantastic shortcuts, easy to use automation, REX manipulation, Blocks, and the BEST damn sidechaining of any host EVER... The general speed of use is also great...It's fast to get stuff done.. super fast..Plus i think the GUI is lovely. The stretch is also very very good except slowing down drums but that is taken care of by slicing instead. For melodic and vocal content the stretch is superb(yes i have tried all three algorithms). The program is also outstandingly efficient on my mac book pro. I finally got around to installing it on the imac, and i can't see myself overloading it any time soon.

At this point though i had been blind to the fact that 1) RE's were license that i would pay for and be stuck with forever, even if i moved on from reason one day, and 2) zero crossgrades from my vst versions were possible.
My excitement for Re's other than a couple of essentials, is not so great anymore, and I am forcing myself to live with the limitations of the included devices. Mind you that may seem as a good thing to some, to save $$$, but it is not good for the future of propellerheads, especially if others in general do the same thing! It also means developers will not continue to make RE's if they do not have strong sales, and so on and so on.

and it is these last 2 points that are the CRUX of this whole topic, because this is WHY reason is appearing so often in the marketplace since the launch of reason 6.5


I have been at KVR 11 years this september.. wow.. and i used to have to SEARCH and usually to no avail to find a reason in the marketplace. In 30 days simply since the launch of reason 6.5, there have been more than 10 copies sold here with a couple in their for sale now.

WOW.

I tell you what.. you might think 10 copies sold second hand is nothing.. but i have never seen a product been sold off so much, EVER.. since i have been here.. since this marketplace BEGAN.. as i was here for the birth also. Since day one. Actually, i was the first person to ever sell anything here, and then made a topic requesting a marketplace. I remember it clearly.

In other words.. no other product is being sold in the KVR marketplace used as much as Reason currently is. You can easily find it for $200 off retail on any given day. KVR members are a very relevant representation of propellerheads customer base on a worldwide scale, I would say.

Initially i thought i would return reason within the 30 day refund period, and save myself 200 bucks by buying it second hand here. You might think that's a shitty thing to do, but 200 bucks is a lot, that's a whole month of food for someone like me who eats on a budget. Plus, initially i thought i would make it up to them with rack extension purchases anyway..

You know what, i am glad i didn't do that, and I am glad i supported the company directly with a sale. But for my sale, there have been a potential 10 or more lost sales. People do not just say "I will spend $250 second hand on reason for the hell of it".. they are actually WANTING to buy reason to BEGIN with. You might say, yes, these customers will spend money on rack extensions anyway, so it is still a gain.. but the general opinion on propellerhead's current RE limitations is NOT positive, the forum talk worldwide is negative.. not the products themselves.. but the licensing conditions or as it is better known, the "EULA".

Propellerhead's claim that reason 6 has been the highest selling version of all time as far as NEW users is concerned was based on 6.0.. NOT 6.5.. and I would be interested to see the comparison of the numbers so far that have been buying reason 6 brand new AFTER 6.5 and RE's were released.

In a nutshell, I find it very, no, *extremely* alarming that reason is being sold off in the marketplace at such a rate. And i firmly believe it is primarily due to the rack extensions licensing agreement, and people deciding "i can't use this as my main all in one host after all", and the more common exposure of the PDC problems now that more devices with latency have been introduced (many people unaware previously that the vocoder and Neptune already had that problem)

I therefore ask that propellerheads start taking the complaints from users and potential users seriously.. and listen.. before their amazing product becomes a marketing failure.

