How do you feel about subscription based plugins?

[ATS]

How do you feel about all those new members posting controversial questions, and then disappearing into the void again?

Personally, I find it quite shady.

Didn't he just make this post today?

[liquidsound]

If that would become the standard it would kill the reselling and licensing transfer at once.
Bad idea.

[Teksonik]

Almost feels like a developer thinking of going subscription and putting out feelers to gauge reaction.

Anyway to answer the question I will never pay subscription for software. Sell me the license and charge me for major updates.

[liquidsound]

^^^exactly

[plexuss]

I spend a lot of money on music software. I have no use for a subscription and do not have any. I prefer to buy a license, one that is easy to transfer to another person and no NFR! Subscriptions, expensive transfer fees and NFR all significantly reduce my decision to puchase the software.

[lotus2035]

I hate 'em.
Rent to own would be the closest I would get.

[WatchTheGuitar]

I think it's death by a thousand cuts and by completely removing the option when you buy to sell on later (usually at a large loss, but still getting some return) then moving from what is a good to a service should mean the rental price is significantly lower than what we're seeing from the current vendors who have started doing it now. I'm talking $5 a month territory for an entire suite of plugins. Look at Disney+ and Netflix, charge less and get more customers.

[excuse me please]

Depending on the brand I would be interested.

[pekbro]

1 thing I don't like about most subs is that they don't take into account stuff you already own. Kush
for instance, I am only missing a few of them, yet the price is exactly the same for me as someone
who doesn't own any of them.

[Winstontaneous]

I generally avoid subscription models, however I do take the Relab reverb subscription occasionally because the plugins are so damn good and pretty expensive. But the Relabs are not my bread & butter reverbs, more like dessert or special sauce and I turn it off when not needed. Also I get the Adobe Creative Cloud sub through work for making training & marketing audio/video content. As someone who manages department budgets subs are just fine, they let you have predictable recurring expenses spread throughout the fiscal year.

Unless they are rent to own, the $$$ for subscriptions clearly works out in the developer's favor. However, for anyone who files taxes as a musician/producer these discussions are basically meaningless - as sometimes taking on extra expense is just what you need to bring down your taxable income, and you get fun toys in the bargain.

[BONES]

If you cancel, your sessions won't work because you are missing plugins.

It doesn't work that way. If you cancel, all your old projects will keep working, you just won't be able to add new instances of those plugins or edit them. Output, for example, just lock the GUI and disable patch loading once your Arcade subscription runs out. The plugins keep working in your old projects but you can't edit anything or use it new projects. If you buy a new machine and need to get all your stuff loaded onto it, you just renew for a month and cancel again.

Anyway, I subscribed to Output's Arcade for about 15 months, I think. At Au$14 a month, that's an investment of more than Au$200, which is twice as much as I've ever paid for a VSTi, for an instrument I rarely used after an initial flurry, because they took it in a completely different direction. So the idea of getting lots of new content all the time never did us any good because they never added anything new that we could use. Therefore, after we'd used all the stuff that it came with that we wanted to use, there was no point in continuing to pay for it. We waited until we had locked off the production for the album we used it on but we were quick to cancel after we reached that point.

Overall, my attitude is that if it was $199 up-front, I would never have even looked at it but because it was on a sub, I was happy to give it a go. But Arcade was an exception, because they supplied regular new content for it, which gave you you something for your monthly outlay. For a normal V/A VSTi I would never even consider a subscription model, unless it was a rent-to-own sort of thing like Kilohearts does with their bundles. And for me it's not about reselling licenses, which I've never done, it's the more practical aspect of what might happen if everything I need to use is on subscription and I end up with 20 or 30 of them, adding up to possibly hundreds of dollars a month. It's just not practical if everyone does it and it's a less attractive alternative to buying a license, so it makes your product less attractive to customers.

[Debutante]

izz shite

[SneakyBeats]

I'd be cool with subscriptions, if there were a place that would gather ALL of the existing plugins, then I'd pay something like 1€/plugin per month.. Though considering how many plugins I usually use, it's still cheaper to just buy a license.

[LeVzi]

I don't have a problem with the rent to own option, I currently have that going for a couple of plugin's. I think that's been a saving grace for me tbh, otherwise i'd probably not be able to afford them on the initial outlay.

But something I need to pay for , permanently , to use, nah, I want to own the plugins at the end of the payment plan.

[ATS]

I don't have a problem with the rent to own option, I currently have that going for a couple of plugin's. I think that's been a saving grace for me tbh, otherwise i'd probably not be able to afford them on the initial outlay.

But something I need to pay for , permanently , to use, nah, I want to own the plugins at the end of the payment plan.

If you can wait to get them you will probably do better saving up and waiting for a sale. Seems the rent to own is almost always at full price.