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

[ottsch]

Maybe give Add-ons to users for free who don't have a gap bigger than one month between their current and last update plan.

That is my point. Buy Bitwig for 400€ enjoy one year of updates. After that, wait until something is introduced what you want and buy the upgrade plan.

That's exactly the point ... what seems like a decent chunk of their revenue was coming from customers (me, for example) who viewed buying these plans as a means to support the company in good faith (not banking on some specific new feature to come in the next year - I don't where you guys get that from). If all of those people (me, for example) now wait an extra year or two because they are now looking at it like you, that could severely impact their annualized revenues.

My mindset was always I buy a certain version of Bitwig which was available.

So, prove it ... next time you buy an update, request Bitwig to reduce your effective period from 1 year to 1 day without lowering your price.

[Echoes in the Attic]

As long as the add-ons keep being things i don't care about, I'll be cool. haha

All I really want is for Bitwig to have some kind of functionality like Ableton's M4L Capture Device to instantly recall global values (and maybe on a device level as well). And be able to bounce to sampled instruments and drum pads (velocity, key range, rr etc.)

[wilkins_micawber]

The Bitwig team could have been more transparent about their reasons for adding paid addons, but I find their statement pretty clear in suggesting they need more money and have decided against increasing the price of the upgrade plan:

" Highly specialized features, like devices or additional content such as presets and sound libraries, will occasionally be developed as add-ons. This way, we can keep the upgrade plan affordable while giving you the choice to purchase specific add-on features that enhance your workflow."

"We can" implies they could not keep the upgrade price the same without adding additional revenue streams.

https://www.bitwig.com/support/shop_lic ... e-plan-54/

[don_looney]

So, prove it ... next time you buy an update, request Bitwig to reduce your effective period from 1 year to 1 day without lowering your price.

Why should I ?

Have a nice weekend everybody and make some music!

[pdxindy]

All I really want is for Bitwig to have some kind of functionality like Ableton's M4L Capture Device to instantly recall global values (and maybe on a device level as well).

What is that exactly?

[Echoes in the Attic]

All I really want is for Bitwig to have some kind of functionality like Ableton's M4L Capture Device to instantly recall global values (and maybe on a device level as well).

What is that exactly?

It's a device you can put anywhere that stores and recalls global snapshots of whatever devices you want (you can optionally include devices, track levels, send levels etc.). Kind of like Maschine's snapshot functionality. I don't think it should be a device in Bitwig, that's just how they had to do it with Max for Live. It should be part of the program, like with Maschine. Maybe I should have compared it to Maschine instead.

[Hink]

Ultimately, I believe Bitwig will do the right thing, and they just made a stupid mistake here. Poor communication, not honoring existing agreements and expectations.

"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" - Hanlon's razor

They aren't bad, just didn't think this one through well at all.

I still have hope for that. I think the people working at Bitwig are good people, and they will soon do a course correction to resolve this.

paywig will do nothing
i hate those fanboys
so many videos on youtube and still ignored
f**k paywig i will drive to berlin and piss on their windows

The same as somebody pissed in your head, as it seems!

Registered here since 2 days and sending >80 posts full with aggressive non-sense!

I have been watching thanx to reports from many members

[Phil B]

So, prove it ... next time you buy an update, request Bitwig to reduce your effective period from 1 year to 1 day without lowering your price.

Why should I ?

To prove it. But, too late, you just dis-proved it

[Phil B]

All I really want is for Bitwig to have some kind of functionality like Ableton's M4L Capture Device to instantly recall global values (and maybe on a device level as well).

What is that exactly?

It's a device you can put anywhere that stores and recalls global snapshots of whatever devices you want (you can optionally include devices, track levels, send levels etc.). Kind of like Maschine's snapshot functionality. I don't think it should be a device in Bitwig, that's just how they had to do it with Max for Live. It should be part of the program, like with Maschine. Maybe I should have compared it to Maschine instead.

Sounds like a great idea for a $100 add-on requiring the latest version of Bitwig!

[Nemirov]

"We can" implies they could not keep the upgrade price the same without adding additional revenue streams.

This is not the reason you can change your agreement for current customers. Current users with active upgrade plan must not be touched by this. For new customers from some date they could make new rules. But they cant stole from what was payed for.