Thanks for your attention.
A concerned customer (and fan)
-Theo

To answer your question -

For it to be effectively sold off, it has to be be bought by someone else, so the original question is somewhat of a paradox. You loose a customer and gain one at the same time (which essentially isn't actually a market share loss of on a user base percentage) and you hopefully gain Re and refill customers in the sale as a company.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and possibly offend a few Reason users in the process, but a large percentage of Reason users use 3rd party refills and sound sets and with the addition of Rack Extensions probably see the plugin/play/preset nature of much of the application to be disappearing.
For (me at least) what i love about the whole Rack Extension concept is that i get to customize my Reason rack how I see fit and build the combinators and all that good stuff that I want to use. What happens if a refill dev makes a refill that uses a swag of devices that you don't own and the trial period is up for example ?
This isn't s really big issue for me but for other users it well could be. Logic for example has huge suite of plug ins and massive preset library, buy another AU and you have another instrument with a large patch library. The Synapse Re's, Pulverizer and the like really need a fair amount of patching and getting dirty under the hood to get the most out of (ditto for Etch Red) and I have already seen people asking for more Polysix presets when it must be one of the easiest synths in the Reason rack to program.
I personally find the newer sampling features married with the Re store to be a wonderful improvement indeed and I was going to leave Reason at version 4 but much prefer what is becoming now. What i enjoy most is that the Re's use the same browser/patch management scheme and they really do behave like new Reason devices that expand the Reason rack with the sort of modular control I'd expect via CV/GATE/ Audio In Out and the Combinator Mod matrix. I've already invested in all the Softube Re's, Etch Red, all the Synapse Re's, Polar, Pulsar, Polysix, ReTron and RoughRider and really appreciate all they bring to the mix. It's not about what i can resell or pass on or crossgrade with or too but what enhances my overall studio composing experience.
I use Logic as well for my final mixing and production stage and it's where I sync up my MPC and sequence my hard are from (I have quite a bit of hardware). That said between Reason + Logic and the hardware I don't really want or need for anything else and the combination of the three gives me a varied enough working scope to be able to change, mix, match and approach various things from different angles (which is always a good thing).
I understand no application is the be all and end all for everyone and Reason isn't without it's quirks, but as a modular and self contained sampling, sequencing and recording environment that's flexible, fun and easy to use it is still IMHO rather hard to beat.

[drez]

Why is it that a company has to have a bunch of people on staff to be successful?

Well when their website went into meltdown, lackof personel was cited as an excuse...

When it was taking their customer support team up to 2 weeks to respond to an email... it was lack of staff.

When people ask for MIDI out .... "we're only a small company..."

Keeping the company small increases the hard cash profit that the top brass make. It's great for the balance sheet. But it has a detrimental effect on their customers.

Website meltdown: How many Web guys should they have on staff? If it normally runs just fine, how many does it take to sit and wait for an issue? It happens. Things go down and can go down hard when the stars align. I deal with it everyday in the SaaS marketplace. You can't staff to have twelve 9's availability when you know that, in the market you are in and your customer base, maybe just three 9's are acceptable.

Top Brass $$$: If this was the case I would expect a large amount of turnover from the employees because "the top brass" makes all the money. Most of the people that I see that work there have been there a very long time, so either the "underlings" are all passionate and eating bread and water, or they are passionate AND making $$$.

As for support issues due to lack of staff, it's foolish to have employees "sitting around" in case something happens. Sometimes companies are understaffed at specific times are when specific events occur. That's part of business as well. Maybe they started selling so well that they needed to staff up for new users? We don't know. But to speak that it has to be a negative to the success of the company and ALL of its employees is speculation. We started with 6 of us and balooned to 90 and we definitely grew that number way too quickly and that was over a considerably shorter timeframe than 10 years. Lean and mean is the way to go, IMO.

It could be... they just LIKE being small.

It might sound like I have a polar viewpoint to you, but the fact is I don't. I'm just not going to make assumptions that everything is "negative". All I have to do is look at their success in the marketplace to determine if what they are doing makes sense from a business perspective.

It would appear that they are doing just fine with the headcount they have.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[KevWestBeats]

There's no need for a "pool", it is simply the truth. I wrote "99%" rather than 100%, because I give you the benefit of doubt, LOL. Otherwise, tell me other reasons: the dongle? no midi out?... Let's be serious: it's because of the "no-vst" issue. Nothing new, we've been asking for that at least since 2003.

If 99% of the people that are leaving is because there's no VST support, then why do people keep buying it even though their IS no VST support? You're 99% number doesn't make rational sense. Its a sweeping generalization with no factual basis.

Besides, The only thing 100% assured is dying. It is also extremely efficient, as It has a 0% failure rate. HiHi

I'd encourage you to start a poll on the why folks leave reason. You can have 3 options.

1. No VST
2. No MIDI out
3. Other

This poll on KVR wouldn't work since this is plug in central though. Would need a neutral ground. I have no idea where that would be though. I am one of those guys who make YouTube videos using Reason. I love Reason personally. I have times where I get frusterated with the direction Props are going into but I love the software as it is though I will still say Reason 5 was the best update. At the same time I took advantage of that amplitube sale today for $99 and I received my copy of Alicia's keys in the mail today back from when NI was having that half off sale and I love it too. I have about 70 plug ins and I enjoy them just as much as I enjoy Reason. I am a fanboy for everything maybe lol.

[drez]

Ttoz, I would like to point out regarding your OP....

