Are subscription models a cure for GAS?

[Elektronisch]

Subscription models are tools for consumer abuse, and nothing but.

Im not using any of that and im not a fan in fact, but i do see its pros. Im genuinly curious, how its an abuse? why? how would you prove your argument to be right?

[Jace-BeOS]

Subscription models are tools for consumer abuse, and nothing but.

Im not using any of that and im not a fan in fact, but i do see its pros. Im genuinly curious, how its an abuse? why? how would you prove your argument to be right?

• Time literally becomes money. If you aren’t using the products, but you’re still paying, you’re wasting money. Companies don’t make it easy to start and stop paying them (by design), so if you take a vacation for a few weeks, that’s money you’re paying for product you’re not using.

• Lock-in, access-control, version-control, bugs. When you need old versions to work with old projects, or don’t want to upgrade one thing (because it will force you to upgrade a bunch of other things). What I’ve read from consumers on forums like KVR and elsewhere is that companies with subscription models discourage or kill access to anything but the current version; the management tool they demand you to run usually does not provide access to older versions, or wont work on older operating system versions. More rapid deployment is not helpful for people who expect to have little downtime. To make it seem like you’re getting your money’s worth, updates might come faster and be tested less in order to do so.

• Cost: the math has been done by people smarter than me and their math shows that it costs consumers way more to subscribe to software than it does to use a one-time-purchased perpetual license used over a long period of time (even with an upgrade or two), especially if you have no need or no desire to constantly pursue the perpetual upgrade push by OS, DAW, and plugin developers. Claiming you have “access to all of this for only dollars per month” is an illusion. Look at the end-of-year numbers.

Greed is the ONLY reason companies are choosing to adopt the subscription model: they want MORE profit in shorter amounts of time, and they want to do LESS work to earn it (because work costs them). The claim is that they want users to fund updates, but this is insincere, since the companies who started this shit have been making great money in the perpetual licensing model for decades and software quality hasn’t improved as a result of subscriptions.

If money is not an issue for you whatsoever, then maybe none of this matters... but I imagine your time still matters; dealing with perpetual OS and software upgrade pushes is a massive time sink, even when things work as they are supposed to work (and much worse when they don’t, which isn’t rare). To people like me, these issues matter a lot. I don’t have endless money to spend on every damn company who thinks I need to subscribe to their services too (the media IP and gaming publisher companies seem to think that we can afford to have a subscription to a different service for EVERY DAMNED COMPANY). Few people make enough money per month for this much constant monthly billing. Maybe the top 10% of the business using these tools to make money don’t have an issue with it, but it’s not in their best interests either.

I am very resistant to buying into consumer-abusive schemes in our increasingly unregulated capitalism, so there’s also an ethical aspect to this for me. The more people allow it, the more normalized it seems and the more companies jump on the bandwagon because they can point to others and say “this is normal”. Some people think ethics have no place in economics, and I think they’re part of the problem. The computer industry is an abusive industry to begin with. Subscription models just make it even worse.

[Elektronisch]

But thats not consumer abusing? the rules are litteraly written and you either agree with them or not. . You are not being scammed, pushed in to some fraud, lied ect.

And as every buisiness it always has to calculate how much profit you can make. Same as a pro producer who makes living out of music. Maybe he needs lets say certain strings element and its cheaper for him to pay 30 dollar monthly subscribtion to write a piece of instrumental then buy whole bundle of string instruments. So maybe that producer is actually abusing the compnay? Plugin renting is like netflix subscribtion, so maybe netflix is also abusing consumer?

Claiming you have “access to all of this for only dollars per month” is an illusion. Look at the end-of-year numbers.

I strongly believe you had finished first grade but i will explain how it works. You pay lets say 10 dollars per month (as the compnay says). A year has 12 months, so thats why at the end of the year you have more money (12 months x 10 dollars per month = 120 dollars).

And capitalism is good because: capitalism means competition between companies, competition between companies means better prices for consumer, competition means company has to offer something for consumer more, that means progress in development.

Sorry but i cant take this stereotypical hippie stuff. Peace man, believe what you believe.

[rod_zero]

Subscriptions models only make sense if you make money from the service, I pay for microsoft office cloud but I use it for work and Onedrive cloud is very important for managing my work.

But for music software which for the great majority of users it is just a hobby subscriptions will just bleed you over years.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Plugin renting is like netflix subscribtion

It really isn't

[Elektronisch]

Plugin renting is like netflix subscribtion

It really isn't

Im not gonna ask why, because it is exactly the same just different product

Plugin subscribtion - you get an acounted number of plugins of some kind (instruments, fx)
Netflix subscribtion - you get an acounted number of videos depending on your country and region. And like with discontinued plugins on plugin subscribtion, you can compare that with TV shows that get discontinued, if you started to watch and invest time before it gets removed, you are also screwed. Just with plugins you are at least able to make some sort of backup by sampling it or just bouncing project parts to audio.

