Waves abandon perpetual licenses and WUP

[Aleksey Vaneev]

The sales obviously collapsed and the only way to keep good margins is to turn to subscriptions. This is what money system forces to do. The CEOs may be in tears abandoning perpetual licenses at the same time. So, blame capitalism and S-curve of technical or any other progress.

[revvy]

Da!

[El°HYM]

The sales obviously collapsed and the only way to keep good margins is to turn to subscriptions. This is what money system forces to do. The CEOs may be in tears abandoning perpetual licenses at the same time. So, blame capitalism and S-curve of technical or any other progress.

People might not be ready for this truth.

[Leo1999]

The sales obviously collapsed and the only way to keep good margins is to turn to subscriptions. This is what money system forces to do. The CEOs may be in tears abandoning perpetual licenses at the same time. So, blame capitalism and S-curve of technical or any other progress.

I blame a very big country for less money in many a man's purses. Prices got higher and higher the last 12 months, so no money left for Waves subscription.
You are talking disrespectfully about capitalism and I think I know the reason why.

[martinjuenke]

The whole "Waves goes subscription only" drama has one true fact:
Waves will not use resellers any more to sell their perpetual licenses.
That's all.
The rest is noise.

lmao

I am bloody proven wrong.
Still learning the f#cking mechanics of the audio software business.

[plexuss]

The sales obviously collapsed and the only way to keep good margins is to turn to subscriptions. This is what money system forces to do. The CEOs may be in tears abandoning perpetual licenses at the same time. So, blame capitalism and S-curve of technical or any other progress.

Definitely could be the case. dropping perpetual licenses also eliminates a chunck of business cost in terms of people to maintain that part of the business. Thinking of that, it may be a sign of the magnitude of the revenue collapse because if they could offer both licenses and subs they probably would. They may have backed themselves into the corner with only once choice to remain viables: subscription only. I hope they estimated accurately and accounted for the damage to their business from the fall out, otherwise...

[martinjuenke]

I’ve gone from being pissed off to being excited about deleting all my Waves plug-ins. Helps me simplify, which is my goal now. What a horrible company.

My reaction as well

[plexuss]

The whole "Waves goes subscription only" drama has one true fact:
Waves will not use resellers any more to sell their perpetual licenses.
That's all.
The rest is noise.

lmao

I am bloody proven wrong.
Still learning the f#cking mechanics of the audio software business.

We knew you were wrong. We were just being nice.

[martinjuenke]

Waves probably came to the conclusion that their existing business model is not working, and we who are complaining are no longer part of their core business. They probably made the calculation that although they will lose a big chunk of paying customers now, they will be compensated by subscribers who are dazzled by the prospect of having all the world famous Waves plugs within reach. Another benefit for Waves will obviously be that from now on they can pretty much release whatever they want and it will just merge into the economical calculations of the Waves-Borg-Collective of plugs. A failed release won't hurt as much because of the new model.

Which company will be the next?
Soundwide (NI)?
Asking to prepare...

[martinjuenke]

I created this google doc to keep track of Waves product alternative. Feel free to contribute and share...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Very helpfull

[Aleksey Vaneev]

You are talking disrespectfully about capitalism and I think I know the reason why.

If you think deeper, capitalism is a system where only time-to-market advantage and market channel advantage matter. Efforts matter much less. So, when economy collapses you get less for more because market channel controllers can do that not allowing those with better effort to strive. In theory many economical systems are great, but in details most of them are just scam for the benefit of few. Don't forget about S-curves. There are local S-curves, and there are global S-curves. The world hit a ceiling.

[MogwaiBoy]

Gave up on Waves awhile back - so this only ensures I will never go back to Waves, ever.

[Hidenori]

I can't afford to pay the subscription for over hundred "unused" plugins. Because I want to use only 2 or 3 plugins of them.

[noiseboyuk]

FWIW...

I liked Waves. While Waves has had its detractors here for ages - I can well understand the acrimony after dropping the DSP Pro Tools versions - I found little to complain about. In fact, quite a lot of be enthusiastic about. New plugins like Clarity VX are superb, and in best in class. Even Waves Central - once the bane of my existence - they'd finally got working smoothly, keeping my old v9 working safe and sound and effortlessly managing all the chores.

When buying an effect, you really only want 2 things. 1 - it needs to work and 2 - it needs to carry on working, so you're not left high and dry when OSs roll around. The WUP was too expensive, but they offered something better - deeply discounted upgrades in sales. In the last 24 months I'd updated both sets of plugins that I have for much less than the cost of the WUP, and got new plugins effectively for free. Most I didn't care about, but in the last upgrade (to Horizon) I discovered Soundshifter, an absolute gem of a plugin. I was positively feeling warm and fuzzy towards them.

Until yesterday.

I could be wrong, but I think what Waves have done is without precedent. Even Adobe gave people warning IIRC. Avid rowed back on their own plans to force people to turn to subscription - in fact they begun doing deals on getting past users up to date with their perpetual licenses.

What Waves have done is irretrievably broken the contract between a developer and users. Not just broken, obliterated. I think there's a reasonable chance that they will have to row back on this, faced with a tsunami of justifiable anger. The least that they should offer is the WUP for permanent licenses ongoing (at no worse conditions than it was), so users can keep using them when they, say, move to Silicon. They can lure people to subs all they like - "look how much more you get for less" - but still allow the option. But even if, chastened, they allow this in future, the trust will have gone. The damage to the brand is incalculable.

Maybe it will work out for them long term. There are new users every day. There will be promos for their subs, extra months free etc, and people who haven't been scarred will jump. I'm far from certain it will be economically sound for them, with a cost of living crisis, reducing monthly outgoings is one of the first things to go, as the streaming services will tell you.

As someone else said, Waves is not Adobe or even Avid. They are inessential. Maybe they are about to find out just how inessential.

[Caine123]

guys i didnt read through everything and just saw this now, didnt know this before, so does it mean you can still use the plugins you got activated but if you want to renew/update them you NEED TO subscribe?

p.s.
their ubercheap selling marketing always smelled bad, i guess they wanted that people own a lot of their stuff and now give them this , plugin alliance might be next...