The "NEW" Plugin Alliance?

[mixtur.se]

I miss the old PA

+1. Too much dirking around. There are still a bunch of other companies that don't dirk around like this and just offer good products at good prices with friendly support. That's where my focus is going to go.

Like PSP. They have stayed classic for 20 years now and seem to be able to make a living.

Sorry, accidentally reported this post when I was replying, will try to reverse it (is it possible)?

[perpetual3]

Yeah, oh well. No big loss really.

[SLiC]

I just can’t see people subscribing. The Roland Cloud was half as much and much sexier being mainly instruments (and some real gems) but it was pretty much slated and even with the Roland marketing machine behind it hasn’t really set the world on fire. It may have value if you ate a professional studio or producer....but not to the vast majority who can pick up no brainier deals periodically like the waves or eventide stuff for 20-30 bucks...

Except the Roland Cloud let's you keep two plugins per year, which sweetens the deal considerably. It's nice knowing my subscription bought the System-8 and Juno plugs.

So if I sign up for Roland cloud now and purchase two years in advance I get to keep two of the plugins?

Nope, it's not true anymore, see this topic: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=475542

That's dumb on their part. The YOURS program was a huge part of the appeal of the Roland sub. Looks like I'm grandfathered in, but I wouldn't be subscribed in the first place if not for that.

I believe if you pay the full price sub not the new discount sub you get YOURS still...

[jochicago]

At $15/m it’s not a bad deal for someone that really wants the entire collection. Although the variety on offer seems a good fit for only studios, or mastering people, or hobbyists with money to burn.

Sad that it’s turned this way for PA, but as a whole I’m encouraged by the negativity here towards subscriptions, because I fear how software all over are going to subscriptions that tend to draw more money for less value and lock you in. The supposed advantage is also not that exciting: tons of goodies you won’t really use to their fullest.

I prefer to buy what I need/want at a competitive price I deem appropriate and not be locked in. I’m glad to see so many people on the same page about this.

Prediction:
PA will keep selling plugins and go back to decent deals soon enough.

Abobe was a monopoly. They got away with forcing subscription the same way they got away with destroying Macromedia's products, just pure bravado of being the big bad wolf and nobody to stop them. PA doesn’t have nearly that type of power. If they try a maneuver that consumers don’t like, we’ll all just happily mix with someone else’s compressor, strip or eq.

[plexuss]

PA now stands for Plugin Annoyance

[JerGoertz]

With all these plugins to buy, when will I find the time to make music?

[perpetual3]

I just can’t see people subscribing. The Roland Cloud was half as much and much sexier being mainly instruments (and some real gems) but it was pretty much slated and even with the Roland marketing machine behind it hasn’t really set the world on fire. It may have value if you ate a professional studio or producer....but not to the vast majority who can pick up no brainier deals periodically like the waves or eventide stuff for 20-30 bucks...

Except the Roland Cloud let's you keep two plugins per year, which sweetens the deal considerably. It's nice knowing my subscription bought the System-8 and Juno plugs.

So if I sign up for Roland cloud now and purchase two years in advance I get to keep two of the plugins?

Nope, it's not true anymore, see this topic: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=475542

That's dumb on their part. The YOURS program was a huge part of the appeal of the Roland sub. Looks like I'm grandfathered in, but I wouldn't be subscribed in the first place if not for that.

I believe if you pay the full price sub not the new discount sub you get YOURS still...

It doesn’t seem that way - YOURS ended for new subs 12/31/2018

[db3]

I just can’t see people subscribing. The Roland Cloud was half as much and much sexier being mainly instruments (and some real gems) but it was pretty much slated and even with the Roland marketing machine behind it hasn’t really set the world on fire. It may have value if you ate a professional studio or producer....but not to the vast majority who can pick up no brainier deals periodically like the waves or eventide stuff for 20-30 bucks...

Except the Roland Cloud let's you keep two plugins per year, which sweetens the deal considerably. It's nice knowing my subscription bought the System-8 and Juno plugs.

So if I sign up for Roland cloud now and purchase two years in advance I get to keep two of the plugins?

Nope, it's not true anymore, see this topic: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=475542

That's dumb on their part. The YOURS program was a huge part of the appeal of the Roland sub. Looks like I'm grandfathered in, but I wouldn't be subscribed in the first place if not for that.

I believe if you pay the full price sub not the new discount sub you get YOURS still...

I bought into Roland Cloud before Xmas, only due to the special price and the Play2-4Life offer for 2 permanent licences. I'm waiting to see what else they release this year so my account still states I have 2 instruments to select. And it also states I have 6 months remaining until my next reward.

[escalona]

I miss the old PA

+1. Too much dirking around. There are still a bunch of other companies that don't dirk around like this and just offer good products at good prices with friendly support. That's where my focus is going to go.

