Roland Cloud

[SLiC]

That’s interesting - does Roland Cloud include Melodics (on line lessons)?
I’m a Roland cloud subscriber but they don’t get any revenue from it…just lifetime keys, that could be many users I guess. Paid users also seems to include anyone who bought anything?

[beely]

I’m a Roland cloud subscriber but they don’t get any revenue from it…

Just generally, if you're not paying monthly, then you're not on a subscription. You simply have a Roland Cloud account (which your keys are registered to). You're an account holder, rather than a subscriber.

A subscriber is an account holder who is also on a paid subscription plan.

I'm also a Roland Cloud account holder, but I'm not (currently) a subscriber.

So figures for subscribers would most likely be active paying subscribers, not account holders who've never subscribed, or account holders with lapsed, inactive subscriptions.

Edit: And looking at the PDF's, they actually mention these numbers:
.

SCR-20240918-bprs.png

.
So, 1.5M Roland Cloud "users" (Roland Cloud active account holders), versus ~30K on a paying subscription - so about 2% of Roland Cloud accounts are on an active subscription.

[IvyBirds]

There are about 30,000 Roland Cloud subscribers, currently.
Roland Cloud seems to be growing by 1000 to 1500 subscribers per quarter in recent years, which is around maybe 15 new subscribers per day, net.

I wonder how many of them are the $3 a month plan? Or the $10 plan? Or the $20 plan

That would be $90,000 a month on the low end or $600,000 on the high

But probably $300,00-$400,000

Be generous and call it $400,000 x 12 is 4.8 million. That's not really a lot of money when you factor in the overhead of everything

If there is any profit at all it's a drop in the bucket for a large corporation like Roland. My guess is they lose money

The unknown would be how the cloud benefits Roland Hardware sales. Based on my experiences with the cloud I am have no interest to buy any Roland Hardware, even less than zero if it's in anyway tied to the cloud

I got my first Roland gear in 1988, a D50. I have owned a few dozen different Roland Hardware pieces over the years

[BBFG#]

I wonder how many of them are the same member signing up under another account in trying to get the system to work in those constant manager problem times...

[N 4 LIFE]

I find it highly informative...

continue discussing Roland when they release something new. Or shall we again start on the login hassles, millions of internet-reroutings in the RCM. Lifetime keys needing to validate every 30 days. Updates without release-notes. Killing off plugins (Soundcanvas) but letting ppl buy it, up to the day it was killed and was this considered some sort of service. Instead of releasing it for free, coz there will be no updates for it and it is as is.

Hows that?

I bought sound canvas from guitar center for 69 bucks. it worked for a couple months. then Roland Cloud disabled it and there was no customer support that was two years ago. They gave away concerto and then they took it away. wtf.
u you just be a cool company? I guess not.
There's a computer repair guy on youtube named Louis Rossman who is a specialist in this kind of B.S. he been through everything with corporations and companies and has great insights. Check him out if you don't know about him already.

[DashOfLime]

Hey Septic, happy to pass this criticism along for you.

Hello Jon

Perhaps you should pass on that almost every post here and on other sites is very critical of Roland Cloud, that the cloud 'experiment' has failed and that Roland's reputation in general is being damaged by trying to push on with this. Its adding insult to injury.

God damn you're stuck in a bubble. Failed experiment my ass. Y'all think the keyboard warriors on this site and a handful of others are the majority of users of Roland Cloud?

[DashOfLime]

As for release notes, from what I can tell we almost always include them on our webpage when we make an update. Is there somewhere else you'd like to see them as well? I would like to see them in RCM when the update option pops up.

Jon if you'd pass on to the powers that be...please update the SH-2 manual. It doesn't match whats in the plugin (like the Scatter stuff). Unless of course I missed an update at some point.

[SLiC]

Hey Septic, happy to pass this criticism along for you.

Hello Jon

Perhaps you should pass on that almost every post here and on other sites is very critical of Roland Cloud, that the cloud 'experiment' has failed and that Roland's reputation in general is being damaged by trying to push on with this. Its adding insult to injury.

God damn you're stuck in a bubble. Failed experiment my ass. Y'all think the keyboard warriors on this site and a handful of others are the majority of users of Roland Cloud?

For plugin virtual synths I would think KVR is the most representative site and the feedback here is very poor. The copy protection method is unpopular and unstable (I have been using cloud since it started, personal experience), many of the original plugins have bugs and have never been updated and there has been very little development of new synths for several years.

