Zebra 3 and Zebra Legacy

[ghostwhistler]

Totally different sound and far more abilities with Zebra. It's like should I get a £5000 telescope if I already have a £5000 DSLR camera.

It sounds like you think Zebra eclipses bazille so having both is then a bit redundant?

They sound very different compared to each other. And the workflow is very different. So no, in my opinion there's little overlap and you should get both

I have Bazille already. But I think I'd rather one or the other and, from my noodlings thus far, Zebra is probably more useful for me so I might sell it. BZ is great and I've made a ton of sounds but it is a bit hard work.

Mind you, so's Zebra I guess - oscillator wave design is pretty in depth

[JonHolstein]

Typically with music software, people will get discounts for the next generation, in the form of upgrade pricing or crossgrade pricing, sometimes vendors will even give away the update for free.

Depending on when one buy a software, one might miss out on huge discounts. Even around the holidays, it isn’t uncommon for early discounts that are larger than later ones, or the opposite.
But sales can occur anytime of the year, and so can price drops.

(Almost) Every person buying music software will have experiences of them buying, only to see a better price just a little later or to discover they just missed a sale or a better sale offer, or have bought a product very close to the release of the next iteration, and regretting the purchase, either because they did not get a product discount at all, or the discount + the upgrade discount is smaller than the intro price discount of the next iteration for new buyers.

In this case, life isn’t fair, not even close to.

Vendors can set-up different mechanisms to make it more fair, but few have. Some give yearly vouchers. Some will calculate points or price discounts, based on purchase price and store those in one’s account.



What U-he has done with Zebra legacy does not make any sense.
There is no clear information on the site that there will not be an upgrade path to Zebra 3 for people buying at the Zebra legacy price.
No one, in their right mind can argue that people have to find it out for themselves, by reading old news items or discussions on forums.
The first I heard of the Zebra legacy package was seeing the offer. Most people that will be exposed to this offer that do not own Zebra 2, will not have followed the news leading up to the release. I haven’t bought it, since it is black-Friday sale season and it isn’t a sale price, so it will not increase immediately after the black Friday period thus it wasn’t an extremely time limited offer.


If people that have bought Zebra 2 in the past will get a discount on Zebra 3, there is no valid argument saying that the synth is new from the grounds up, so it will not really be a follow up to Zebra 2.
Then no one should get the upgrade path.
Also if that is the argument, then they should not name it Zebra 3. But even with a name change, many would expect that owning a predecessor will get them a crossgrade option.


This was a really poorly made decision by U-he.


U-he is looking for a way to bring in more money.
Even if a large part of it will go towards keeping Zebra 2 up to date, and hosting it, there will probably be margins that will go towards other investments. But even if everything they got from this move, only went toward Zebra 2 support, it can’t be considered fair practice, since previous owners of Zebra 2 will benefit from that as well, so then everyone has contributed, and thus it makes no sense that newer buyers would be left off the upgrade path.
There simply is no logic to shutting buyers of Zebra 2 legacy out of the upgrade path, since they also contributes.
And the only influx of money comes from buyers of Zebra 2 legacy, previous of owners do not continue to contribute.


There is no logic behind this move.
If the margin is lower per sale with this price, they will still sell more licenses, so that will balance some of that out. Setting too high of a price might have meant that they would not have been able to sell that many licenses at all it is still an old synth, even if it sounds good.

If we were to pretend that there was some kind of logic, that made it so, that Zebra legacy buyers buying at 99 should be left out of the upgrade path, that people who have purchased the software many years ago, are still on, well then the least thing they could have done, was to offer two prices, clearly stating that the higher price will mean that the combined price of Zebra legacy and Zebra 3, will be lower than the lower price of Zebra legacy without the upgrade path, and then paying full price for zebra 3. That way it would have been clear that there wasn’t an upgrade path. It also would have meant that there would have probably been a lot of those looking at the offer that would decide to pay the higher price, for the future discount of Zebra 3, thus maximizing the sales, without leaving some buyers with a bad taste in their mouth, when they later find out that they will not get a upgrade price that other have gotten. Others would either decide that Zebra 2 is all that they need, or would expect their budget to have grown by the time Zebra 3 is released, so paying less now and more later, would end up being less of their overall budget over the years.



For me, this move makes me not want to buy zebra legacy. I saw some demos and had plans to buy it some time early next year.

[mabian]

Thanks for your opinion. My opinion is that you're just trolling.

