Pro Tools is Now Subscription Only

[BONES]

Here we agree. Avid aren’t in mortal danger yet. But keep stuffing up, and they will be.

Avid survived Final Cut Pro just fine, I don't think anything else will present anywhere near the threat that FCP did. And FCP is the perfect example of how capricious big companies can seem because Apple threw away their entire professional user base by turning FCP into an app for idiots. Stupidest of all is that they did it at a time when they probably had Avid on the ropes and could easily have owned the NLE space if they'd wanted it. But they saw FCP as a way to sell more Macs so they dumbed it down for the masses without a second thought.

I’m talking about what’s going to happen as we pivot from global pandemic to global recession.

Having lived through the GFC, I think I have the right perspective and I didn't see anyone go to the wall in '08/'09 so I don't think it will have much effect this time around, either.

[noiseboyuk]

BONES - I doubt you know the relative income breakdown for video vs audio at Avid, but I don’t believe for a second that the audio side is trivial. It might even be the larger part of the two at this point. For while FCP didn’t kill them (for the reason you suggest), Avid is nowhere near as dominant in video now as it once was. Every movie and TV show used to be cut on Avid, that’s far from true now. And they’ve never had the hobbyist market. Pro Tools has always been Post and pro Music, which combined make pretty significant numbers.

So the casual dismissal of Pro Tools for Avid feels, well, totally made up.

I was called out for not adding IMHO to comments, which is fair (it’s just boring to keep typing it). But the casual use of complete invention masquerading as fact in this thread really is pretty impressive.

[ghettosynth]

By contrast, I think we’re about to see subscriptions becoming entirely unstable. They can and will be dropped. People are only just figuring out they only need subscribe to Netflix two months a year, Apple two months a year etc, saving 80% and still watching everything. Because it all adds up. If a music maker is subscribing to a dozen services and then they can’t afford bread and milk, what do you think will happen? Those services will be the first to go.

That’s the hobbyist sector mind. If a pro needs something they’ll keep paying for it. But I’d guesstimate 98% of music making sales are hobbyist.

Now here we agree somewhat. In fact, if one wants to look hard enough, I've ranted about this before. The last thing that subscription companies want customers to do is to start thinking about the subscription fee. This is Netflix's nightmare. It may well be that the current economic cycle will take a toll on this mad dash to subscription software. That doesn't stop the entire industry from salivating over the sweet steady income of subscriptions though.

The music and video content industries may be a good model here. People will stop paying for subscriptions, but won't return to buying content either. When was the last time you purchased aa DVD? Once you decide that you don't need something on a daily basis, you are going to curtail the subscription and only rent when you do, but you've already made that decision so you're not going to buy a perpetual license either.

At the moment, many (most?) of us are somewhat irrational with perpetual license purchases. Ohh, new shiny! The last thing that vendors want is for us to start thinking about those purchases like we are forced to think about rent and the electricity bill.

[noiseboyuk]

ghetto - yeah, it's a very interesting moment in time. I really do think Netflix's subscriber drop is a seismic event whose ripples will be felt far and wide. Of course people's behaviour was already changing, but that news itself rocket-fuelled it. People are doing the unthinkable - counting their outgoings, and getting horrified at what they discover. In the case of streaming services, the obvious thing to do is to sub by the month. People are always hungry for new shows and movies, they can get the whole lot 80% off if they sequentially do each streamer a month each at a time.

For music-making though, it's not a perfect analog. Is GAS like the desire for new movies and TV shows? Not exactly, but there might be some parallels. Want to have an orchestra for one track? Subscribe to East West for a month, render it out and cancel. But a DAW is different - that's like the TV itself, not the programmes. Nobody wants to rent their TV, that went out in 1975. That's the thing that makes so little sense to me with Pro Tools subs. If you need it, typically you will always need it.

For the vast majority of the business, people can switch to another DAW. You can buy Cubase Elements for less than a year's rental of Pro Tools Artist (and it's got more features). The technically capable have Reaper for $60. You can still make great music on Garageband or Bandlab for crying out loud. So I don't think Artist will be attractive to the hobbyist, especially with the economic crunch. It only makes sense as a learning environment for the full version. Pro Tools will remain true to their name, pro-centric.

Adobe is a real anomaly, that I think is not repeatable. It's terrible, terrible value - unless you use a lot of it. And for many companies, that works. They use Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Audition. Premiere has taken a lot of the Avid market for this reason - one programme-maker I know said it saved them weeks and weeks of production time on a vis-fx heavy show because the workflow between it and After Effects was so good. Using Media Composer - as they did on the first season - was tortuous. They never looked back. Avid cannot compete with that, nor should they.

[crickey13]

Do any musicians and creative types use PT in the first place?

Since it seems that professionals involved in the film industry and television are the only ones using it because of its hegemony in the field, PT going the sub route is actually understandable and what's more, this is like one of the few DAWs for which it makes sense by virtue of its heavily business-oriented nature.

What doesn't make sense are the pricing scheme and the lagging features compared to other DAWs which is why the PT monopoly bubble may burst at some point, especially if businesses decide to cut costs alongside private individuals, but maybe they can swing it, who knows.

