How do you feel about subscription based plugins?

[Ploki]

There are tons of subscription services in the world. Are they all corrupt? Give me a break. And no, sorry, as much as I love it and support developers, music software is not some special magic category.

Most are services or library access, not a piece of outdated code.
Adobe got SO MUCH FLAK when they went sub.

[WatchTheGuitar]

There are tons of subscription services in the world. Are they all corrupt? Give me a break. And no, sorry, as much as I love it and support developers, music software is not some special magic category.

Most are services or library access, not a piece of outdated code.
Adobe got SO MUCH FLAK when they went sub.

In 2013 when Adobe launched Creative Cloud, the company broke with selling boxes and refocused on selling subscriptions (software as a service). At the time, the company had about $200 million in annual recurring revenue. Today, Adobe has over $5 billion in recurring revenue.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/15/adob ... g-revenue/

Oh noes, internet flak, scary stuff

[Ploki]

It was a commentary whether its corrupt. Obv its profitable.

[loungepanda]

Just going to shill for Serif here and remind people that the Affinity 50% off covid campaign ends in 5 days.

Hilariously cheap price for such great software.

[_leras]

Just going to shill for Serif here and remind people that the Affinity 50% off covid campaign ends in 5 days.

Hilariously cheap price for such great software.

Wow! That really is pretty incredible deal - £75 gets you all three of the Affinity products. Adobe is more like £600 per year.

Adobe, for how good their tools are, is definitely an example of a subscription being a rent seeking piss take...

[collider]

I feel like this: No thanks!

[Ploki]

subscriptions for plugins should work like music subscriptions, since you mostly get a product that never rarely gets updated and occasional new release (like with music).

I pay 5$ for every plugin manufacturer in the world, and devs get 0.005 cents per download.

Then DEVS can pay to get on music playlists.

No really, this is getting bizarre. Plugin manufacturers as tool makers are paid more than actually people using the tools. Imagine being a carpenter, you get paid 0.005$ for every nail you hammer, but hammer costs you 25$/month. Want a screwdriver? That'll be another 25$/month since the hammer company doesn't make screwdrivers.

So in conclusion, sub companies - especially those who neglect their software and don't update it in timely manner, are corrupt scammers that we shouldn't give our money to, and should actively punish by not purchasing their product.

[Ploki]

also he makes a great point:


basically, none of the sub-based vendors are M1 compatible, while most of non-sub are, regardless of catalogue size.

[enroe]

In 2013 when Adobe launched Creative Cloud, the company broke with selling boxes and refocused on selling subscriptions (software as a service). At the time, the company had about $200 million in annual recurring revenue. Today, Adobe has over $5 billion in recurring revenue.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/15/adob ... g-revenue/

Understanding Adobe's business environment is essential to understanding:

Adobe's target group are graphic artists and designers who often work
professionally in agencies. It is easier for them to use a subscription
model instead of always running after each update manually. In addition,
Adobe has a kind of quasi-monopoly, because in the designer sector
everyone works with Photoshop - without exception.

So the subscription model makes perfect sense for Adobe. Other areas
of application software are often not comparable with the designer area,
so that subscription models would probably fail here.

[pixel85]

subscriptions for plugins should work like music subscriptions, since you mostly get a product that never rarely gets updated and occasional new release (like with music).

I pay 5$ for every plugin manufacturer in the world, and devs get 0.005 cents per download.

Then DEVS can pay to get on music playlists.

No really, this is getting bizarre. Plugin manufacturers as tool makers are paid more than actually people using the tools. Imagine being a carpenter, you get paid 0.005$ for every nail you hammer, but hammer costs you 25$/month. Want a screwdriver? That'll be another 25$/month since the hammer company doesn't make screwdrivers.

So in conclusion, sub companies - especially those who neglect their software and don't update it in timely manner, are corrupt scammers that we shouldn't give our money to, and should actively punish by not purchasing their product.

In audio world this carpenter would do it for free and would feed family with exposure
Remember that you're talking about industry
- where musicians are against Spotify paying more because they're afraid that Spotify is so poor that they can't handle it.
- where bands will play for free, taking care about event promotion, tickets and everything where pub/club owner will have promo of his place done for free.
- where musicians and producers need new plugin every day because otherwise they're uninspired
Etc. Etc.
This industry is full of people happy to be screwed and those who doesn't want and are trying to fight back, are seen as freaks, traitors, azholes etc.
tl;dr music industry is hopeless

[_leras]

basically, none of the sub-based vendors are M1 compatible, while most of non-sub are, regardless of catalogue size.

I'm not fully up to speed of which audio software vendors have subscription services, but would expect you need a fair sized coverage and a decent amount of products to update. I doubt that there would be a significant correlation.

I don't need any subscription services - but for someone starting out an instrument sub + mixing sub could make a huge amount of good tools available to someone starting out.

