Reason sound doesn't sell is not true

[hibidy]

Since we've gone off here allow me to say that for me personally, it makes no sense. I don't want to re-buy plugins and there isn't anything about reason that is like "whoa, that's so much better than what I have"

My take? Reason is expensive, is a bit of a black hole financially and I'm not convinced I'd be any better off with it. I like being able to use the vst's I already paid money for

[V0RT3X]

Actually the problem is Reason and its add on products don't sell. Looking at their financial statements, Propellerheads lost 0.5 million dollars in 2011 and lost 2.2 million dollars in 2012.

How much longer can they can continue to operate while losing money? If things don't turn around, I suspect they will be acquired by one of the bigger players in 2-3 years.


https://www.solidinfo.se/foretag/propel ... 43/ekonomi

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Propellerhead Software AB

                    2012-12    2011-12   2010-12   2009-12
Net Income TKR     (14,511)    (3,450)     3,311     2,246 
Net Income USD  (2,212,928)  (526,125)   504,928   342,515

Open the above link in Chrome to translate the statement into your language of choice. I am looking at the Net Income (Årets resultat) line which is stated in TKR (thousands of SEK). I translated the numbers into USD at today's exchange rate. USD = TKR * 1000 * 0.1525.

(Using today's SEK to USD exchange rate is not technically correct but since the rate has been pretty stable it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this discussion.)

If the Props are losing money they should really think about upping the quality of their vanilla products in Reason or they will end up losing more money by not attracting new users.

For $450.00 you do get a lot but for that amount of money you should get a much more modern sounding set of tools. I mean compare the synthesizer sounds from Thor to something like Zebra and you'll know what i mean.

Having RE devices is nice but i do not know if it will take off considering their entire no resale policies.

[loungepanda]

Ernst (CEO at Props) recently said in an interview about RE as a format: "It's great technology and if I dare say so, in many important ways ahead of VST, AU and AAX."

But how can it be when it doesn't support SSE optimization? Am I missing something?

[murnau]

Ernst (CEO at Props) recently said in an interview about RE as a format: "It's great technology and if I dare say so, in many important ways ahead of VST, AU and AAX."

But how can it be when it doesn't support SSE optimization? Am I missing something?

no, it's because you can use RE only in Reason.. ..honestly this is so lame, maybe he think the people around are all idiots?

[LawrenceF]

Reason seems capable enough to me.

I've always had an aversion to buying into any closed system so I never even considered it. Even with RE's it's still a closed system so, I'd never buy it. Some hip-hop guys around here seem to like it. Not my cup 'o joe.

Having no interest in using it I spend very little time thinking about it, usually only when these threads pop up.

[user5394]

Some hip-hop guys around here seem to like it.

I like it too and i'm far away of being some kind of "hip-hop guy".

IMO, it's great. I don't need any other DAW. I've also sold Live and all my VST(i)s*.

*...not entirely, Image-Line stuff is still for sale.

[hibidy]

Reason seems capable enough to me.

I've always had an aversion to buying into any closed system so I never even considered it. Even with RE's it's still a closed system so, I'd never buy it. Some hip-hop guys around here seem to like it. Not my cup 'o joe.

Having no interest in using it I spend very little time thinking about it, usually only when these threads pop up.

I think you have it confused with dub turbo.

[EnochLight]

This entire thread is adorable.

[hibidy]

This entire thread is adorable.

I'd post a cat pic, but it would be so like me, I'll not.

[bmrzycki]

How much longer can they can continue to operate while losing money? If things don't turn around, I suspect they will be acquired by one of the bigger players in 2-3 years.

Be careful reading their demise into their financial analysis statement. For one thing there is no mention of their cash reserves.

There are also a few other interesting areas to consider.

Their operating costs rose sharply (-3421 in 2011 to -14409 in 2012). Their staff jumped by 8, almost a 20% increase (42 in 2012, 34 in 2011). They also had a sharp increase of "Remuneration of other", usually a category for temporary or contract workers. Don't forget they started producing hardware (Balance) in 2012 along with the new Props store. I read that as a company that was reacting conservatively for several years decided to take a financial gamble on investing in people. And in 2012 they created new technologies:

1. iPad apps
2. A new hardware audio interface
3. A software SDK to develop products for Reason.
4. A virtual storefront to sell REs.

