Roland Cloud

[joe_b]

Roland and their "sales"...

[Echoes in the Attic]

Yeah $50/year for an 808? No thanks.

[EvilDragon]

$5/mo doesn't seem like a terrible deal to me, honestly.

[chk071]

Same. When i read that, i thought it was pretty alright.

[Reefius]

Their complete catalog is over 30 plugins for $20/mo, so only one plugin for $5/mo is a terrible deal.

I would like to see something like only the Legendary series for $10/mo.

[zerocrossing]

$5/mo doesn't seem like a terrible deal to me, honestly.

It could be worse. They could have made it $8.08/mo.

[chk071]

Their complete catalog is over 30 plugins for $20/mo, so only one plugin for $5/mo is a terrible deal.

Pretty normal that you get a bulk discount, though. After all it's better for them as well, when they can teaste their whole repertoir, and then get people to sub for a single plugin they liked. Clever, if you ask me.

[Gamma-UT]

Yeah $50/year for an 808? No thanks.

$5/mo doesn't seem like a terrible deal to me, honestly.

The difference that framing makes. Put it another way: $150 over three years for a single 808 emulation? You're now way past the pricing of something like Drumazon.

Weighed against what you get in the full sub, it's not that great a deal unless you're really desperate for Roland's software version of the 808 and absolutely nothing else from the catalogue. If they were planning on using this as a gateway drug for the Full Monty, setting it at a level that reflected the fact it's one among more than ten instruments in the "legendary" section of Roland Cloud would have made more sense (ie $20pa). Then again, if this takes off, I can seem them thinking a la carte pricing works and they can afford to knock out individual instruments at $50pa.

[chk071]

$5/mo doesn't seem like a terrible deal to me, honestly.

It could be worse. They could have made it $8.08/mo.

$3.03/month for the 303 then, nice...

[EvilDragon]

$5/mo doesn't seem like a terrible deal to me, honestly.

It could be worse. They could have made it $8.08/mo.

Zing!!!

[PAK]

$5 a month for renting just one plugin isn't exactly a great deal.

Nope. I suppose it lets them see how many haven't signed up because they only want single plugins. But the 2-4 life offer was a "lifetime" license for $100 (if you split the $200 cost over the 2 plugins.) So $60, for a year, doesn't compare well.

Heck, you could reasonably argue even $100, for the lifetime license, wasn't great either - considering Behringer have a hardware analogue take, on the 808, for $299. If you really wanted an 808 I reckon you'd go in that direction.

With mobile lowering price expectations, and now even the hardware end lowering costs, it's likely not the best time to try to sell certain high cost plugins and/or subscription services. Plus there's already an established path by the likes of NI and Arturia (an expensive bundle with optional yearly upgrades). These almost function like a subscription, minus the worry of having plugins taken away if users sit out "upgrades".

Some companies might like the stable revenue stream of a subscription. But audio plugins are not Netflix, and IMO ultimately all it's going to achieve is pushing more new users towards hardware - which might not be a bad thing considering some of the stuff going on right now.

[Caine123]

it is strange, but when was the last release of a plugin? it feels like less new happens :/

[Watchful]

I've been following this thread for a very long time and have been continuously fascinated by the variety of opinions here, all of which are very good. This thread is practically a master-class in marketing and economics, provided anyone from Roland is reading it (which they should be).

I don't subscribe to Roland Cloud simply because there's a very small number of plugins I would want from them, and can't justify those monthly costs for 2-3 plug ins I might use once or twice on a project over several years.

But PAK's Netflix analogy is excellent, and finally got me to comment. Netflix is pretty much how Roland is running this, minus the thousands of content items. New ones are being added all the time, but you penalize the early adopters. In fact, it gets more economical the longer you wait.

What about an approach something like Microsoft is doing with Office? You subscribe annually for about $50-60, get pretty much everything you need (even selecting groups of plug-ins based on your interest), and get continual updates and new products? If you cancel, maybe you keep the products you have but you lose out on updates and new product.

I don't know the answer, and if a Roland marketing rep read this thread all the way through, he or she would realize they don't have the right answer, either: there are amazing points being brought up in this thread, and equally astonishing counterpoints. I will say, for me, the subscription as it stands is too expensive for what it provides--and that a lower monthly or a simple annual cost would almost certainly drive up subscriptions to profit off the lower price.

[EvilDragon]

it is strange, but when was the last release of a plugin? it feels like less new happens :/

SRX Studio in July, not that long ago. Before that TB-303 in March.

[yehboy1]

The thing about the Netflix comparison is that it often saves people money because they can cancel cable. So, like $10 a month for Netflix versus $100 for cable. Subscription plans don't offer such an obvious savings.

Although I do think the people against plugin subscriptions don't fully take into account the cost of owing plugins. For example, if a person bought Pro-Q2 a year ago for $180, they would have had to pay another $90 shortly after to upgrade to Pro-Q3 (if they wanted to upgrade). So that's $270 in a year for one EQ, whereas someone with a subscription gets a lot of plugins, and upgrades, for a lower price over that year period. And that's just one EQ plugin. Add in other plugins that are "owned" and the upgrade costs become more.