In ALL of these Reason threads, there are only like 8 of us that drill them into the ground (myself included). I think you're waaaaaay over estimating the number of people that actually care about these excruciating details of Reason and that more people "appear" to be selling Reason because more people have been forced to "buy" Reason legally than ever before.

Hey, people sell their Ferrari's every day. Is it because they don't have VST support?

[myrna]

So, maybe i've been lucky for over 10 years? Never had negative experiences with Propellerhead. I don't know what you are talking about. I don't understand all this "throwing sxxt" on great people. Of course, I don't agree with their policy, but this does not mean they're "wrong". It is just a matter of needs. They claim "reason is all you need" (i guess they believe it), I think it is not true, because I (and the other 99% ones) need vsts, too. Just this. For the rest, Propellerheads are still great people.

[myrna]

There's no need for a "pool", it is simply the truth. I wrote "99%" rather than 100%, because I give you the benefit of doubt, LOL. Otherwise, tell me other reasons: the dongle? no midi out?... Let's be serious: it's because of the "no-vst" issue. Nothing new, we've been asking for that at least since 2003.

If 99% of the people that are leaving is because there's no VST support, then why do people keep buying it even though their IS no VST support? You're 99% number doesn't make rational sense. Its a sweeping generalization with no factual basis.

Besides, The only thing 100% assured is dying. It is also extremely efficient, as It has a 0% failure rate. HiHi

I'd encourage you to start a poll on the why folks leave reason. You can have 3 options.

1. No VST
2. No MIDI out
3. Other

This poll on KVR wouldn't work since this is plug in central though. Would need a neutral ground. I have no idea where that would be though. I am one of those guys who make YouTube videos using Reason. I love Reason personally. I have times where I get frusterated with the direction Props are going into but I love the software as it is though I will still say Reason 5 was the best update. At the same time I took advantage of that amplitube sale today for $99 and I received my copy of Alicia's keys in the mail today back from when NI was having that half off sale and I love it too. I have about 70 plug ins and I enjoy them just as much as I enjoy Reason. I am a fanboy for everything maybe lol.

There's no need for a poll: just wonder if FL had no vst support

[liquidsound]

I just realized why the "Pay what you want" deal!
Brilliant !

[KevWestBeats]

There's no need for a "pool", it is simply the truth. I wrote "99%" rather than 100%, because I give you the benefit of doubt, LOL. Otherwise, tell me other reasons: the dongle? no midi out?... Let's be serious: it's because of the "no-vst" issue. Nothing new, we've been asking for that at least since 2003.

If 99% of the people that are leaving is because there's no VST support, then why do people keep buying it even though their IS no VST support? You're 99% number doesn't make rational sense. Its a sweeping generalization with no factual basis.

Besides, The only thing 100% assured is dying. It is also extremely efficient, as It has a 0% failure rate. HiHi

I'd encourage you to start a poll on the why folks leave reason. You can have 3 options.

1. No VST
2. No MIDI out
3. Other

This poll on KVR wouldn't work since this is plug in central though. Would need a neutral ground. I have no idea where that would be though. I am one of those guys who make YouTube videos using Reason. I love Reason personally. I have times where I get frusterated with the direction Props are going into but I love the software as it is though I will still say Reason 5 was the best update. At the same time I took advantage of that amplitube sale today for $99 and I received my copy of Alicia's keys in the mail today back from when NI was having that half off sale and I love it too. I have about 70 plug ins and I enjoy them just as much as I enjoy Reason. I am a fanboy for everything maybe lol.

There's no need for a poll: just wonder if FL had no vst support

I dispise FL though. Never liked it.

[drez]

So, maybe i've been lucky for over 10 years? Never had negative experiences with Propellerhead. I don't know what you are talking about. I don't understand all this "throwing sxxt" on great people. Of course, I don't agree with their policy, but this does not mean they're "wrong". It is just a matter of needs. They claim "reason is all you need" (i guess they believe it), I think it is not true, because I (and the other 99% ones) need vsts, too. Just this. For the rest, Propellerheads are still great people.

+1.

And the fact that you disagree with their mantra of "Reason is all that and a bag of chips" is ok in my book as well. Wrong "for you" is THE best reason to make decisions.

Wrong for others is right for others. Its the beauty of choices.

For me, its the "vendetta" atmosphere of folks towards Reason that I don't understand. I get that feeling from you most of the time, and then you post something like this which makes me scratch my head Maybe its Italians?

just kidding

[liquidsound]

Maybe its Italians?

just kidding

Italians don't need Reason(s). They just are