[Fixed in 4.4] Weird bug: latest "Spectral Suite" update not included in upgrade plan

[krazzmann]

Bitwig is great company. And for me it is better to support them than see if they will be bought by Gibson, Fender, PRS...etc...and then abandoned.

Absolutely this. They're just a bunch of guys and gals who wanted to make great music software.

I love what the do.

I find it so disappointing to see so many people lose the plot from what is really just a misstep in communication.

This!

[0degree]

Guess they are

1) Ignoring the noise hoping it goes away
2) No idea how to deal with the bad PR
3) Ran out of money to pay the electric bill so can't reply

Hopefully they are still discussing things internally and not going to go ahead with this shady and sneaky changing of terms hoping nobody noticed

4) Don't care because people will cry on the internet but eventually everything will settle down and people will just accept it. Maybe they will release something soon to dry the tears.

Sadly my bet is option 4

[dayjob]

i don't expect them to back track on this in any way. perhaps when they do a sale sometime down the road they might offer a really good deal bundled w/the update plan or some other new add on or something.

but it really does set a precedent for their plans going forward. this kind of thing would make more sense if they released an SDK for 3rd parties or something. but i don't know how that would work and what the obvious problems would be from a developer perspective.

regardless, the way they did this kinda muddies the waters in some people's eyes. i do think it'll give people pause about buying an upgrade plan yearly and more people will skip months and years to save $$$ and buy future add ons or whatever.

[Phil B]

Bitwig is great company. And for me it is better to support them than see if they will be bought by Gibson, Fender, PRS...etc...and then abandoned.

Absolutely this. They're just a bunch of guys and gals who wanted to make great music software.

I love what the do.

I find it so disappointing to see so many people lose the plot from what is really just a misstep in communication.

This!

I disagree. I think underlying it all is that bitwig users want the DAW to survive, they know they do not have interest supporting the new structure, that puts the company and DAW at risk, and they are hoping Bitwig decide to change the structure so they can support it and the DAW survives. People don’t like the actual structure … the communication of that structure has been crystal clear

[SLiC]

I guess we will all have to keep an eye on that Bigwig website, no idea what this means but it all just feels so underhand.... could well mean devices used in Bitwig Studio -fx, synths etc are no longer included

Really SLiC?

The words you use are important. Do you really think they have set out with intent to be underhanded? That's quite an insinuation.

You don't think a botched communication and approach is more realistic? They're a small software company making amazing music software, not a bunch of evil business geniuses trying to screw you over.

Yesterday it could have been botched communication, changing the web site Today to change what they say is included in the upgrade plan is intentional and underhanded.

[pekbro]

It's not miscommunication, it's willful divergence from their previous business model. C'mon, they are not stupid, they know exactly what they are doing. They expect it will blow over, nothing more nothing less. Likely they are correct about that sadly.

[pierb]

I find it so disappointing to see so many people lose the plot from what is really just a misstep in communication.

It's very difficult to consider it a "misstep in communication".

Bitwig knew very well what they were doing. So much so, they decided the right time to do it was just after the U-He promotion. If they had announced in advance what they were planning to do, a big chunk of the sales from that promotion probably wouldn't have happened.

[JsinOwl]

They knew there would be significant backlash. Our task is to make it more intense and last longer than they can stomach and also make sure that they see a noticeable dip in revenue. That's the only way to set things right. Compared to the competition, Bitwig was already one of the more expensive options. It's not like anyone can argue that Bitwig was below market value, so tacking this on really just brings the price on par with other software. That's not the case at all. Any way you analyze this, there's no justification.

[kultschar]

It's not miscommunication, it's willful divergence from their previous business model. C'mon, they are not stupid, they know exactly what they are doing. They expect it will blow over, nothing more nothing less. Likely they are correct about that sadly.

Indeed - one would be naive to think otherwise after sneakily changing the wording. I even saw someone blame their lack of English lol

[Dionysos]

They knew there would be significant backlash.

Bold hypothesis.

[dayjob]

they're a company. they want to make money. they're not your buddy. people need to realize that. sure, they have a vision of what BitWig should be as a music making platform but the bottom line is still the bottom line. i have no idea how big their user base is. seems like bitwig is widely adopted really no idea how financially stable the company is or what the revenue stream is.. but this does seem like a plan for future cash flow etc. ultimately i think it could harm as much as it helps when it comes to the bottom line since a lot of people give the side eye to this kinda stuff.

blah. whatever. as said in every post i've made i don't plan to update until i absolutely have to so hopefully can stretch my dollars further.

[3ddie]

they're a company. they want to make money. they're not your buddy. people need to realize that. sure, they have a vision of what BitWig should be as a music making platform but the bottom line is still the bottom line. i have no idea how big their user base is. seems like bitwig is widely adopted really no idea how financially stable the company is or what the revenue stream is.. but this does seem like a plan for future cash flow etc. ultimately i think it could harm as much as it helps when it comes to the bottom line since a lot of people give the side eye to this kinda stuff.

Yes, they are a company, that's fine. What is not fine is that they change the terms of the upgrade plan on the website and consider that to be binding. When I engaged in the update plan a few weeks ago it stated that I would get any "software update". It now says "Bitwig Studio update". They released new software which under my agreement of the update plan is definitely part of a "software update" but I still have to pay for it. So they unilaterally broke the contract we engaged in, but that is not the worst part...

Bitwig employs developers. The amount of developers is proportional to the amount of revenue they make. So in essence the people who buy Bitwig and the upgrade plans fund the development of the product. Now Bitwig has a perverse incentive to do less product development on Bitwig Studio and more on "add-on" packages. This is shady business. The upgrade plan and the add-ons are not really compatible. Who decides what a "highly specialised" feature is?

Anyway, the lack of a clear explanation on how we get updates for the add-ons is a clear indication of their intent. Do we get an upgrade plan for add-ons? Is it a lifetime update as part of the one-time buy of an add-on? What will it cost? No one knows what a Bitwig license is really going to cost. You won't hear any YouTuber on that because they have NFRs including updates. They don't live in the same world as paying customers like us.

So I wish them good luck with that. I have an upgrade plan for just under a year and after that I will not extend the upgrade plan. I will keep the version at that time for my Linux system and that's it. I might consider selling the license... we'll see.

[Buckster]

it 4.4 is out in next few weeks and has fantastic new features that make these look like niche add-ons then I might change my mind but otherwise I'm pretty certain I won't be buying any future annual plans after all of this

I'll make do with my whatever version is at end of my current plan sometime next year

[Gribs]

blah. whatever. as said in every post i've made i don't plan to update until i absolutely have to so hopefully can stretch my dollars further.

That is going to be my approach, too. Big things like the grid will inspire me to pay to update. Smaller things like a few MIDI processors and effects will not. It is just a DAW that I like. I have two others plus the playgrounds that are VCV Rack Pro with the plug-in host module set and Unify.

[Greenstorm33]

they're a company. they want to make money. they're not your buddy. people need to realize that.

We're also not their buddy and they need to realize that people will go elsewhere if they pull stuff like this.