[ReleaseCandidate]

Adobe is a real anomaly, that I think is not repeatable.

It is.
By Autodesk, for example:

As of January 2016, Autodesk stopped selling new perpetual licenses. In May 2017, we stopped selling maintenance plans. All Autodesk software is available to buy as a subscription on a plan.

https://www.autodesk.com/licensing/overview
And Autodesk isn't 'just AutoCAD', they bought more or less every 3D program on the planet - modelers, 3D Compositing (F/F/I), industrial design, ...

But 3D, 2D and audio isn't the norm, in many other fields you can't buy _any_ program, only subscriptions exist.

[Mr. T]

The reality is the global economy is being privatised.
What were once PRODUCTS, will become SERVICES.
The days of single payment perpetual licences are over, and soon will be for for any consumable product under the sun.
Apparently, unlimited agency over your electronic toolbox doesn't work in the brave new world...
This "Subscription" model in pro audio is an effect of this radical systemic change.

Remember WEF's 'Great Reset' honcho Klaus Schwab?
"You'll own nothing and be happy"

[noiseboyuk]

Adobe is a real anomaly, that I think is not repeatable.

It is.
By Autodesk, for example:

Sorry, I meant in the field of Film/TV post.

[ReleaseCandidate]

Adobe is a real anomaly, that I think is not repeatable.

It is.
By Autodesk, for example:

Sorry, I meant in the field of Film/TV post.

Autodesk has programs for that too. Although F/F/I (which is just Flame now IIRC) isn't as relevant as it were when it ran on SGIs (now that's Nuke) and Smoke never has been widely used. I don't even know what else than Discreet they have bought.
Hmm, Shotgun/Shotgrid:
https://www.autodesk.com/products?filte ... how&page=1

[whyterabbyt]

Do any musicians and creative types use PT in the first place?

yes.

[noiseboyuk]

Do any musicians and creative types use PT in the first place?

yes.

It was interesting though that - I think - nobody posted about all this here for about 24 hours after release on KVR, whereas it was exploding everywhere else from minute one. Conclusion - only a teeny proportion of KVR users use it (absolutely not a criticism).

[whyterabbyt]

Do any musicians and creative types use PT in the first place?

yes.

It was interesting though that - I think - nobody posted about all this here for about 24 hours after release on KVR, whereas it was exploding everywhere else from minute one. Conclusion - only a teeny proportion of KVR users use it (absolutely not a criticism).

or they just dont mention it because of the KVR kneejerk.

[noiseboyuk]

....I use PT Ultimate for Post, and Cubase for music. Pro Tools is far, far better for basic audio work, it's more stable and reliable...

I also use both, for the same purposes as you and would like to ask you to further elaborate on this because I completely disagree.
This is completely untrue in my experience.

One quick example (it’s my bedtime) - offline processing. Cubase is a horrible mess. It gets confused - I fix one clip, move to the next and then the previous one reverts to the unprocessed version. I have no end of trouble with it. Pro Tools Audio Suite is pure joy by comparison. Works with handles that I can set easily - it’s terrific.

Never had that problem, but yeah, ymmv

I meant to come back to this. We all know that every new release by any DAW developer may unearth new problems, and Pro Tools is not immune. But for Cubase it seems (subjectively) to be far, far worse. Case in point - Cubase Pro 12.0.0 worked pretty darn well for me. 12.0.10 seemed to massively break things for a lot of people - basic audio performance issues, and many plugin guis with huge wide borders. 12.0.20 has helped a bit for audio for some, but still not right. Apparently 12.0.30 is mooted for a GUI fix.

This is all in a long rich tradition. I spent literal years trying to get the disabled tracks multi-out bugs fixed. I joined the beta team and everything. It got fixed. Then the next major update unfixed them again, and they had to re-fix them. By the time it was all over I'd totally reconfigured my template so I barely used them (still do just a bit).

It's a constant feeling of whack-a-mole I have with Cubase. I can feel the creaking 25 year old code and all the gazillion patches hanging off it. By contrast, Pro Tools feels much more stable. Maybe I just get lucky, I know things can and do break (video export for mac something that immediately comes to mind).

There are other thing, such as I can't drag and drop a clip in Cubase depending on what automation lanes are open - if they're not the same it won't work. That's nuts. Audio fades have finally improved, but I still much prefer all those basics in PT.

For all of these reasons, for my serious stuff now I always export stems from Cubase and do the final mix / mastering / clean up in Pro Tools. I really like that workflow, but it shouldn't be necessary.

As you say, ymmv, but that's some of my own reasoning for saying Pro Tools feels more solid.

[noiseboyuk]

Do any musicians and creative types use PT in the first place?

yes.

It was interesting though that - I think - nobody posted about all this here for about 24 hours after release on KVR, whereas it was exploding everywhere else from minute one. Conclusion - only a teeny proportion of KVR users use it (absolutely not a criticism).

or they just dont mention it because of the KVR kneejerk.

Ha, could be!

[crickey13]

I wonder how many musicians actually use PT and how many of them are willing to go down the PT subscription path, what with the looming recession, skyrocketing costs of living and whatnot.

If you live in a second-world country, I doubt you can afford it without a substantial as well as stable source of income.