License model no way !!!

[anttimaatteri]

I do not want to repost here, but I just posted a price comparison with Ableton. That Bitwig is asking more for 2.0 is in the ballpark. And that means asking more for upgrades. Unfortunately the Ableton pricing for upgrade is not available publicly as one has to log on to an account to have it calculated based on the current license.

i got my live suite together via 3 steps of sales actions on a 1.5 year timespan
59EU for Intro
229 from Intro to Standard
199 from Standard to Suite
all 20% or so off regular prices

so even on sale with a total of 490EU bitwig is 100EU less with its full 2.0 version on regular sale. not to mention the price of 299EU or so for 1.0 (i paid 250 by upgrading from 8-track which came for FREE on a controller purchase). one can simply check the prices at thomann website for actual prices, its 639EU for live suite boxed, which is 200EU above the official bitwig 2.0 price and 300 above 1.0.

so all that cheap-mofo huffpuff about greedy bitwig devs is absolute nonsense and tbh utterly disgusting.

[humanbeingbeing]

Bitwig 1 is less valuable to me than Ableton 9.

[.jon]

I do not want to repost here, but I just posted a price comparison with Ableton. That Bitwig is asking more for 2.0 is in the ballpark. And that means asking more for upgrades. Unfortunately the Ableton pricing for upgrade is not available publicly as one has to log on to an account to have it calculated based on the current license.

i got my live suite together via 3 steps of sales actions on a 1.5 year timespan
59EU for Intro
229 from Intro to Standard
199 from Standard to Suite
all 20% or so off regular prices

so even on sale with a total of 490EU bitwig is 100EU less with its full 2.0 version on regular sale. not to mention the price of 299EU or so for 1.0 (i paid 250 by upgrading from 8-track which came for FREE on a controller purchase). one can simply check the prices at thomann website for actual prices, its 639EU for live suite boxed, which is 200EU above the official bitwig 2.0 price and 300 above 1.0.

so all that cheap-mofo huffpuff about greedy bitwig devs is absolute nonsense and tbh utterly disgusting.

Bitwig does not compare with Suite, only with Standard.

[ezelkow1]

I do not want to repost here, but I just posted a price comparison with Ableton. That Bitwig is asking more for 2.0 is in the ballpark. And that means asking more for upgrades. Unfortunately the Ableton pricing for upgrade is not available publicly as one has to log on to an account to have it calculated based on the current license.

i got my live suite together via 3 steps of sales actions on a 1.5 year timespan
59EU for Intro
229 from Intro to Standard
199 from Standard to Suite
all 20% or so off regular prices

so even on sale with a total of 490EU bitwig is 100EU less with its full 2.0 version on regular sale. not to mention the price of 299EU or so for 1.0 (i paid 250 by upgrading from 8-track which came for FREE on a controller purchase). one can simply check the prices at thomann website for actual prices, its 639EU for live suite boxed, which is 200EU above the official bitwig 2.0 price and 300 above 1.0.

so all that cheap-mofo huffpuff about greedy bitwig devs is absolute nonsense and tbh utterly disgusting.

No its not once you factor in cost for multiple years. If you want to play sale prices thats easy enough too. I bought live8 off of someone for 200 in 2010, upgraded to suite for 209 during sale, plus another 167 for m4l. That put me at 576 for complete live 8 suite with m4l. Then the live 9 upgrade 3 years later was 250 and its now 2017. So 826 total for 7 years of usage, which also includes the original purchase price. If you want to do official prices then your looking at 639 one time for live suite, and say 2 major upgrade periods coming in at 500 total for both. So 1139

If you do the same with bitwig now your looking at 400 + 6*169, 1414$ for the same time period. The big part of the comparison your missing is not the intro cost, its the ongoing costs. If ableton continues the same pace of major upgrades every 3-4 years then that minimal difference in upfront cost gets easily eaten away by bitwigs yearly price for the same services.

The other factor, since your comparing live suite and not standard, is that suite comes with a whole lot more content than bitwig standard. Either way bitwig is still more expensive with this pricing scheme than even ableton suite by far.

