New Waves Update Plan Terms

[plexuss]

[snip]
Anyways, enough time wasted on peoples' personal vendettas against a company's policies that are clearly documented and should be visited before purchasing anything.

So you won't share any of your amazing work? Oh well, we'll just have to struggle through...

[rewrite history]

[snip]
Anyways, enough time wasted on peoples' personal vendettas against a company's policies that are clearly documented and should be visited before purchasing anything.

So you won't share any of your amazing work? Oh well, we'll just have to struggle through...

[unsnip]

Just turn on the radio, Spotify or whatever music broadcasting system you can think of. Guess what you'll hear? That's right, Waves plugins.

Doesn't anyone else find it funny how the industry standard and leader in the audio world, and has been for DECADES, is in question for "sound quality" by a forum user here? Every professional studio around the world has Waves plugins for a reason. They've also released countless hit records that are more then the proof you need.

[mixtur.se]

WUP is the equivalent of paying for maintenance and support which is common for most business software.

Which ordinarily is a good thing, but no other company AFAIK charges existing license owners more to renew/maintain the license than to buy a new one, nor are they gatekeeping license transfers behind extortionate maintenance fees. My FabFilter bundle is NFR but had I bought the regular commercial license, it would only cost 9e to transfer the entire bundle (license) to a new user. Despite having a similar RRP value, Waves want $150 for the same privilege. The Gold bundle has been on sale for as little as $99, how can Waves justify charging me 50% more than the sale price for maintenance (and the ability to transfer me license) when FF are giving me a 65% discount on upgrades for my continued support... They're not bad for wanting revenue to keep afloat, they're bad for going about it in the worst possible way by locking in customers with an utterly ridiculous licensing policy. I would gladly pay a sensible fee, say $25, to be able to transfer my license to someone else. Given that Gold regularly goes on sale for peanuts and that mine is only a v9 license, I probably wouldn't even ask for more than the hypothetical $25 fee (27 to cover PP fees if needed) just to be rid of it.

Maintenance is always paid on the list price, and not on the discounted price. I sell software for a living and most major vendors have this policy.

I’m not saying it’s good practice but I think this is where they are coming from. Waves has its roots in commercial studios and not with bedroom producers.

[antti]

Are you talking about $29 sale prices as your base figure? We're talking the actual retail prices here.

For all practical purposes, the $29 ”sales” prices are the actual retail prices when it comes to Waves plugins. In fact, if they were based around here, they’d get fined for false advertising (a sales must be exceptional circumstance and a regular occurrence cannot be adverised as a sales).

[rewrite history]

Are you talking about $29 sale prices as your base figure? We're talking the actual retail prices here.

For all practical purposes, the $29 ”sales” prices are the actual retail prices when it comes to Waves plugins. In fact, if they were based around here, they’d get fined for false advertising (a sales must be exceptional circumstance and a regular occurrence cannot be adverised as a sales).

I choose not to complain about low sale prices and choose to waste the extra money on video games. But, that's just me.

[plexuss]

Waves likely has some slick MBA's in their executive pool who saw that license transfers and WUP were lucrative but plugin sales were not. A good capitalist is going to find a way to exploit customers while still maintining a strong customer base. Apple are one of the best at this. Wave likely did business analysis and determined this 3 prong approach: 1) get more plugins into people's hands while still trying to make a profit at a price that is attractive (manipulative) but not so low as to crash the revenue stream. Grow the customer base and products-in-hand to feed 2 & 3...; 2) automate the transfer process and increase fees; and, 3) increase WUP fees.

Did Waves have any exective changes before all this happened? That could serve as further evidence. Some new sociopathic bean counters on staff to shake things up.

[reggie1979]

Let's keep something in mind: Waves was not always the "sale sale sale" company it is now. S...t was EXPENSIVE. So the WUP was just an extension of that from a by-gone time.

Now, with all the sales, people are like "WTF" over the WUP pricing. Currently, I see no advantage to the 240 bucks I'd have to shell to upgrade everything. Pretty sure I'm not alone (thank you captain obvious)

[rewrite history]

I believe most sensible people opt out of WUP renewal after the free first year expires and they just continue to enjoy incremental updates for free for the next 5-7 years.

What other company offers that for such a long period of time? None.

The only people that seem to have issues with it are Mac users with their poor implementations of O/S updates and those looking to resell something they bought on sale because of an impulse buy.

[Gamma-UT]

I see gas pump/synth guru/firstword secondword has once again graced us with his presence in the quest to defend Waves at all costs. Troll or shill? Porque no los dos? You decide.

[PieBerger]

So I haven't looked at my account for a little while; seeing the WUP costs just upsets me, but since I decided to get involved in this little discussion here I decided to take a peek. To my surprise my renewal price is actually only 70 bucks (does anyone know if they reduced the prices within the last 12 months?), which although still high is palatable and at least low enough to pass on the license without being out of pocket . I still maintain that locking license transfers behind WUP is shitty, but I was wrong about it costing more than a new license it seems (now and maybe always).

[sprnva]

I'm not using any Waves stuff these days but out of curiosity I checked my account. I only bought one plugin (NLS) and the WUP renewal for that is just under $27. The rest are various freebies.

Funnily, the highest renewal price is $40 for StudioRack.... which is free.

[Burillo]

they usually have regular deals on the WUP as well.

[emulator01]

they usually have regular deals on the WUP as well.

Really? I am waiting for it and this was my hope to save some money.

[rewrite history]

They also have a referral program that can pay for an entire upgrade, instead of going the WUP route.

[noiseboyuk]

they usually have regular deals on the WUP as well.

Well, a month later and now there is one - 25% off.

I'm in perhaps a peculiar position. I'm one of a small breed who find the whole Waves Central process so clumsily dangerous, particularly when combining v9 and v10 - that I'm sworn off them. I know it is possible for v9 and v10 to co-exist with care, but I take the view that every time I make a change, update or add a new plugin there's always the possibility that either I or Waves will screw up. So I took the decison that either I wait for Waves to make WC fully functional, or wait until everything is on v10 before I buy any new product from Waves. The former, it is clear, is not going to happen as the number of customers in my position is too low for them to bother about, so that just leaves updating to v10 or staying static forever. Ultimately abandonment always leads to trouble in the end with OS updates etc, so while there's hardly any rush, at some point in the coming years it makes sense for me to jump.

I have 16 Waves licenses inc duplicates for Gold and L3-16 so I always have those on the laptop dongle-free. I can update all but those duplicates for $180, and that's my main rig 100% v10. I can then potentially upgrade those two dupe licenses separately in the next bundle up sale to Horizon or something if it makes sense at the time.

My question is - is this the best its likely to get? What is this referral program that rewrite history spoke of? I looked on Audio Deluxe and they currently have WUP listed as $240, which doesn't appear to reflect the current promotion. I find the whole "make them an offer" on a custom bundle quite bizarre, grateful if anyone can shed any advice there on what sort of offer to make, if it is worth making one at all. If anyone wants to share info but can't publicly, would be very grateful for a PM. Many thanks.