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

[jclosed]

The sad thing about this all is that all this backlash was avoidable.

They just could have increased the renewal fee with, let's say, 10% or max 20%, and then explained it's needed because of the present worldwide financial situation that is going on. But as a "compensation" they have worked very hard on some "Spectral" stuff, that's now included.

That way they would have the needed increased income, and at the same time give their loyal costumers something to be content with. Sure, there would be some moaning going around, but everyone would agree that things in the world are getting more expensive, and Bitwig is also a part of the world. And look what great things we get for that extra money!

If they would have done the above, they would have not even close (if at all) the backlash they get now. I personally would be glad with that extra stuff, and would understand a higher renewal fee. It's not fun, but understandable.

Sadly - the above is not what happened. A huge missed opportunety in my books. Now we have two tiers of Bitwig. The "suite" with all the extra stuff, and the "medium size" that is what we had until now. The question is - What goes in the "medium size" and what goes into the "suite". Will the people that pay the renewal fee of €169 only get the crumbs that are left after all development is shifted to "suite" stuff? Will they even getting anything more than bug-fixes and a higher version number? Time will tell. But it's that uncertainty that makes people uneasy and in some cases very angry...

[liquidsound]

There is no Suite.
We have Bitwig Studio and "Specialized Tools" (without any defined criteria!) to pay additionally, when available, and created by the Deveopment team paid by the Yearly Maintenance fee.

[MrRodent]

Ok here's the entire quote. It simply makes you look worse and I detect no sarcasm. I was doing you a favor.

Are you one of those people who don't put their trolley back at the supermarket.

"I didn't get a free update, so join my mob and cause pain!"

ok....

Like I said emotions are running high right now. If this is causing you a great deal of distress it would probably be better if you just step away for a while.

People are upset and just venting right now. Let them get it out of their systems. You're really not helping things at all.

Wow you're right, it actually does make him look worse.

[DEP-5]

I wonder if actually someone will sue them on their terms of service ...

[Sweet Tooth]

I have an upgrade license burning a hole in my pocket. when is the v5 gonna get announced.........

[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.

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.

These guys are modern day luthiers. The creators of fantastic musical tools, the likes of which were unimaginable 20 years ago.

Literally heroes of the electronic music community because they have taken the risk, invested money and years of their lives to try to create the best artistic tools for musicians that they can conceive.

What have you done?

And you want to just write these talented hardworking people off as an unfriendly heartless company because of one misstep?

Do you have no soul?

i didn't characterize them in any way. you did that. i didn't say they weren't hardworking or talented.. you did that. i didn't malign bitwig in any way. i own it as of a few months ago and i know it's fantastic software. i haven't written them off. you're projecting.

calm down. i know people are emotional about this and protective of BitWig but the bottom line is still the bottom line. i only speculated as to possible motivation for this change in tactic for generating revenue.

companies exist in the real world and have to meet certain goals in order to survive. if they aren't meeting those goals or if they need to raise more money for whatever reason (change in goals? <- which could be a positive thing) then that's why they are doing what they're doing.

this "What have you done" line is ridiculous, my dude. really. c'mon. i'm old af and been using software and hardware since the 90s. i'm not going to compare whatever my life's accomplishments are to anyone else's. that's not how this works. stop being so emotional about all this. it is what it is.

edit: and not to be that guy but.. as far as what was "imaginable" 20 years ago.. hate to break it to you but people were doing things w/software like max/msp back then that still shits all over what is happening today... and they did it themselves. built their own environments and people are still asking "how did they do that?"

so, unimaginable only to those w/o imaginations.

[apoclypse]

As a community we must make them feel the pain of this decision until they course correct. I will not buy this add on.

Are you one of those people who don't put their trolley back at the supermarket.

"I didn't get a free update, so join my mob and cause pain!"

ok....

The update is not free. Don't know why you keep saying that. You pay $169 per year for an update, more than a lot of subs out there and now you have to pay extra on top of that. Don't know what you definition of free is but that's not my definition.

Even if the add-on was paid which is corny but whatever, nagging paid customers to death with an update screen only to nag then with another screen to update something they need to pay for is nagware/shareware territory. Bitwig should have an option to disable all update notifications if a user wishes, but they won't do that because how will they nag you to update your plan every damn time you open the application.

Before I updated to 4.3 I would see the nag screen every time I opened Bitwig in 3.3. Not cool. I'm not happy about paid add ons, I'm even more unhappy about the nagging.

[SephReed]

After seeing one of favored Bitwig YouTubers more-or-less shill, I decided to try to make a level headed video on the subject. Leaving it here in case anyone feels like having a synopsis in video form to share.

[dlandis]

All EU customers are protected by laws that shall protect from:
"misleading practices, either through action (giving false information) or omission (leaving out important information)"
So if Bitwig have claimed:
"12 Months of Free Upgrades

Future-proof: All Bitwig Studio updates in the following 12 months are FREE. "

They might be in trouble.

I think that wording is the thing though. Add-on ≠ update.

Except that the wording seems to have changed (I caught this on another site and copied it here):

bitwig updates.png

So, at some point the wording changed to protect this change of policy. The question would seem to be simply, "When did you purchase your subscription?" If before September 23, 2022, you should receive all updates for the regular annual subscription price, period; if after, then only Bitwig Studio is covered. I'm not a lawyer, but this change of wording seems to open a can of worms for Bitwig. It could be argued (perhaps correctly) that their word change implies at least sensitivity to a perceived legal issue.