Anyway - my only real point on this is that I think it is possible for a subscription service to be good for both customer and developer without it being a corrupt thing. But, I do understand why people would be cynical.

[Ploki]

I'm not fully up to speed of which audio software vendors have subscription services, but would expect you need a fair sized coverage and a decent amount of products to update. I doubt that there would be a significant correlation.

I don't need any subscription services - but for someone starting out an instrument sub + mixing sub could make a huge amount of good tools available to someone starting out.

Anyway - my only real point on this is that I think it is possible for a subscription service to be good for both customer and developer without it being a corrupt thing. But, I do understand why people would be cynical.

i am because i went M1-only in january.
I'd doubt as well, but none of the guys offering subscription have M1 native plugins. NONE.
Output, PA, Waves, Splice(Standalone App), Eventide, EastWest, iZotope, Nugen, Antares

There's also SSL Native, McDsp, Kush and Slate - but those are iLok.

On the other hand you have:
U-he, Voxengo, Fabfilter, Melda, Fuse Audio, Spectrasonics, Reveal Sound, Tone Projects, Valhalla, Wavesfactory, Youlean, AAS, Klevgrand, Modartt, Sugarbytes, Synapse audio, Audiodamage, Audiothing, BlueCat, DMG Audio, TBPro audio, Tokyo Dawn, Xfer records - even f**king abandonware WAVE ARTS that haven't generated any revenue stream for probably years

Arturia is soon going into beta.

So i'll side with Alexey again - subscription offering plugins vendors are corrupt.

If they weren't, we'd have a 100-plugin sub for mix'n'match through something like pluginboutique or gobbler or splice, as it stands now they try to lock you into their ecosystem because of two fine plugins and a lot of f**king pointless filler nobody needs.
IF they weren't we'd have some M1 native offerings.

As for starting: for someone starting out GarageBand, Logic, Reaper + freebies or anything is a bite of more than they can chew.
And then there's splice rent-to-own which is basically interest-free lease which also gives you access to great tools, and you can keep the license.
You don't need 100 professional mixing plugins and synths with gajillion of controls when you start out because you'll have no clue what to do with it.
Moreover, it locks you into a single manufacturer if you're starting out.

To go back to carpentry "why don't you try something with a table router and CNC although you never even held a hammer in your hand".

[WatchTheGuitar]

i went M1-only in january.

Well that was a dumb move. Early adopters of new processor technology always suffer compatibility issues for a while.

Maybe another way to look at this is that the companies offering subs are the only ones big enough to risk pushing back at Apple and the way they go about arbitrarily imposing extra workload on everyone? Maybe Apple will give software companies a longer lead time and/or better tools next time? Or maybe not, after all they’re Apple and their followers will just end making excuses for them as per usual.

The reason a heap of small companies have M1 native plugins now is that a lot of them will use a common codebase, JUCE is popular and when that got M1 compatibility it was a fairly trivial matter for all the plugins based on it to be recompiled to use it. The more plugins you offer that are based on more disparate codebases, the more work you have to rebuild them to work on M1.

[Ploki]

i went M1-only in january.

Well that was a dumb move. Early adopters of new processor technology always suffer compatibility issues for a while.

Maybe another way to look at this is that the companies offering subs are the only ones big enough to risk pushing back at Apple and the way they go about arbitrarily imposing extra workload on everyone? Maybe Apple will give software companies a longer lead time and/or better tools next time? Or maybe not, after all they’re Apple and their followers will just end making excuses for them as per usual.

I dont have any compatibility issues.
I tried everything i use before selling my intel macs…

How much mental gymnastics do you need to do to paint subscription vendors as hero rebels?

Apple offered dev kits months before M1 official release- and given the large amount of vendors offering native versions it’s apparently enough lead time.

Most devs have a common framework, either 3rd party or proprietary. Amount of plugins doesn’t change the work needed to do on the framework

[WatchTheGuitar]

Apple offered dev kits months before M1 official release

During a pandemic and most dev teams will have had the next year or so’s main development workload mapped out. But sure, drop everything at Apple’s whim, I’m sure there’s no blame for Apple there, Mr Mental Gymnast.

Most devs have a common framework, either 3rd party or proprietary. Amount of plugins doesn’t change the work needed to do on the framework

Even if you have plugins all using the same framework you should still complete full testing after recompilation to ensure all functionality still works and you haven’t introduced issues.

I’m not a plugin dev, but I am a dev and I rankle when we all have to reshuffle our work priorities when, for instance, Microsoft decides a certain O/S is going end of life or Internet Explorer is no longer going to be supported. I agree dropping old tech for better new tech is a good idea, but there is an impact on customers where we can’t offer a new process we’d planned to roll out in Q3 because we now have to burn dev cycles prepping for the O/S changes.