Now Im not calling them greedy, they can charge whatever they want and how they see fit. But it is not absolute nonsense, they are charging more than everyone else. The thing people are concerned with is not the original cost, I can see 400 being fair (after all it is basically smack dab in between ableton standard and suite and so is that price), and its not the upgrade cost, 169 also seems fair. Its now the ongoing costs of 169 combined every single year for unspecified returns from the developers that has people concerned

[mevla]

Bitwig 1 is less valuable to me than Ableton 9.

Well, that's something else. I would have a different point of view if I was running Windows and got Ableton in the first place (which I bought for our youngest son). Maybe I'd have never bought Bitwig, who knows. After all Ableton started in 2001. So when I bought Bitwig about last year they already had 15 years of development and experience and probably, price increases. As I've stated elsewhere I run Linux which makes Bitwig unique.

[humanbeingbeing]

Bitwig 1 is less valuable to me than Ableton 9.

Well, that's something else. I would have a different point of view if I was running Windows and got Ableton in the first place (which I bought for our youngest son). Maybe I'd have never bought Bitwig, who knows. After all Ableton started in 2001. So when I bought Bitwig about last year they already had 15 years of development and experience and probably, price increases. As I've stated elsewhere I run Linux which makes Bitwig unique.

Yeah you really havent got many options with Linux... I'm fortunate with Ableton because I actually bought a license with Ableton 1 so I'm just paying from upgrade to upgrade.

[greenfly]

How old are the people who are complaining about the price. Are you like 16 year old skint kids?

[ezelkow1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

[BlackStarMuzic]

As an example of Bitwig not being ready for the pro world don't forget they cannot get it to run at all with the Avid Core Audio driver, something which every other DAW on the planet can do with no problems what so ever. That's pretty broken IMO.

Ok so Protools interfaces are not common in the small studio environment but nearly all major studios use them. Pretty unbelievable if you can get everything from iTunes to Cubase to run with it but not Bitwig. If you are going to start charging premium upgrade/license/sub prices you really should be able to get the basics right.

Avid mehh.. I don't care if major studios have it, avid forced it in places studios and the educational system as a couple of Harvard boys own it. I would rather support cubase then anything from that company. They're not forward thinking so they are kind of garbage regardless of what the industry might say. Its why all of these other DAWs are coming up at them swinging will they win doubtful but at least they're trying and not overcharging and ignoring their customers.

I agree bitwig isn't ready for pro but PT isn't for people who want to be creative. At least with hard and soft synths in terms of workflow. "Just my opinion"

Don't necessarily disagree with your view of Avid but thats not the point, being unable to get it working on a standard core audio driver like very other DAW surely doesn't give one hope in their skill at fixing bugs quickly. If you are going to charge premium prices you should have a premium product that doesn't suffer from things like this. Seems a pretty basic issue for everyone else but BW struggle with it !!!

I can't disagree with you either there but I can't help but feel it might come down to licensing fee for talking about Avid here. but if that's not the case I guess you could sum it up the programming team size but I'm not sure that is a just argument. So I guess disregard my comment. haha

[rodanmusic]

I do feel your writing portrays a false idea, that you think Bitwig is as good as any other software and that it's track record is comparable, but that is not the case...

I could list all my creds, all the software and hardware I've used to seem more experienced, but everything about Bitwig is on record... you're going to have a really hard time establishing this narrative... I myself have worked with music software for 20 years, I've been a software engineer for even longer and the first year of Bitwig releases was NOT typical at all... , it's nothing to do with the OS support, I work in loads of daws in loads of studios not just my own... after 2 years of waiting for it to be released in the first place.. people used to call it 'Bitwait' and now they want an annual sub... I'm not sure if you had those experiences, I have to assume you got into Bitwig recently.. but I am on record about Bitwig bugs with many others, this isn't a new thing I've just come up with... a cursory glance at the release archive portrays a vivid picture, the word 'crash' shows up 79 times, it still doesn't accurately depict the frequency of Bitwig issues + conspicuous missing features.