All of those things have a cost in development and maintenance time. Engineers aren't cheap to hire either.

Looking at their fixed asset costs they all went down in 2012. It's possible part of this is due to moving to selling Reason as a downloadable product as well as a boxed one. They also moved to external server hosting, it's possible the jump in "Renumeration of Other" includes some of this.

Most of the other lines remained flat or changed little.

This report doesn't strike me as one that implies the sky is falling. It looks a lot more to me like a company that is re-investing in itself to grow. Doing so takes real risks and sacrificing profits in the short term to invest in the mid- to long-term view. A more telling story (IMO) will be their 2013-12 financial report.

If you really want to cringe, go look at the financial reports for Apple Corp in the early 90s. Now *those* make for some "sky is falling" reading. Then look at the quarters when Jobs came back and they were still losing money with an aging and confusing product line. It took several quarters of losses to slowly bring the company back into the black.

[hibidy]

Right, but it's not good to suddenly take on all of that ambition and be in the hole for a really large amount. Let's be realistic, just based on this thread it's clear people are not jumping on the bandwagon and the market is saturated.

I'm not a speculator (in financial terms ) but that's not going in the right direction.

[damoog]

All DAWs sound the same. Bottom line. The only reason different people use different DAWs is personal preference.

/thread

I almost totally agree but studio one undoubtedly has its own sound,it has a final rich sound

[Frantz]

Be careful reading their demise into their financial analysis statement. For one thing there is no mention of their cash reserves.

I believe cash reserves are included in their assests which dropped dramatically in 2012:

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                     2012-12     2011-12     2010-12     2009-12
Total Assets TKR      14,043      32,815      33,993      30,122
Total Assets USD   2,141,558   5,004,288   5,183,933   4,593,605

Total assets dropped by 2.8 million dollars last year. That must include a big hit to their cash reserves. (I don't have a background in accounting. It would be great if someone with accounting expertise chimed in with their opinion.)

This report doesn't strike me as one that implies the sky is falling. It looks a lot more to me like a company that is re-investing in itself to grow. Doing so takes real risks and sacrificing profits in the short term to invest in the mid- to long-term view. A more telling story (IMO) will be their 2013-12 financial report.

I basically agree with this. They are definitely investing in new revenue streams: Rack Extensions, iPad, audio interface. The problem is they are a tiny company and they bet the farm on these things. They can't afford to lose another 2 million dollars in 2013. They would be running on fumes then.

The other thing is that Rack Extensions became available in 2012 Q2 but they didn't sell enough to help the 2012 balance sheet. Will they take off in 2013?

It's a fascinating story. They had the correct general vision in 2000 that music software was going ITB. They were ahead of the game and they got comfortable and IMO a little arrogant. I think they made some bad strategic decisions - a closed system, no MIDI out, no way to record audio. The world caught up and passed them by and slowly they reversed their stance on all of these decisions. But is it too late?

[deep'n'dark]

The biggest reason related myth has always been that does it have a soundengine or not. Propably not. The reason sound comes from the sum of all the stock effects, samples and effects plus instruments. It wouldnt't make any sence that propellerheads have coded an automatic signature sound to color the sound, that makes them really proud from the beginning of the whole reason evolution.

But, wtf is going on with the bass frequencies compared to reaper's reafir as example? In reason you boost the bass frequencies and you can't sound clean. When you do it in reaper with the reafir, it makes you love the sound. Reason,s equalizers can,t be boosted without sounding dirty. And reason has lot of artifacts in the sound.

The statement that reason can sound whatever you want is b/s. Even my best tunes via the history never make me proud enough. I still love reason to deadh tho, but shouldn't dsp science already be far enough to let me be proud of my sound? If david guetta's best memories sounds good even via cheap laptop speakers and mine always wrong, then i'm not skillful enough or then dsp is not been developed the way it should - to make the Sound translating right via cheap speakers too, not just via my own studio monitors. This is just my own little rant, no pun intended.

But i'll not give up but try to prove, that it's because i need to mix betterly.

Cheers everyone!

[damoog]

i have just purchased reason again(like for the 5th time) and i just keep going back

some of the devices are dated as hell and im not totally into rack extensions(from a financial point of view)for me ableton and reason are a perfect combo

i will say one thing for reason 7 - THE MIDI IS ROCK SOLID,excellent work propellerhead