[WatchTheGuitar]

I don't understand second guessing their changes of business model. Buy or do not, there is... no!... bye!

[dayjob]

For me, this move makes me not want to buy zebra legacy.

Then don’t buy it. No one cares.

[JonHolstein]

For me, this move makes me not want to buy zebra legacy.

Then don’t buy it. No one cares.

U-he should care, so that they don't turn potential customers off.
They need to bring in potential customers not turn them away.
The only reason that existing customers gets discounts, is because of the influx of money from new customers, make up the needed margin, or carry the company to the point where the sales have covered the R&D, to the extent that they could sell the software at that lower price that upgrades are sold for.

Rude fanboys in forums, is another turn off for potential customers.
U-he should care about that part of their image as well.
If their moves make their fanboys owning their products feel entitled, so that they become rude towards potential customers, that is a bad move as well.

[Urs]

There is no logic behind this move.

Strangely, no-one has objected to this concept when we sent newsletter to our customers, posted it on social media and on forums. We have reached tens of thousands of people in over half a year of communicating this concept.

The logic is very simple: By not offering an upgrade path we keep the resale value of a "full priced" Zebra license high. We do not devalue the investment of our loyal customers.

It's a principle that goes against marketing practices that value fast money over sustainability. Our greatest capital is our user base.

[FapFilter]

you also already had 18 years time to purchase Zebra 2... or 11 since you signed in to KVR Audio...
plenty of time to decide wether you really want it, or not.

so my tip, if you're still feeling shafted: wait for Z3, it hopefully shouldn't take that much longer (relatively speaking ) - fingers crossed...
and i don't think that it will cost you more than the €200 it used to cost for current Z2 owners, so no loss at all (or €290+ for the HZ buyers)

[JonHolstein]

There is no logic behind this move.

Strangely, no-one has objected to this concept when we sent newsletter to our customers, posted it on social media and on forums. We have reached tens of thousands of people.

The logic is very simple: By not offering an upgrade path we keep the resale value of a "real" Zebra license high. We do not devalue the investment of our loyal customers.

It's a principle that goes against marketing practices that value fast money over sustainability. Our greatest capital is our user base.

How many readers have actually had? Sending out newsletters is not the same thing as people having read them.
How many of those who read has been existing customers that don't care that newer customers will be left off, thus not impacting themselves negatively?


At least in the past you have had sales. Every time someone is able to pick up something at sale, it can come off as slightly unfair to those who purchased before or after. But people have come to expect this, so there is nothing strange with it, and you will not hear a lot of complaints about it. there is a certain other company that has dropped the prices of their products massively, that has gotten a lot of criticism for that, and most of the negative focus.


You say that you keep the resale value, but how many transactions or old licenses with an upgrade path vs new licenses without has been sold in the past couple of days, and what does the statistics say about the price level for resales?


You have posted similar posts to this before in this thread, so this is not the first time you have heard criticism. Just because you perhaps did not see any people commenting on it, when you first released your plan, through newsletters, mostly to existing customers, but also re-posted in threads, mostly reaching engaged fans, does not mean that the strategy is brilliant.
When you get feedback now, you could be humble about it.
It is not until now that you are actually reaching potential and new customers with this information. And you will sell licenses to people that are not aware of this limitation, that will not feel great about it, when they find out that others get a huge discount that they do not get, that drama will come when you release Zebra 3, and not know, since it isn't common knowledge among your new customers that this is the case. Don't you want your new customers to become part of you loyal user base?
Like I said, sell two different products, then you can solve the issue, by informing customers, also getting customers to pay a bit more if they know that it will get them on an upgrade path. That way you don't have to increase the lowest price or add an upgrade path that you had no planned to add for people purchasing at that price.

Perhaps you made a mistake, thought that you had reached enough potential customers that would engage if they did not think this strategy was a good idea, but then be humble about it. Criticism that comes up now, is more valid than not hearing anything in the past. People criticizing you today, are not to be blamed for not being reached by your newsletters of the past. And customers that will only find out in the future, aren't either.

[zvenx]

So I think up to November 14th 'real' Zebra 2 cost 199 Euros.
If u-he had a limited time option to allow you to pay the extra 100 Euros to get your Legacy license turned into a real zebra license would you take it?

Since I think the gist of your and the other person's argument is you didn't know at the time of your Zebra Legacy purchase.
rsp

[JonHolstein]

So I think up to November 14th 'real' Zebra 2 cost 199 Euros.
If u-he had a limited time option to allow you to pay the extra 100 Euros to get your Legacy license turned into a real zebra license would you take it?