[Sincrol]

Some people are so invested that they have developed gear acquisition syndrome and will simply never accept this is bad for them... Accepting this is wrong is accepting they themselves have been wrong for years.

Native Instruments, Reason, FL Studio.. Now Bitwig.

i'm a former paying customer right now.

[Chameleonman]

The core feature updates are usually so basic. Color palette, mp3 support and so on. Important but too minor for the money. Their focus has been always on some specialiced devices that I dont need many times. I've been always too stupid to renew my plan because of those shiny devices, similar than the plugins I have already. Part of the reason for doing that was the support for the company. Not a fanbwoy anymore. I'm demoing the Reaper now.

[Phil B]

Will the people that pay the renewal fee of €169 only get the crumbs that are left after all development is shifted to "suite" stuff?

I think people who used to think of the annual plan as a 1yr good faith investment in the company in exchange for its “surprise me!” work product will now think of it as 1 day plan to add the features added since the last time they paid the 1 day plan fee. And judging from the reaction, I think that’s a significant number of people. I’m guessing those people will generally not buy the add ons either. So, if that extends update payments by one year, that means reducing annual revenue by ~50% for x% of the customer base. What is x? Could it be that bitwig knows that the loud online majority actually represents a small minority of its customers? Maybe. Maybe not.

[JsinOwl]

As a community we must make them feel the pain of this decision until they course correct. I will not buy this add on.

Are you one of those people who don't put their trolley back at the supermarket.

"I didn't get a free update, so join my mob and cause pain!"

ok....

More like I didn't get the update I paid $169 for and they said they would give me. The use of the word pain was metaphor, and not intended to mean literal pain. You understand metaphor yes? You understand that people are frustrated, and when frustrated may indulge in some hyperbole yes? I would say this is quite normal human behavior that you yourself engage in at times. The point remains, if we want them to honor their agreement: that all updates are included with the upgrade plan, then the best way to do that, is to make that the most financially advantageous option for them. How you ask? By joining my "mob" apparently, and not buying the add-on and not renewing your upgrade plan until they decide to honor the terms under which we all purchased Bitwig and the subsequent subscription.

You literally are trying to incite the community to cause Bitwig pain.

I think a lot of people here need to take a deep breath and reflect on their attitudes to life.

4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 have been great updates and if you had updates from say 4.2 I'm sure you'd still get 5.0 when it comes out.

Literally the very worst case here is people don't get a spectral plug in for free. Yet, the indignation is worse than if someone had killed their cat.

See, hyperbole, you can do it too. I "literally" just said I was using metaphor and hyperbole. You keep saying we're not getting a plugin for free when multiple people have explained that we've paid for these updates. I don't know if you're an employee of Bitwig or just a mega fan, but people have very valid reasons to be upset. Boycotting is a very reasonable response. It is not "inciting" anything.

You asked me earlier if I'm the kind of person who doesn't put the trolley back at the super market. I'll tell you the kind of person I am. When I first got Bitwig, I read the manual beginning to end. In doing so, I noticed some errors, some minor, some not so minor: misspellings, grammar, missing figures, figures that didn't match the text or were out of date, wrong page references, etc. I thought, hell, I'm reading the manual anyway, I can proofread it and send them the errata. It'll be some tiny way I can contribute to Bitwig. So I did, and emailed them multiple pages of errata, asking nothing in return. They got it and said thanks, that's the last I ever heard about it. That's the kind of person I am. What have you contributed to Bitwig? Tell me about how I need to reflect on my attitude in life?

The issue is not that we're not getting 4 devices. If that's what you think the uproar is about, then you've completely lost the plot. A contract has been broken, there's huge uncertainty for the future, and it's the principle of it. It's just wrong.

[Guenon]

A professional user here. What gets me in all this is exactly the broken promise/contract/trust, not a handful of effects I’m apparently not receiving without arbitrarily paying some more. Indeed, it isn’t about the latter. Simply, I was told the license was for ”all software updates in the following 12 months”, and from a reputable company that’s what I expected. The convolution stuff, for example, was included in ”all software updates” as it should, and that was really nice. ”Ohh, how nice to see the value in this kind of licensing.” And now... suddenly these aren’t. It’s just random, it breaks a simple but effective promise, makes the 12 month thing hugely less enticing, and is much more difficult to recommend to other people, going forward from here.

[Sincrol]

A professional user here. What gets me in all this is exactly the broken promise/contract/trust, not a handful of effects I’m apparently not receiving without arbitrarily paying some more. Indeed, it isn’t about the latter. Simply, I was told the license was for ”all software updates in the following 12 months”, and from a reputable company that’s what I expected. The convolution stuff, for example, was included in ”all software updates” as it should, and that was really nice. ”Ohh, how nice to see the value in this kind of licensing.” And now... suddenly these aren’t. It’s just random, it breaks a simple but effective promise, makes the 12 month thing hugely less enticing, and is much more difficult to recommend to other people, going forward from here.

The single strongest point about Bitwig, the foundation, was this. And they broke it.
I expected that, year after year, i would pay them GOOD MONEY and get all the amazing stuff they developed in Bitwig.

People here playing semantics need to understand that we are pissed for a good reason. We expected these "separated products" NOT to be separate. Maybe the GRID should be removed from the core software and you should pay extra 99$ for it.

I'm so mad.