[don_looney]

I am pretty sure Bitwig has some serious economical problems. I mean, having around 30 employees as fix costs and generating between 100-200k profit is just to near at the black zero and a small little incident would push Bitwig into red numbers. What I wonder about is, when they employ 30 people, there should be at least 75% developers in such a small company. For that amount, the SW outcome is just too less. Either they failed in optimizing employee structure and have bloated administration or they have a suboptimal development process. But they should rather work on their efficiency and increase customer base by listen more to their customer feature requests and offering more value, instead of pissing on the small up-until-yesterday-loyal customer base.

I think the software outcome is really impressive. Which DAW gives you more updates in the same time frame?
It is funny that people argue about efficiency when 4 devs created Bitwig from zero to version 1. And that is not something I believe they did, they themselves spoke about that in a radio interview in Germany back in the days. 75% developer makes no sense at all in a business like that.
They made round about 1 million last year, take 50% off (tax etc.) and then divide it by 20. They were 20 people in 2019 some of them not even full time. That's 25k€ for everybody if you would split it equally. Just an easy calculation. Everybody speaking of greed ->
Just check bundesanzeiger.de

Take a step back and look what they have already achieved! For my part I am really happy with Bitwig and I will continue to support them, like I did in the past.
And please stop this hate culture, it is not healthy at all and will change nothing into something better.

Yes, when 4 devs created the initial DAW once, they surely were efficient. But now they are around 30 according to their self-presentation. And for a 30 people-company, the outcome is too low IMO. I see it at some points similar as you: they are not greedy, they just dont get managed their finances. Not sure how much turnover they make, but if it would be just 1 million, this wouldn't feed the people. Avergae wage in DE is ~50k, but without employers additional royalties and costs and we are not talking about average, but emplyoess with mostly academic backgrounds.

I am not primarily interested in what they offer per timeframe, but per money. So which DAW offers more for the money? We can easily list Logic, Reaper, Ableton, FL studio here. The price/value ratio for new features is much much higher..

Of course you can argue that I have this in my hand by just buying an upgrade plan, e.g. each 2 years. But then it's nevertheless annyoing, that I have timeslots, where I don't have the latest and the greatest and furthermore it's annoying to buy an upgrade plan with the knowledge in mind, that you will not get all of the fancy stuff in the future, but going to be charged extra, if you want it.

It was one million in 2021 (round about). It is a GmbH you can check it at bundesanzeiger.de
And my calculation was 25k€ after tax.
I don't think the majority of people in Germany gets 50k€ after tax.

Other DAW's don't release so many updates in between. Bitwig could also do this. They could bundle 4.1 to 4.4 and sell it as 4.5 and charge 199€. But the updates would be less frequent and I think most people would not like that all.

[pdxindy]

All I really want is for Bitwig to have some kind of functionality like Ableton's M4L Capture Device to instantly recall global values (and maybe on a device level as well).

What is that exactly?

It's a device you can put anywhere that stores and recalls global snapshots of whatever devices you want (you can optionally include devices, track levels, send levels etc.). Kind of like Maschine's snapshot functionality. I don't think it should be a device in Bitwig, that's just how they had to do it with Max for Live. It should be part of the program, like with Maschine. Maybe I should have compared it to Maschine instead.

Yeah, seems better suited to a project wide snapshot function...

I can already make snapshots in Bitwig for a device chain... but obviously not outside it

[flori89]

This is a curios case for me, I don't own Bitwig or the update plan, but I'm always interested in:
- What can companies legally get away with
- What can they get away with business wise

The first one is especially interesting in the software world, since you usually just buy a license and don't actually own something. But German law is famously strict when it comes to "unlauterer Wettbewerb" and if you are interested you can read the full text here:
https://dejure.org/gesetze/UWG

Of course the law gibberish doesn't help us layman much, but there most laws are usually available as interpretation of what they mean:

A commercial practice shall be regarded as misleading if it contains false statements and is therefore untrue or if, in any way, including all the circumstances of its presentation, even with factually accurate statements, it deceives or is likely to deceive the average consumer in relation to one or more of the matters listed below and, in any event, causes him actually or probably to take a transactional decision which he would not otherwise have taken.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

This is quite interesting, because there is a case to be made that someone might not have paid the upgrade fee if he was aware that it doesn't include "all software updates" but instead just the "updates to Bitwig Studio". And seemingly Bitwig realized the same thing, otherwise they wouldn't have changed the wording.

