Minimal Audio Current…subscription

[pierb]

Does the $200 include the effects?

Yep, it includes all the effects inside of Current's effect rack and the other effects we're planning on adding to it. Just to be clear, the audio engine (oscillators, modulators, effects, etc.) will always be the same regardless of how you purchase Current. It's the huge library of content that we're going to separate out as "expansion packs", which we think makes sense because we got a lot of feedback from people saying they didn't want to have to pay for it. Hope that makes sense

Thanks that sounds great

[PatchAdamz]

Minimal Audio has listened to synth users and shown us all that they are both flexible and excellent designers. Nice to hear the change in purchase policy.

[plexuss]

Minimal Audio has listened to synth users and shown us all that they are both flexible and excellent designers. Nice to hear the change in purchase policy.

Now they just need to work on their business skillz...

[dayjob]

it's excellent how they turned this around. I think the options they came up with should suit everyone's needs. Also, the rent to own plan sounds great.. should be appealing to a lot of people. Hopefully this all works out for Minimal too and proves to be successful model. Large products like this need flexible purchase options to really work. the way they talk about it it'll keep growing and evolving.

[charlesalbert]

I’m a prickly guy unfortunately, even at work. It could be a great synth but I I forced myself not to support Minimal Audio anymore after all this mess.
it's a matter of honesty and principle.

[GusGranite]

I’m a prickly guy unfortunately, even at work. It could be a great synth but I I forced myself not to support Minimal Audio anymore after all this mess.
it's a matter of honesty and principle.

Yep. I don’t know what to make of the decision to hide the subscription model from the online reviewers. That’s a really weird one that Minimal Audio did not address in their follow up.

[zeph]

I’m a prickly guy unfortunately, even at work. It could be a great synth but I I forced myself not to support Minimal Audio anymore after all this mess.
it's a matter of honesty and principle.

Yep. I don’t know what to make of the decision to hide the subscription model from the online reviewers. That’s a really weird one that Minimal Audio did not address in their follow up.

Yeah - as Glitch says - These jokers at Minimal Audio were plotting this subscription rip-off, 2 or so years ago!!!!. They had one thing in mind - milk us dry!!! And they did not inform anyone, including YouTube reviewers, that this was their master plan!!

How can we trust this company again? For sure, there will be some other con somewhere along the way, just waiting to nail us!!!

[RPH]

Yep. I don’t know what to make of the decision to hide the subscription model from the online reviewers. That’s a really weird one that Minimal Audio did not address in their follow up.

Does it matter? This all felt like tunnel-vision on their end, too much focus on the product.
It's good they put out the video and probably they'll have contact with the content creators about this. This has been a big learning lesson for them I bet, good and bad, having read a lot of the comments been made online.

[RPH]

blah blah, still angry..

Please stop, enough of this nonstop ranting.

[zeph]

blah blah, still angry..

Please stop, enough of this nonstop ranting.

I'm just trying to warn the people

[jules99]

blah blah, still angry..

Please stop, enough of this nonstop ranting.

I'm just trying to warn the people

This is now the third or fourth time users have asked you to calm down. Maybe touch some grass?

[FarleyCZ]

Just cought up on the matter (mostly by watching Weaver Beats video).

Look. I've been using, reviewing and collecting plugins in really unhealthy fashion for decade and half. I've seen developers and companies come and go. I've seen them rise to the top and fall to the bottom. And I get it. It's god damn hard to make a living doing software development. Life expanses are going up, plugin sales are not speeding up accordingly at all.

But! (And I'm saying this as someone who loves Rift and your rather excellent sample packs.) The problem here is trust. You've done the same mistake Waves and Unity recently did. You've engineered a way to enforce subscription to people. And that trust has been broken. You do that just once, I'm sorry.

Again, I do get that it's hard to stay afloat developing audio software. But you have to realize, that 98% of your customers are either kids asking parents for pocket change or hard working folks who return from their completely unrelated dayjob, feed their family and then, may be then, if some money is left over, they invest into their hobby. Vast majority of your customers spend as much (if not more) effort on their music craft as you do on the coding, but without any chance of seing a single dime in return. Of course offering subscription only product to these people wil be met with extreme pushback. People may afford it sometimes, might not other times, but they definitelly can't justify a Netflix-level money for a single VST. I know that steady income stream is sexy for every developer, but it's essentially passing all the business risks to your customers, who (in contrast to let's say Avid's or Adobe's user base) can't really afford too much risking... Sorry, but that's the cold truth.

What are you trying to do now is: "Sorry, bad idea, here's Kilohearts model instead." But there are two things playing against you. First is the broken trust and the second is that Phaseplant (judging from the GUI pics) is overall much more polished product from the getgo. I wish you a speedy recovery from this mess, but I don't think simple apology and re-lunch will be enough in this case. You've lost some customers. I personally don't have any interest in checking out Current after this.

In your shoes, I'd take the underlying code, re-pack it into a completely different product, wait a while and try to market it properly. Current will always have the aura of a really unfortunate publicity stunt.

[gondii]

Sounds like a fair and sensible pricing model to me now, I‘m not one to hold a grudge. I‘ll try out the synth and if it adds value to me, I‘m in.

[Samiver]

At least they did a quick turnaround on their original plans.

Original response from MA seemed to be disappointment people were talking about subs and not trying the product without realising the obvious issue that if you never plan to sub trying it would be a complete waste of time.

At least now it's no longer a sub people may try it.

Personally I already have a load of top tier synths and not sure I need another £200 one but at least this change of tack means I am likely to demo it as I really like rift.

It now will get a go rather than a complete hard pass

[martiu]

UVI's much more expansive Falcon, at $244 right now with an additional $100 soundware coupon, is a much better deal. I think people were expecting $100-$150, but at $200 (which is $274 Canadian, ugh!) it's just too high, IMHO, for an unproven new-to-market synth launched during challenging economic times for consumers. But I wish you well.

The price seems perfectly reasonable, its similar to direct competitors like pigments,phaseplant. I even thought it would be a bit more expensive.

I mean there are many effect plugins that have a similar price or even higher. Even Serum, soon 10 years old, is still 189$!!( i havent seen anyone complaining about that lol, shouldnt serum be like 20$ by now?).
So 200$ for this(synth only as of right now) is a really good price and not overpriced at all.

I cant say that for any other prices though, i guess they will still announce prices for upcoming effects inside current, etc

You weren't looking for it. I've thought Serem was overpriced since day one. $200 for almost any synth is not a "really good price." Knock yourself out, buy what you want, but compared to most of the market, it's an expensive synth. Whether it's overpriced or not depends on what you're willing to pay for.

These kinds of marketing mistakes will always leave a bad taste for many people for some period of time. I find perception to be a funny thing. People who might have had, literally, no opinion, may now distrust based on this move alone. Backpedaling is probably a good idea in this case, but the expectation that it will engender trust is naïve. What it indicates is that they didn't know what they were doing, or they did and they were hoping it would fly. Neither is a good look.

Serum is not only synth, it is one of the best sounding and easiest to work with wavetable synths and it comes with separate effect rack.