Many people have to use Roland Cloud - it’s where I get updates for my Roland Hardware etc, no issues with this…it’s the VST subscription only service I am referring to.

[Septic Underground]

God damn you're stuck in a bubble. Failed experiment my ass. Y'all think the keyboard warriors on this site and a handful of others are the majority of users of Roland Cloud?

well...

download (1).jpeg

[IvyBirds]

God damn you're stuck in a bubble. Failed experiment my ass. Y'all think the keyboard warriors on this site and a handful of others are the majority of users of Roland Cloud?

The issue is according to Roland's own publicly available information the Cloud Subscription is a total failure at just 30,000 subs many of them paying just zero dollars to $3 a month.

So the actual numbers indicate it's a failed experiment

Many of those "paid" subscribers also don't really want to be, what they want are to own Roland Software outright so they take advantage of "play for life" where they can get Roland Software titles for $99 USD and get a free subscription in the process one they don't really want. When I was a "paid subscriber" I didn't use or care about the majority of it. Sadly and this is the real indictment over the whole thing, I have better sounding Jupiter 8 and Juno plugins from other companies that use way less CPU and are not tied to a monthly phone home RCM scheme that causes issue after issue

Play for life along with the $3 a month plan allows Roland to pad the cloud subscription numbers

And what do they get for those paltry 30,000 subscribers? Because they have to sell monthly subscriptions they have built the entire ecosystem around a once a month phone home system which the market hates. That ecosystem called RCM continues to give to Roland a huge black eye

When according to Roland own numbers there are 2.8 million Roland Cloud "users" but only 30,600 subscribers that's an issue it means that 98.9% of all actual users of RCM software who are potential paying customers all of whom have gotten at least a free month of Roland Cloud Ultimate as from the very beginning you got a free month have experience Roland Cloud and said nope not going to subscribe that is most certainly a failed experiment

You don't need to be a keyboard warrior on KVR to understand that if the 2,800,000 users who have all had a free month of Roland Cloud 2,769,000 of them have passed would indicate to anyone who isn't in a bubble that it's a failed experiment rejected by the market

My guess is many of those 2.8 million users have multiple accounts to take advantage of multiple free months of the cloud which is also quite the indictment

[SLiC]

My guess is many of those 2.8 million users have multiple accounts to take advantage of multiple free months of the cloud which is also quite the indictment

Yes, if you could be bothered you could use any of the instant free email services and keep re-registering for free...

[Examigan]

God damn you're stuck in a bubble. Failed experiment my ass. Y'all think the keyboard warriors on this site and a handful of others are the majority of users of Roland Cloud?

Many of those "paid" subscribers also don't really want to be, what they want are to own Roland Software outright so they take advantage of "play for life" where they can get Roland Software titles for $99 USD and get a free subscription in the process one they don't really want.

It's too bad Roland can't run a decent sale that allows for something better than $99 for just one lifetime key (Play4Life price). I don't care about subscribing to get all the other stuff, since I just like certain plugins.

I've said this before; getting Arturia's V Collection 8 for $49 in December of last year was probably the best software deal ever (for me anyway).

[IvyBirds]

It's too bad Roland can't run a decent sale that allows for something better than $99 for just one lifetime key (Play4Life price). I don't care about subscribing to get all the other stuff, since I just like certain plugins.

I've said this before; getting Arturia's V Collection 8 for $49 in December of last year was probably the best software deal ever (for me anyway).

If Roland were smart they would drop the subscription service entirely and basically follow the Arturia and Korg model

They should make a "Roland Ultimate Collection" which has everything and sell it for $499 and put it on sale a few times a year like black Friday for $299.

That would contain everything

Then offer individual titles for $149 and sale prices of $99

Maybe have several Zenology packages for various prices

If they did that all of the angst would go away. This would do away with the phone home scheme. As all you would need is a serial number and a one time validation

They could also go years without new products and no one would care and then every 18-24 months come out with a new version with a few new things and people would be happy. At that point they could sell reduced priced upgrade packages just like Arturia and Korg do

They would never need to retire anything the way they did with Sound Canvas as things like Sound Canvas would be part of the old "Roland Ultimate Collection"

This would make everyone happy and would make them far more money than having a few tens of thousands of people subscribing to the cloud

If they absolutely want to have a subscription as well maybe just have a Zenology Subscription for $10 a month that is all you can eat. Just keep that separate from the main product

[N 4 LIFE]

that makes way too much sense

[Septic Underground]

yes, but unfortunately is RolandCloud sitting on the highest horse in plugin-history...