Musikmesse 2012: Propellerhead to share "exciting news"

[headquest]

Regarding upgrade paths for their loyal customers?? You can't be serious, right? Every version that has come out has been offered at a substantially discounted rate to users who had a previous license. Maybe our idea of affordable is different, but I've always felt the price they asked for upgrades between major versions was fair and affordable.

$169.00 to upgrade from Record 1.5 / Reason 5 Duo to Reason 6 (almost the same product)...? Seriously?

Having freely given a considerable amount of my time to beta testing for them free of charge I can tell you it's not worth that

I'm guessing you were an early adopter who bought during the short-lived PWYW period? Did you pay $169.00? Ah.... right.

If you paid $169.00 then I'll accept that you have a legitimate point about the cost of me upgrading. If you paid less than that then you already decided it isn't worth $169.00

[festeringheap]

From the way I interpret it, Record was merged with Reason probably because Reason

was being looked at as a lesser product since you had to buy Record just to have audio recording and the far superior SSL mixer. I think

Propellerhead made the conscious choice to eliminate Record as a separate product since Reason had been their flagship for a decade.

RE could not exist unless the two merged. You can't offer RE without the dongle. And the user base of Record standalone or those that had the Duo would likely not be enough to sustain RE. So they offered a great deal
for Reason 1-5 owners to switch to a dongled Reason6 last year.**
That huge Reason 1-5 user-base would have to upgrade now, if the Props didn't do it in that order, but then there would be a lot of grumbling and ill will that they would have to spend 169 dollars just to begin to buy Rack Extensions.
I think they are definitely firing on all cylinders on the merge and RE venture.

That said, Propellerhead has done a poor job of communicating the merge to their own Duo and Record users from forum posts I have seen and see even now.. And a lot of other folks in DAW land are clueless too.


**A great deal for Duo owners too, I might add, but of course they already had the dongle. (But they did get half a year also to play with the three secret Rack Extensions included).

[headquest]

That said, Propellerhead has done a poor job of communicating the merge to their own Duo and Record users from forum posts I have seen and see even now.. And a lot of other folks in DAW land are clueless too.

According to previous discussions with Mattias, they actually communicated it very effectively in their very small print.

[SJ_Digriz]

That said, Propellerhead has done a poor job of communicating the merge to their own Duo and Record users from forum posts I have seen and see even now.. And a lot of other folks in DAW land are clueless too.

According to previous discussions with Mattias, they actually communicated it very effectively in their very small print.

In legal physics the size of the print is inversely proportional to the incoming f**k factor to the end user.

[liquidsound]

With the Re paradigm, if excepted across the border, Propellerhead is poised to become the Monsanto of the music industry, if you can see far enough into the future. Wake up!

[Anosou]

Whew, back from Musikmesse and just read through the thread. Interesting reading!

That said, Propellerhead has done a poor job of communicating the merge to their own Duo and Record users from forum posts I have seen and see even now.. And a lot of other folks in DAW land are clueless too.

According to previous discussions with Mattias, they actually communicated it very effectively in their very small print.

Hehe, a personal call out headquest? I personally think we communicated the merge of the two products quite clearly but if it wasn't clear to you or festeringheap, I'm sorry about that. That was definitely not our intention but luckily the vast majority of our users both understood the merge and took advantage of the PWYW upgrade. I wish we'd have informed every single user of course, everyone benefits from that, but apparently we didn't succeed.

I also kind of feel the need to point out that the upgrade did contain things other than the merge. Things we think are well worth the $169 upgrade - The Echo, Pulveriser, Alligator, audio transpose, expanded sound bank (1000+ new patches) and now a free upgrade to Reason 6.5. At least I personally think it's worth it but to each and their own.

Something that might interest some of you in regards to the "listen to users" discussion is that Record and Reason being merged was one of the biggest feature requests from our users, myself included (I was only employed in September last year). I'm quite interested to hear about what you think about user feedback though and how we could improve!

We do try to read all feedback and consider it, many of our upgrades in the past (again when I was a user, I might add) has reflected user requests. Still enjoying the constructive discussion in this thread and I'm definitely forwarding your opinions to the rest of the company, the feedback's much appreciated! Any other questions, keep 'em coming and I'll answer what I can.




Oh and speaking of IKEA, I actually live in an IKEA-built flat. It feels oddly super scandinavian and I'm STILL not sure what I think about it.

[christianmusicmaker]

So you can get beds on the Propellerheads webstore now? Will they be compatible with existing Duvet technology or will I need an upgrade?

How did we get here?

Ernst kept this one quiet. Did not know it was part of the Re Spec.

[braj]

Any other questions, keep 'em coming and I'll answer what I can.

Any chance of a rack-only cheap or free Rewire version? How about improved Rewire, are you guys working on that? I have zero desire to work in the Reason sequencer and think you guys could have a good business going back to the basics, Reason as a rack with a RE store, at least with a part of your product. It would go a long way towards making Reason relevant to the users of other DAWs.