But what if they didn't do this on purpose you ask? Well there comes the "strict" part of German law, even if you were just negligent this might apply because of your "entrepreneurial diligence".

Of course the outcome of such a ruling is uncertain, though German judges are notorious to rule in favor of consumers (considering you are a consumer in this case and NOT a company, because if you are legally a company, that changes things slightly).

So based on what I read about this, without being a lawyer, I'm going to say Bitwig isn't completely legally safe here, quite the opposite. That is actually the surprising part for me, so in the midst of this drama I had the opportunity to learn something.

[apoclypse]

The Bitwig team could have been more transparent about their reasons for adding paid addons, but I find their statement pretty clear in suggesting they need more money and have decided against increasing the price of the upgrade plan:

" Highly specialized features, like devices or additional content such as presets and sound libraries, will occasionally be developed as add-ons. This way, we can keep the upgrade plan affordable while giving you the choice to purchase specific add-on features that enhance your workflow."

"We can" implies they could not keep the upgrade price the same without adding additional revenue streams.

https://www.bitwig.com/support/shop_lic ... e-plan-54/

There are so many ways to do this though. Selling sound packs and presets is the pretty much the standard way of making extra revenue and considering how complex Bitwig can get with devices this imo would have been the way to go. The built-in presets and sounds are just okay but being able to buy artist specific sound packs or presets would have been a nice revenue stream. Then they could have charged for a version of Bitwig with all those included and it would be fine imo. However the add-on devices is another matter. Those are core to the software and they require specific Bitwig versions to work. What does that mean for the future when new add-ons are released and you are not on the latest version of Bitwig?

They just made of mess of things imo when they could have just sold sound packs, presets etc to get similar revenue. I would have bought some if they were good enough. Like I'm sure people would like a Grid preset pack that modeled classic synths or drum machine pack for acoustic drums (the current ones in the library don't sound great imo). Interesting ones that did cool things etc. The included content in Bitwig in general is pretty sparse compared to say Ableton or Logic. So many ways to build revenue that they aren't doing and they don't even have to build those themselves. So many companies out there specialize in making sounds and presets. NI's whole revenue stream right now is selling sound packs the majority of which they don't even make themselves. Ableton's built their library over years by selling soundpacks. That's just easy picking in-terms of revenue.

[machinesworking]

The Bitwig team could have been more transparent about their reasons for adding paid addons, but I find their statement pretty clear in suggesting they need more money and have decided against increasing the price of the upgrade plan:

" Highly specialized features, like devices or additional content such as presets and sound libraries, will occasionally be developed as add-ons. This way, we can keep the upgrade plan affordable while giving you the choice to purchase specific add-on features that enhance your workflow."

"We can" implies they could not keep the upgrade price the same without adding additional revenue streams.

https://www.bitwig.com/support/shop_lic ... e-plan-54/

This is why they're completely tone deaf, because changing their plan mid stream to keep it "affordable" is a joke. Their plan has never been anywhere near the cheapest, but people paid it, because they like the program and at least it's not a subscription.

This is as convoluted and messed up of an upgrade system as IK and iZotope. You buy and add on, then two years later when the add on is updated (which will happen), there's not a single guarantee that you won't have to pay the regular plan and the upgrade price, in fact it's inevitable this is how it will work.

They literally changed the wording on their site to fit their new plan, mid stream on people, they uprooted their business model, and broke their word, changed it to hide their shame, and still people defend it. I don't like deceptive moves, I don't like bait and switch. I'm completely OK with any company having to raise prices, paying more for a boutique plug in or DAW, but I'm not OK with being lied to. They had a plan where every device they made they packaged into a yearly fee, while people still have that plan active, they changed it without a bit of concern for how that would affect people, that anyone is defending that is absurd to me. "but the wording''...

I'm glad I hadn't settled 100% on Bitwig, I feel for those of you that did, the kowtowing must be rough.