This is my metric for any subscription offer that is targeting the hobbyist or weekend/evening musician market.ChiTown24 wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 11:10 pm I find it interesting that they often market subscription models as being beneficial for hobbyists, amateurs etc, whereas it seems clear to me that it's only the professional segment where a subscription model can be made to make sense.
As a hobbyist, or even a small-time independent professional, what happens to all your projects when you stop or can no longer continue paying all the subscription fees you owe each month ? Your projects don't load correctly ? plugins de-active throughout your project ? you'll inevitably renew your subscription just to access your projects. and the more projects you make with subscription based software, the more leverage you are giving them to keep you subscribing longer than you'd like.
ya, no thanks.
If it's got to be a subscription model, the Bitwig Studio subscription model is about as far as I could stretch - since at the end of your subscription term you are left with what amounts to a perpetual license for the main version of the software when your subscription expired.
Bitwig has it exactly right - their licensing is technically a hybrid: the license itself is perpetual; the UPDATING is the subscription.
You invest $$$ up front - Bitwig sells you the license plus one year of updates. Then let’s say you get busy; maybe lose interest in music and/or music production w/Bitwig for a while - even years - and if you decide to Bitwig again: your software will likely still work; OR you can simply pay the ‘updates’ fee for another year and your software is completely current! I tend to stay at least a couple of years ahead w/Bitwig: buy the year of updates thing when on-sale (sometimes deeply discounted) and add it to my account (it stacks) - I do this in part because I WANT to support a company that ethically treats its customers this way!
Part of the Reason (pun intended) why I revived this thread is because Reasonstudios aggressively tries to sell me their subscription every time I visit their site - I’m concerned that some may buy into their subscription and then have zero access to their software because they missed a payment if on the monthly plan. Heart-breaking.