[christianmusicmaker]

Any other questions, keep 'em coming and I'll answer what I can.

Any chance of a rack-only cheap or free Rewire version? How about improved Rewire, are you guys working on that? I have zero desire to work in the Reason sequencer and think you guys could have a good business going back to the basics, Reason as a rack with a RE store, at least with a part of your product. It would go a long way towards making Reason relevant to the users of other DAWs.

+1

Not sure if the Props will do it but that is a good FR!

Maybe a stripped down version (no FX or similar) for instance would be cheaper than Reason Essentials. That would let buyers fill their own rack with Re plugs. The entry cost could be half of Essentials or Free. That would likely speed up the uptake of Re.

[Anosou]

Any other questions, keep 'em coming and I'll answer what I can.

Any chance of a rack-only cheap or free Rewire version? How about improved Rewire, are you guys working on that? I have zero desire to work in the Reason sequencer and think you guys could have a good business going back to the basics, Reason as a rack with a RE store, at least with a part of your product. It would go a long way towards making Reason relevant to the users of other DAWs.

That's interesting idea and I did see you mentioned it before. As you might imagine we like our software and also like when people like it. However, ReWire IS our tech and we like that too!

To me Reason Essentials is very close to this already with an expected street price of around 99 bucks. Some of the most basic things like the Audio/CV splitters etc. are there and also some more instruments and FX for connectivity. It's not exactly what you want but it's not far off I hope!

I do appreciate your feedback and think it's an interesting idea, will pass it on!

[Dogboy73]

Whew, back from Musikmesse and just read through the thread. Interesting reading!

I'll say! Some very interesting views in here, not that I agree with the vast majority of them I have to say. I don't really understand some of the negativity & cynicism about where Propellerheads are going with this. I'm just looking at RE from the point of view of a long term Reason user & for me it only seems like a good thing. Further more I would say that this is something Propellerheads really needed to do. It just makes so much sense. Many of us in the Props forums have been asking for something like this for a good while now & I'm not talking about Reason supporting VST. I've always acknowledged that this just wouldn't work. RE is the way to do this I'm convinced. I'm stoked about it. My only real concern is that the rack is going to start looking like a dogs dinner with GUI's designed by 3rd parties (that won't fit in with the look of the other devices). That's about as deep as my concern goes on this!

[braj]

Any other questions, keep 'em coming and I'll answer what I can.

Any chance of a rack-only cheap or free Rewire version? How about improved Rewire, are you guys working on that? I have zero desire to work in the Reason sequencer and think you guys could have a good business going back to the basics, Reason as a rack with a RE store, at least with a part of your product. It would go a long way towards making Reason relevant to the users of other DAWs.

That's interesting idea and I did see you mentioned it before. As you might imagine we like our software and also like when people like it. However, ReWire IS our tech and we like that too!

To me Reason Essentials is very close to this already with an expected street price of around 99 bucks. Some of the most basic things like the Audio/CV splitters etc. are there and also some more instruments and FX for connectivity. It's not exactly what you want but it's not far off I hope!

I do appreciate your feedback and think it's an interesting idea, will pass it on!

Well the most important part is a very efficient app, no audio and no sequencer would help considerably. You could have just the basic tools, even nothing but the store and the splitters etc (I'm not that familiar with Reason) and let the user build their own racks with free and paid REs. This would make it a wonderful little plugin workshop for any DAW, where nothing that you don't need from Reason gets in the way. And if you want to ever upgrade to full Reason all you racks and REs would go with you. Make Subtractor etc. paid if you like, just having the free player would compel many to try REs. For instance the free Kontakt player eventually cost me a few hundred in libraries, I likely wouldn't have chosen NI's products at all had that not been the case. I know you don't want to go the VST route but this would be basically like VSTs but on your terms, and seamlessly integrate with your app.

[braj]

Everything from these Rewire racks could be captured in a combinator when using within Reason. In fact, with Combinator you probably have the model to do it nicely, have Combinator act as a stand-alone Rewire slave. Anyone with the full Reason could then use Combinator patches as plugins in a Rewire-compatible host.

[eXode]

Any chance of a rack-only cheap or free Rewire version? How about improved Rewire, are you guys working on that? I have zero desire to work in the Reason sequencer and think you guys could have a good business going back to the basics, Reason as a rack with a RE store, at least with a part of your product. It would go a long way towards making Reason relevant to the users of other DAWs.

I'm not a ReWire user. Just "improved ReWire" is a bit vague. Care to leave any example on what you feel need to be sorted with ReWire or what you feel is missing?

EDIT: Saw you other post appeared as I was typing this. Never mind. :)

[projectdan]

The Re plugins open up the option of Propellerhead themselves selling plugins for Reason and not having to cover and justify the cost through sales of reason itself.

They could also offer deals to entice developers of plugins they think would really enhance the appeal of Reason such as lowering their own cut out of the sales. I'm sure if they are desperate for specific plugins to be ported they will do deals to get them.