Pro Tools is Now Subscription Only

[whyterabbyt]

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.

I suspect a lot more will be willing at the £10 a month tier.

[husker37]

Strong non concur. I manage software licensing for a large (multinational) corporation, and we hate subscriptions. Software maintenance fees are known - the idea that subscriptions make it easier to forecast annual budgets is just not true, if anything, subscriptions make that more difficult. Subscriptions only benefit the company, not the customer.

There's no substantial difference between an annual maintenance fee and a subscription, is there? Having worked for Autodesk for 6 years, I know for a fact that the vast majority of customers prefer the certainty of subscription fess over the random update cycle. And it's the same where I work now, Adobe CC is a lot less hassle for IT/engineering and it means we, the workers, have the most up to date software, rather than having to put up with versions that are several years out of date because no-one has budgeted for upgrades.

Yes, there is a substantial difference between maintenance and subscription actually. When you buy a perpetual license, you can use that license forever. You can choose to pay maintenance and get upgrades or not. Either way, you can still use the software. Under the subscription model, once you stop paying your monthly/annual fee, you have no way of using the software. And that is why subscriptions do not benefit customers. (And that is why I get irritated when people say Waves is a subscription - it is not. Neither was Sonar. Once purchased, you can use that version forever, and choose to purchase maintenance or not.)

In addition, companies are charging more for subscriptions than they would annual maintenance. Sometimes 10%-15% more. Its ridiculous.

We actually migrated totally off of all Autodesk products (almost 400 licenses) when they moved to subscription only, and moved wholly to Solidworks. We are looking at ditching Adobe products now, as the subscription model is more expensive and more of a hassle than the perpetual annual maintenance model. Your experience has been different for sure, but I have yet to talk to one customer that likes the idea of subscriptions. Businesses just don't like them.

[chk071]

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.

What people often forget is that a pricing like that almost reflects the price of DAW's with a perpetual license model.

Buy Cubase for 579 €, and upgrade it every year, and you're in similar dimensions. Not quite as expensive, but, in the end, you pay and pay and pay as well.

That said, I think 20 € per month would be a better pricing.

[chk071]

You know, in general, I'm not opposed to new business and pricing models. If it works, then it works. And, this industry is a very small one, so, I'm all for the companies getting their share, so they can go on developing software for our needs (I never understood the "capitalism" talk really. It's not like these companies are multi billion $ listed corporations or something).

I think the main consideration for me is that a subscription based model just wouldn't work for me, as, sometimes, I don't boot up my DAW for weeks or even months. A subscription is just totally pointless, if you don't make almost daily use of the software. You're much better off with a perpetual license, if your use case is like mine.

[zvenx]

Hmmm.. not sure your maths works out..
Let us say you buy Cubase for 600 (to make the maths even simpler).. dont' recall what the usual yearly 0.5 update cost is, but from Cubase 11 to 12 it is $100, let us assume this is the new norm.

So by year 3 you have paid SB, 600+100+100 = 800
Using ProTools middle tier (300), you would have paid Avid 900
it gets worse by year four and five (900 vs 1200 and 1000 vs 1500) gets progressively worse after that. (by year 10: 1500 vs 3000)





and secondly, you don't have to upgrade Cubendo to keep using it (unless of course you buy a new computer with a new OS and architecture, but that doesn't happen that often)... but you have to keep paying for the subscription to use it.


rsp

[HAL76]

Right, because this shit hole is where you go to find out where the industry is at. Pro Tools was never meant for the likes of you and me, it's for grown ups who have shit to do so they can get paid. Businesses definitely prefer subscriptions because it allows them to forecast costs when they are doing their annual budgets. I imagine it will be overwhelmingly appreciated by the customers Avid actually cares about and if it gets rid of a few more of the annoying idiots, all the better for them.

We should not forget to mention that the terms of usage and the conditions for evaluating and treating compliance affairs may differ drastically between a service contract and an owners license. For a DAW as well as for cars for example. You simply not find a provider anymore if you frequently drive too fast while the terms might hit producers that support political extremism or content that is glorifying violence one day.

cheers

[chk071]

Hmmm.. not sure your maths works out..
Let us say you buy Cubase for 600 (to make the maths even simpler).. dont' recall what the usual yearly 0.5 update cost is, but from Cubase 11 to 12 it is $100, let us assume this is the new norm.

So by year 3 you have paid SB, 600+100+100 = 800
Using ProTools middle tier (300), you would have paid Avid 900
it gets worse by year four and five (900 vs 1200 and 1000 vs 1500) gets progressively worse after that. (by year 10: 1500 vs 3000)

I know. That's why I said it's less expensive. Yet, it adds up. If you pay almost $1000 after 5 years, it's not exactly cheap either.

Anyway, for someone making a living with it, $29/month is probably peanuts.

[Teksonik]

Buy Cubase for 579 €, and upgrade it every year, and you're in similar dimensions. Not quite as expensive, but, in the end, you pay and pay and pay as well.

The difference being you're not forced to upgrade Cubase to keep using the previous version.

Stop paying the subscription fee and you lose access to Pro Tools.

[noiseboyuk]

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.

I suspect a lot more will be willing at the £10 a month tier.

We'll see, but I highly doubt it with such a crippled feature-set.

[Atlatnesiti]

https://www.engadget.com/pro-tools-subs ... 10247.html

Easy, make it Apple M1 native with support for AU, VST 3 and I’m in…
But we all know that will never happen, if ever… not in 2022…

[fmr]

https://www.engadget.com/pro-tools-subs ... 10247.html

Easy, make it Apple M1 native with support for AU, VST 3 and I’m in…

That would be the last nail in their coffin

[whyterabbyt]

We'll see, but I highly doubt it with such a crippled feature-set.

Hmmm, I hadnt actually seen what major features were removed (versus previous incarnations), just fairly low track counts. But its got no video support, which makes it useless for recommending to our students. Sigh.

[zvenx]

https://www.engadget.com/pro-tools-subs ... 10247.html

Easy, make it Apple M1 native with support for AU, VST 3 and I’m in…

That would be the last nail in their coffin

Why?
I don't think Pro Tools 'succeeds' because it uses its own proprietary plugin format.
It does because, it is the industry standard for film and for mixing and for larger studios.. whether deservedly so or not.
rsp

[fmr]

That would be the last nail in their coffin

Why?
I don't think Pro Tools 'succeeds' because it uses its own proprietary plugin format.
It does because, it is the industry standard for film and for mixing and for larger studios.. whether deservedly so or not.
rsp

They are no longer a "standard" as they used to be (there were times where Pro Tools alone had like more than 70% of the market). IMO they survive only because audio people are too conservative and don't change habits easily. Once they learn to work with something, they hardly change to something else. Other than that, I can't see anything to justify that "standard" statement.

That said, Pro Tools adopting AU/VST would be the implicit recognition they have nothing in advantage regarding other platforms, /(like Cubase and Logic) which offer a lot more to the user for way less.

[chk071]

Buy Cubase for 579 €, and upgrade it every year, and you're in similar dimensions. Not quite as expensive, but, in the end, you pay and pay and pay as well.

The difference being you're not forced to upgrade Cubase to keep using the previous version.

Arguable.

If there are known issues with your version of Cubase which aren't fixed, or it's not tested/supported on Windows 11, or a newer Mac OS version, you might be forced to upgrade.