Since I think the gist of your and the other person's argument is you didn't know at the time of your Zebra Legacy purchase.
rsp

I have not purchased Zebra legacy. I was thinking about it, but planned to wait until some time early next year since it isn't part of the black friday sale season, and I was lucky to find out about the limitation before purchase. Had I purchased and found out now or when zebra 3 is released that the legacy did not come with an upgrade path, but other owners of Zebra 2 would be on, I would have been very disappointed. Getting an offer to change a "legacy" license to a real for 100, after finding this out, I would feel offended.
U-he could have made this very clear on their page, possibly offering two license types so that people would be able to make an informed decision, then it would have been a different matter.

I would guess that the vast majority of buyers of this offer, will not be people that held off buying Zebra 2 earlier because they had heard about Zebra legacy and the conditions of it, but rather people that hear about Zebra legacy now, and think it seems like a good deal. That is how it was for me, just that I did not purchase, before stumbling over this thread.
I'm not saying that 99 should include the upgrade path from now on. I'm saying U-he should make it very clear that it doesn't, especially since other owners of Zebra will be on that upgrade path. And I think before purchase is the time that people should find this out. And I would argue that offering two types of licenses is the best way to make it clear, and then people have the option of buying Zebra 2 still, to enjoy while waiting for Zebra 3.

If they weren't looking for the money of people purchasing zebra legacy, they could have offered it as a free plugin license, that would possibly stop functioning upon the release of Zebra 3.
U-he clearly is looking for that money for some reason, to keep maintaining Zebra 2, or to help fund finishing Zebra 3. Buyers of Zebra legacy are contributing to U-he somehow.

[zvenx]

I would bet the vast majority of people buying legacy are either:
1) people who have heard about zebra and couldn't afford it or justify the expense of it.
or
2) people who found out about in on social media and heard/thought that 99 Euros is a no brainer.


I am an unapologetic u-he fan boy and for sure think some people would know about the conditions and still try to argue that they should get a discount (you said you haven't bought zebra legacy (which btw most likely will never ever be cheaper ever) so this wouldn't apply to you).

But I don't think putting a disclaimer (not two options) that there will be no upgrade path to zebra 3 if or when it is released would hurt.

But I argue again, the name includes the word Legacy. That should have triggered the need to at least and inquire why is it called Legacy.
rsp

[audiojunkie]

Typically with music software, people will get discounts for the next generation, in the form of upgrade pricing or crossgrade pricing, sometimes vendors will even give away the update for free.

Depending on when one buy a software, one might miss out on huge discounts. Even around the holidays, it isn’t uncommon for early discounts that are larger than later ones, or the opposite.
But sales can occur anytime of the year, and so can price drops.

(Almost) Every person buying music software will have experiences of them buying, only to see a better price just a little later or to discover they just missed a sale or a better sale offer, or have bought a product very close to the release of the next iteration, and regretting the purchase, either because they did not get a product discount at all, or the discount + the upgrade discount is smaller than the intro price discount of the next iteration for new buyers.

In this case, life isn’t fair, not even close to.

Vendors can set-up different mechanisms to make it more fair, but few have. Some give yearly vouchers. Some will calculate points or price discounts, based on purchase price and store those in one’s account.



What U-he has done with Zebra legacy does not make any sense.
There is no clear information on the site that there will not be an upgrade path to Zebra 3 for people buying at the Zebra legacy price.
No one, in their right mind can argue that people have to find it out for themselves, by reading old news items or discussions on forums.
The first I heard of the Zebra legacy package was seeing the offer. Most people that will be exposed to this offer that do not own Zebra 2, will not have followed the news leading up to the release. I haven’t bought it, since it is black-Friday sale season and it isn’t a sale price, so it will not increase immediately after the black Friday period thus it wasn’t an extremely time limited offer.


If people that have bought Zebra 2 in the past will get a discount on Zebra 3, there is no valid argument saying that the synth is new from the grounds up, so it will not really be a follow up to Zebra 2.
Then no one should get the upgrade path.
Also if that is the argument, then they should not name it Zebra 3. But even with a name change, many would expect that owning a predecessor will get them a crossgrade option.


This was a really poorly made decision by U-he.


