My ability to claim 2 products per year from Roland Cloud was revoked (and given back)

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e-crooner wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2020 4:48 pm
SirkusPi wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2020 6:52 pm After reading all the above: wow. I'd often been a bit tempted by the Roland subscription, but never actually pulled the trigger. Now I'm glad I avoided this mess altogether, and any residual interest is well and truly dead. Thank you to everyone for sharing your experiences!
Sad to see what has become of Roland. Their chaos and dubious business practices are untypical of a Japanese company.
That's because Roland Cloud is not fully a Japanese company. Roland does the DSP part of things, but plugin programming and the cloud part (AFAIK) is handled by Virtual Sonics, which is an American company owned by Jeremy Soule, who is a bit of a conman.

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EvilDragon wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 7:15 am
e-crooner wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2020 4:48 pm
SirkusPi wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2020 6:52 pm After reading all the above: wow. I'd often been a bit tempted by the Roland subscription, but never actually pulled the trigger. Now I'm glad I avoided this mess altogether, and any residual interest is well and truly dead. Thank you to everyone for sharing your experiences!
Sad to see what has become of Roland. Their chaos and dubious business practices are untypical of a Japanese company.
That's because Roland Cloud is not fully a Japanese company. Roland does the DSP part of things, but plugin programming and the cloud part (AFAIK) is handled by Virtual Sonics, which is an American company owned by Jeremy Soule, who is a bit of a conman.
Thank you. That explains why they sound great, but the plugins themselves are pure shit.
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Alienware i7 R3 loaded with billions of DAWS and plugins.

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EvilDragon wrote:
That's because Roland Cloud is not fully a Japanese company. Roland does the DSP part of things, but plugin programming and the cloud part (AFAIK) is handled by Virtual Sonics, which is an American company owned by Jeremy Soule, who is a bit of a conman.
All well and good, but at the end of the day, it’s Roland’s name on the door that brings customers in.
On a number of Macs

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it's also Roland's name that gets sullied when they let a conman represent them.

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I've written this a number of times before, but Roland does not have a good name when it comes to software and software support. They are always about moving on to the next shiny.

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Hardware

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Gamma-UT wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:26 pm I've written this a number of times before, but Roland does not have a good name when it comes to software and software support. They are always about moving on to the next shiny.
That’s the corporate culture of a hardware company. They sell software because they’re desperate to have their fingers in the pie of the computer-based product market. Diversification and opportunism.

Do any hardware companies do software any better? Korg? Maybe marginally? :-/

These companies have always had this behavior with their hardware, too: update it maybe once, then abandon it and jump to a new piece of hardware to sell to you (with only marginally different design or functionality compared to the last thing they sold you). Though it’s an even worse issue when producing software products, because they often use outside contractors for those.

Then there’s the utter lack of communication with the customers, which is so much worse when selling software products to people because software never gets refined with the same rigor before sale as hardware (which has also gotten worse with the “patch it later” mentality).

I’m ranting.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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I just read this thread from page one... This is all exactly the reason I have zero interest in any subscription garbage. This end result is exactly what I expect of this business model. It might go on longer for companies that have always been software product makers, but hardware companies... ha ha ha. And not funny ha ha either.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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Gamma-UT wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:26 pm I've written this a number of times before, but Roland does not have a good name when it comes to software and software support. They are always about moving on to the next shiny.
Yeah it wasn't VirtualSonics who decided to not further update Roland's plugouts. Unless... did VirtualSonics make the plugouts too? Actually I don' teven know. I mean they are the same exact plugins, just with improvements in the Roland cloud versions.

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Jace-BeOS wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:37 pm Do any hardware companies do software any better? Korg? Maybe marginally? :-/
Walforf perhaps?

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I had the free trial mainly because I liked Jeremy Soule. Had him on patron and love his music. Glad I didn't actually buy. This sort of stuff is ridiculous especially when you compare it to how incredibly easy demos and purchases are elsewhere. To even get the free trial I had weird issues and got bad customer support.

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empphryio wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 5:12 pm got bad customer support.
this.

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Interesting thread (not), all that hate towards Roland is mind boggling.
My Roland Cloud account was seamlessly transferred to new one and I can still claim my 2 "instruments for life". For what they charge me on monthly basis with the number of instruments and sound-banks available, it's peanuts.
Had only one issue, more like suggestion that I have raised with Roland support and they have responded and addressed it very quickly.
Am I the only one on this board that is happy with Roland Cloud?

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Atlatnesiti wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 1:11 pm Interesting thread (not), all that hate towards Roland is mind boggling.
My Roland Cloud account was seamlessly transferred to new one and I can still claim my 2 "instruments for life". For what they charge me on monthly basis with the number of instruments and sound-banks available, it's peanuts.
Had only one issue, more like suggestion that I have raised with Roland support and they have responded and addressed it very quickly.
Am I the only one on this board that is happy with Roland Cloud?
It seems that way. Hey I'm happy it's working out for you. Doesn't really change the fact that they outright removed the two products per year from my account without warning (after it was promised to me when I signed up) now does it?

Some people judge people/organizations by how they treat them only. And some people judge also based on how they treat other people. If you are the first kind, then I guess all good. If you are the second, then Roland Cloud does not look so good.

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If people put any trust, into Roland Cloud, it's entirely because of the established Roland name. So, regardless of who does what at Virtual Sonics, it's Roland Japan who will get the blame for anything negative. And rightly so - the buck stops with them.

Roland Virtual Sonics seems to have about 20(?) people, though much of that number appears to be marketing / "management". They also appear to have lost several people carrying job titles you'd assume were involved on the software /plugin side. Natural turnover, an indicator of Roland's future intent, other issues? Who knows..

What's not guessing is the customer service is patchy enough to have some people want to run in the other direction. They also can't seem to give anyone detailed answers about what qualifies for instrument ownership with 2-4-Life and membership rewards. How much does it take to state these policies, clearly, on their website?!

Given the massive delay in rolling that out, the offer ending without any notice, and claims it only applies to certain payment methods (but not others - crazy!!), at best it gives more than the impression of a company which is disorganized in some areas. Even the plan, to transfer to Roland Backstage, where you were supposed to get an account activation email, seems to have been changed mid-way through.

Now the Roland Cloud accounts appear to have been seemlessly migrated to the same server side software as Roland Backstage. The good news is that should finally allow you to change your email! However the Google Analytics disable switch doesn't appear to work on Roland Cloud, where it does on Backstage ;)

At least the overall product is decent, and the RC software manager has improved in reliability over time. But they need to work on customer service (my own experience has also been poor), and they need to state a clear policy about their membership rewards - this thread is a direct result of them NOT doing that. Ultimately I wish Roland Japan would just give people what they want - just sell us the instruments and charge for future updates if you have to. Let others rent if they want..

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