I have heard the standard practice myth before...kinda misleading considering the size of Bitwig--- they do follow standard practice with a super small team... maybe that is the issue... if I had to guess I'd say they have very little QA--- in my SW company we have more testers on staff than devs... I should add we are talking about a new license model, they have switched from the 'standard' one... remember this discussion is about them changing their practice....

the bug I reported was a disgraceful bug which should never have been in the software to begin with, it wasn't a low priority bug, and it wasn't even fixed properly in the first go.... I find it amusing that you jump to speculation with this because the history of Bitwig is so well documented... I personally recall at least 20 weird bugs that took years to fix... and also recall this constant back and forth where one thing would get working and something else would break.... constant regressions, 6 on record. I installed over 30 versions of Bitwig... I have NEVER seen that kind of issue with other music software, I was able to move back to Cubase and Ableton and get work done.... I, like many others, am on record getting fed up with bugs and leaving Bitwig to mature... I saw the 2.0 update come through and thought, maybe now they've got their act together.. still kinda amazed that it's not the 2.0 that was previewed before.. is that standard?. I'm not paying for the privilege of finding out...

I think you should stick to the argument because conjecture about whether Bitwig is as high quality as any other music software is really not the point, it's about the time it took to get to this point.... if you're saying Bitwig 1.0 was just as great at launch - I'm sorry but that's delusional - you added the word 'minor' to those 14 fixes as if 14 minor updates is no big deal.. and again, 1.0 was supposed to be the production ready version, there was a coming soon video up for 2 whole years.

I'm just curious... lets say hypothetically that Bitwig 2 takes over a year to be production ready, which was absolutely the case for version 1.... are you telling me that you're completely ok with that? and I presume you'd be happy paying again for another year of support? If you're ok with that then there is no point of discussing anything, we're on 2 different philosophical planets.

Subscription models are for mature software. If you feel comfortable with it, good for you, but based on my past experience I will be swerving this one, and I advise newbies to consider the history before shelling out...

Really it's just differences in opinion. I don't think Bitwig has been that buggy and you do. I wasn't attempting to wow anyone with my accomplishments. I was trying to show that I've tested Bitwig against a lot of different DAWS and I've had much less issue with it than I have any other DAW.

As I said in previous posts, I am not implying I don't believe the users posting here...just that my experience has been completely different than a lot of the reports I'm seeing.

I feel that the stream of updates was constant. There was a slight lull leading up to Bitwig 2 and that was it. Anyways as someone earlier suggested, we aren't changing minds here. Maybe the devs will listen but I suspect this is a necessary change in their business model that they have to pursue to make this a viable enterprise.

[humanbeingbeing]

I do feel your writing portrays a false idea, that you think Bitwig is as good as any other software and that it's track record is comparable, but that is not the case...

I could list all my creds, all the software and hardware I've used to seem more experienced, but everything about Bitwig is on record... you're going to have a really hard time establishing this narrative... I myself have worked with music software for 20 years, I've been a software engineer for even longer and the first year of Bitwig releases was NOT typical at all... , it's nothing to do with the OS support, I work in loads of daws in loads of studios not just my own... after 2 years of waiting for it to be released in the first place.. people used to call it 'Bitwait' and now they want an annual sub... I'm not sure if you had those experiences, I have to assume you got into Bitwig recently.. but I am on record about Bitwig bugs with many others, this isn't a new thing I've just come up with... a cursory glance at the release archive portrays a vivid picture, the word 'crash' shows up 79 times, it still doesn't accurately depict the frequency of Bitwig issues + conspicuous missing features.

I have heard the standard practice myth before...kinda misleading considering the size of Bitwig--- they do follow standard practice with a super small team... maybe that is the issue... if I had to guess I'd say they have very little QA--- in my SW company we have more testers on staff than devs... I should add we are talking about a new license model, they have switched from the 'standard' one... remember this discussion is about them changing their practice....

the bug I reported was a disgraceful bug which should never have been in the software to begin with, it wasn't a low priority bug, and it wasn't even fixed properly in the first go.... I find it amusing that you jump to speculation with this because the history of Bitwig is so well documented... I personally recall at least 20 weird bugs that took years to fix... and also recall this constant back and forth where one thing would get working and something else would break.... constant regressions, 6 on record. I installed over 30 versions of Bitwig... I have NEVER seen that kind of issue with other music software, I was able to move back to Cubase and Ableton and get work done.... I, like many others, am on record getting fed up with bugs and leaving Bitwig to mature... I saw the 2.0 update come through and thought, maybe now they've got their act together.. still kinda amazed that it's not the 2.0 that was previewed before.. is that standard?. I'm not paying for the privilege of finding out...