U-he is looking for a way to bring in more money.
Even if a large part of it will go towards keeping Zebra 2 up to date, and hosting it, there will probably be margins that will go towards other investments. But even if everything they got from this move, only went toward Zebra 2 support, it can’t be considered fair practice, since previous owners of Zebra 2 will benefit from that as well, so then everyone has contributed, and thus it makes no sense that newer buyers would be left off the upgrade path.
There simply is no logic to shutting buyers of Zebra 2 legacy out of the upgrade path, since they also contributes.
And the only influx of money comes from buyers of Zebra 2 legacy, previous of owners do not continue to contribute.


There is no logic behind this move.
If the margin is lower per sale with this price, they will still sell more licenses, so that will balance some of that out. Setting too high of a price might have meant that they would not have been able to sell that many licenses at all it is still an old synth, even if it sounds good.

If we were to pretend that there was some kind of logic, that made it so, that Zebra legacy buyers buying at 99 should be left out of the upgrade path, that people who have purchased the software many years ago, are still on, well then the least thing they could have done, was to offer two prices, clearly stating that the higher price will mean that the combined price of Zebra legacy and Zebra 3, will be lower than the lower price of Zebra legacy without the upgrade path, and then paying full price for zebra 3. That way it would have been clear that there wasn’t an upgrade path. It also would have meant that there would have probably been a lot of those looking at the offer that would decide to pay the higher price, for the future discount of Zebra 3, thus maximizing the sales, without leaving some buyers with a bad taste in their mouth, when they later find out that they will not get a upgrade price that other have gotten. Others would either decide that Zebra 2 is all that they need, or would expect their budget to have grown by the time Zebra 3 is released, so paying less now and more later, would end up being less of their overall budget over the years.



For me, this move makes me not want to buy zebra legacy. I saw some demos and had plans to buy it some time early next year.

There is an American English saying that goes...

“Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.”

Poor Urs. Even with the best of business moves, there’s always “that one guy” that will complain and find fault. In this case, there are a couple.

[audiojunkie]

For me, this move makes me not want to buy zebra legacy.

Then don’t buy it. No one cares.

U-he should care, so that they don't turn potential customers off.
They need to bring in potential customers not turn them away.
The only reason that existing customers gets discounts, is because of the influx of money from new customers, make up the needed margin, or carry the company to the point where the sales have covered the R&D, to the extent that they could sell the software at that lower price that upgrades are sold for.

Rude fanboys in forums, is another turn off for potential customers.
U-he should care about that part of their image as well.
If their moves make their fanboys owning their products feel entitled, so that they become rude towards potential customers, that is a bad move as well.

Sometimes certain customers are not worth having.

There was a kid who always hung around and pestered me. One day, he asked me to loan him $10, which I did. From that day on, he went out of his way to avoid me for fear that I would ask for my money.

Best $10 I ever spent!

[audiojunkie]

So I think up to November 14th 'real' Zebra 2 cost 199 Euros.
If u-he had a limited time option to allow you to pay the extra 100 Euros to get your Legacy license turned into a real zebra license would you take it?

Since I think the gist of your and the other person's argument is you didn't know at the time of your Zebra Legacy purchase.
rsp

I have not purchased Zebra legacy. I was thinking about it, but planned to wait until some time early next year since it isn't part of the black friday sale season, and I was lucky to find out about the limitation before purchase. Had I purchased and found out now or when zebra 3 is released that the legacy did not come with an upgrade path, but other owners of Zebra 2 would be on, I would have been very disappointed. Getting an offer to change a "legacy" license to a real for 100, after finding this out, I would feel offended.
U-he could have made this very clear on their page, possibly offering two license types so that people would be able to make an informed decision, then it would have been a different matter.

I would guess that the vast majority of buyers of this offer, will not be people that held off buying Zebra 2 earlier because they had heard about Zebra legacy and the conditions of it, but rather people that hear about Zebra legacy now, and think it seems like a good deal. That is how it was for me, just that I did not purchase, before stumbling over this thread.
I'm not saying that 99 should include the upgrade path from now on. I'm saying U-he should make it very clear that it doesn't, especially since other owners of Zebra will be on that upgrade path. And I think before purchase is the time that people should find this out. And I would argue that offering two types of licenses is the best way to make it clear, and then people have the option of buying Zebra 2 still, to enjoy while waiting for Zebra 3.

If they weren't looking for the money of people purchasing zebra legacy, they could have offered it as a free plugin license, that would possibly stop functioning upon the release of Zebra 3.
U-he clearly is looking for that money for some reason, to keep maintaining Zebra 2, or to help fund finishing Zebra 3. Buyers of Zebra legacy are contributing to U-he somehow.

Hey, could one of us loan you $10?