Like PSP. They have stayed classic for 20 years now and seem to be able to make a living.

Sorry, accidentally reported this post when I was replying, will try to reverse it (is it possible)?

Difference between the two companies:
Antoni
...sells plugins at reasonable prices
...updates and fixes bugs or adds features
...takes a few weeks off per year to meditate

Dirk
...sells plugins at $349
...doesn't know what updates/fixes are
...races supercars on the weekends

[peter.m.junior]

PA now stands for Plugin Annoyance

Indeed, the countless emails I got during the past few weeks were kind of chaotic and very confusing to me. I really don't get this type of marketing and also think that the subscription model is not the best way to go from the users' point of view. After all those good deals they used to have, $200-ish a year for rental seems a bit steep. I have quite a number of their plugins and think they are some of the best out there but have doubts about how successful this new business strategy is going to be.

[perpetual3]

I miss the old PA

+1. Too much dirking around. There are still a bunch of other companies that don't dirk around like this and just offer good products at good prices with friendly support. That's where my focus is going to go.

Like PSP. They have stayed classic for 20 years now and seem to be able to make a living.

Sorry, accidentally reported this post when I was replying, will try to reverse it (is it possible)?

Difference between the two companies:
Antoni
...sells plugins at reasonable prices
...updates and fixes bugs or adds features
...takes a few weeks off per year to meditate

Dirk
...sells plugins at $349
...doesn't know what updates/fixes are
...races supercars on the weekends

Vipassana?

[lwj]

I honestly just don’t get it.

I get Dirk’s reasoning, I get the market is changing. I get developers deserve a living wage and that you can’t R&D with no money. I think PA’s plugins are fantastic. I’m not against subscriptions, especially if it’s just an option. It doesn’t affect the plugins I own so that’s great. It’s a great option for a lot of people, maybe not for me but I’m not affected.

But this offer is just bad. Too expensive, for one. As someone already pointed out, 10 to 15 dollar or euro is the ideal range for a sub. If that doesn’t fit the value on offer, make it fit. Which brings me to the second, bigger issue: it’s all-in-one or nothing. You either get everything, or you have to buy them one by one.

This is incredibly boneheaded:
For anyone that already owns a good number, it’s a terrible deal. You get doubles. So you try to sell them maybe. That drives down the value of the plugins even further. So it’s not just a bad deal now, it gets worse over time. More likely these people won’t jump on it.
Who might? People that don’t own PA plugins yet or are willing to go through the hassle and financial loss of selling them. So outside of maybe a few studio who this happens to work out as a good deal for, you get mostly beginners. So you’re competing with stuff like NI Komplete, Softube Volume 3 which include a lot of instruments and creative effects.. so they’re a more complete and enticing package. What the hell is a beginner gonna do with dozens of different compressor emulations? Then there’s Slate, Fabfilter, and so on.. this is the age of cool bundles. They don’t all offer subscriptions.. yet, but with a 250 dollar upfront price you’re asking people to shell out big.

Then then people on your subscription are never going to become buyers either because that just doesn’t make sense.

Why not come up with something more flexible? Like a tiered system: rent 5, 10, 15, 20 plugins for a reasonable amount per month. How hard is that? That’s attractive to everyone. A heavy hitter can use it to complete their collection. A beginner can get everything they want. Simple, great. That way you can have super low, enticing prices and introduce way more incentives for people to keep buying (or renting in).

If you’re really cool, you even make it flexible like: suppose I’m renting 5 plugins and I decide to buy one of them, then one of my rented slots opens up for a new plugin to try. That way it can even function as an extended (paid) trial of sorts.

That would keep everybody happy, wouldn’t fragment the user base between owners and renters, would actually be an attractive deal, ridiculously competitive compared to what everybody else is offering and achieve more or less the same goals Dirk wants to achieve.

I honestly don’t understand why they come out with this ridiculously massive package with 100 compressors and then hope adding a few more compressors will sweeten the deal. There’s very few people that will want to have every damn PA plugin ever.. or use them all. So after a while they’ll kind of resent paying 25 a month for a set of plugins they only use maybe a third of.

It’s just massively stupid from every angle.

[DJMaytag]

3. Most users will need more than one sub as they have quite a few holes in their lineup

5) What´s the incentive to continue develop old plugins with this model?

#3: Other than the occasional rent to own of Rack Extensions, I don’t see any other subscriptions I’d be interested in.

#5: PA has already guaranteed no one can drop their plugs from the PA subscription, so old plugs HAVE to be maintained for future OS’s and formats.

[SLiC]

‘It’s just massively stupid from every angle’

Yeh, think of the effort that must have gone in to this to pull that off!

[yehboy1]

To the people who are against subscriptions, is there a price that it makes sense? As an extreme, would you be opposed to the PA subscription for $1 a month? If not, then is it in essence not about subscriptions but instead about the price?