I think you should stick to the argument because conjecture about whether Bitwig is as high quality as any other music software is really not the point, it's about the time it took to get to this point.... if you're saying Bitwig 1.0 was just as great at launch - I'm sorry but that's delusional - you added the word 'minor' to those 14 fixes as if 14 minor updates is no big deal.. and again, 1.0 was supposed to be the production ready version, there was a coming soon video up for 2 whole years.

I'm just curious... lets say hypothetically that Bitwig 2 takes over a year to be production ready, which was absolutely the case for version 1.... are you telling me that you're completely ok with that? and I presume you'd be happy paying again for another year of support? If you're ok with that then there is no point of discussing anything, we're on 2 different philosophical planets.

Subscription models are for mature software. If you feel comfortable with it, good for you, but based on my past experience I will be swerving this one, and I advise newbies to consider the history before shelling out...

Really it's just differences in opinion. I don't think Bitwig has been that buggy and you do. I wasn't attempting to wow anyone with my accomplishments. I was trying to show that I've tested Bitwig against a lot of different DAWS and I've had much less issue with it than I have any other DAW.

As I said in previous posts, I am not implying I don't believe the users posting here...just that my experience has been completely different than a lot of the reports I'm seeing.

I feel that the stream of updates was constant. There was a slight lull leading up to Bitwig 2 and that was it. Anyways as someone earlier suggested, we aren't changing minds here. Maybe the devs will listen but I suspect this is a necessary change in their business model that they have to pursue to make this a viable enterprise.

Sry I may have come off too harsh in my response, I thought your post was fine I just needed to state my disagreement in sharp relief for people reading. I don't actually think it's a difference of opinion. I'm sure you believe us and everything is cool, you don't actually even need to believe me... You can take the evidence that is readily available rather than just my word. I thought my post was more focused on facts than opinion.

I'm slightly concerned about the number of people almost suggesting we shouldn't post our views, because I don't expect to change the mind of the people arguing on this board, I would however like to change the mind of Bitwig...some people are fine with the extra sub for existing customers, but I do find it odd that they defend the position and claim people don't really have issues (it is not a matter of opinion that Bitwig had issues, your workflow must've managed to avoid all the issues clearly documented by countless users and Bitwig themselves, maybe you got some miracle happy path- but that doesn't change the fact that many people have had serious problems over a long periods of time, all of this is acknowledged history). This should really go without saying but on audio boards with devoted users, apparently and obviously it does need to be said.

[bite_me]

I now call it a B!tchwig. But she´s so sweet - resistance is futile.

[Reefius]

I've been calling it Bugwig for a long time now, because development has always been 1 step forward and 2 steps back. For every bug they fixed there seemed to be 2 new ones popping up. That's why I believe the new license model is totally outrageous.

We've been paying beta testers for Bitwig over the past years and now they have the nerve to ask for even more money to keep beta testing. Enough is enough.

[Coockie1176ln]

I've been calling it Bugwig for a long time now, because development has always been 1 step forward and 2 steps back. For every bug they fixed there seemed to be 2 new ones popping up. That's why I believe the new license model is totally outrageous.

We've been paying beta testers for Bitwig over the past years and now they have the nerve to ask for even more money to keep beta testing. Enough is enough.

But in all honesty, i think this new model is good though in the end it will push them to get a stable and feature rich daw or people wont pay for next year off updates. Its do or die within 1 year and i think the customers will win on that. Also i dont feel that 2 new pop up for every fix, i think that is baised on what others are saying and that feeling is based on a feeling more than truth. Its a lot more stable these days then before and if it was 2 steps back it would be worse then on release. its not. People can also sit back and relax enjoy their time in bitwig 1.3.15 or use another daw and check how the devolopment is going for the daw. maybe they suprice big time that year its up to proof

[geo33]

But in all honesty, i think this new model is good though in the end it will push them to get a stable and feature rich daw or people wont pay for next year off updates. Its do or die within 1 year and i think the customers will win on that.

Knowing Bitwig's history, customers can also choose to hold off upgrading or buying though until they see satisfactory speed to development and that will also hurt Bitwig's income. Personally I don't like this license models in general but if they are to be used, the company needs a proven record of dedication and transparency and a mature software, in my opinion.