To simplify, you rent, get a temporal licence

[Winstontaneous]

Subscription models are tools for consumer abuse, and nothing but.

I only do a few software subscriptions - Adobe Creative Cloud, Safari Online Books, and the Relab reverbs on & off. I see them as a business expense - I also do programming, video editing, some visual design. It's a way to have access to the latest tools - the Adobe stuff in particular is a standard across many industries (if not always best in breed). Safari Online is one of the most remarkable IT info repositories on the planet...For a few hundred books a year I can access every book/video from all major & niche publishers, e-readable and hyperlinked to code, and not taking up any space on my bookshelf.

That said, I'm conscious of when I'm actually using things and sometimes go month to month with the Relab stuff. Yes, the math works out in the favor of the companies pushing subscriptions, but I use these as tools and don't feel like I'm getting scammed.

[Jace-BeOS]

But thats not consumer abusing? the rules are litteraly written and you either agree with them or not. . You are not being scammed, pushed in to some fraud, lied ect.

First: If you’re going to make an ad hominem attack on me for my education, you really ought to bother spelling “etc” correctly.

Second: If you think contracts and terms cannot be abusive just because someone can read them up front, you’re probably going to excuse everything corporations do as “acceptable capitalism”. I’m not sure I should even continue replying at this point.

Plugin renting is like netflix subscribtion, so maybe netflix is also abusing consumer?

It’s absolutely not the same. One is the rental of the ability to use tools and the other is the rental of entertainment. Since Netflix recently increased prices without adding much value to the service for me, I might entertain the notion that they’re being greedy, though.

I strongly believe you had finished first grade but i will explain how it works. You pay lets say 10 dollars per month (as the compnay says). A year has 12 months, so thats why at the end of the year you have more money (12 months x 10 dollars per month = 120 dollars).

Leave your ad hominem commentary in your pants.

I should probably talk longer term than yearly, but what products are you renting for only $10 per month? Not even Netflix costs that little. How many other bills do you pay monthly? Are you a business?

I am not a business, and that means this perpetual pay licensing model cannot be cushioned by increasing charges to customers.

Also I already noted that people better at math than myself have done the math for various products that went subscription after having been perpetual licensing. It always works out that consumers are spending more in the subscription model. The notion of spending less is an illusion, and people have demonstrated it on other threads. If you can compensate for the increased costs by charging your clients more, and if you choose to justify it as acceptable TO YOU, that’s your choice. Companies always fare better than individuals, though, and that’s part of what’s wrong in this economic system.

And capitalism is good because: capitalism means competition between companies, competition between companies means better prices for consumer, competition means company has to offer something for consumer more, that means progress in development.

“Capitalism is good” is a strange way to start any sentence, unless you’re defending capitalism (and it absolutely doesn’t need your efforts because it’s the world-dominating model at this time). I’m not attacking basic capitalism. What I’m criticizing is laissez-faire/unregulated capitalism.

While there currently is a good amount of developer variety in the music software plugin market, it is an exception, not a rule. There is only just starting to be any competition at all in the market Adobe has for many decades totally dominated, and Adobe is the key player in initiating this “software rental for consumers” model. You might call them the instigator here. Most other industries are going the exact opposite direction of competition: consolidation (and price-fixing between the few remaining companies).

Sorry but i cant take this stereotypical hippie stuff. Peace man, believe what you believe.

No, don’t believe. Learn the facts. For examples of anticompetitive markets, examine the very few (and very much de facto monopoly) internet service providers in the USA (who behave like they believe they’re in the business of selling and renewing contracts, rather than in the business of providing actual services or maintaining the equipment for said services). https://www.thedailybeast.com/chattanoo ... every-city

Look at the business of eyeglasses & frames (it’s all one company that has used its dominance to crush and absorb the rest). https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does- ... -industry/

Hell, even your local grocery store, despite its thousands of SKUs and brands on shelves, really is only representative of about ten companies: https://www.businessinsider.com/10-comp ... ry-2017-3/ (this number may have changed, as further consolidation continues)

These facts and more are out there for people to learn about. But by all means just keep throwing ad hominem commentary to attack my credibility or my character rather than my argument, just because I’m daring to challenge an economic model that is quite literally ruining everything on this planet.

[Tappistry]

The only cure for GAS is finding a set of tools with a workflow that makes sense to you, and then learning how to use them correctly and to their fullest potential.

Subscribing to a group of plugins, of which you may use half or less, doesn’t make sense. Buy the ones you like and pay for the occasional update when it suits you.

[Elektronisch]

But thats not consumer abusing? the rules are litteraly written and you either agree with them or not. . You are not being scammed, pushed in to some fraud, lied ect.

First: If you’re going to make an ad hominem attack on me for my education, you really ought to bother spelling “etc” correctly.

Second: If you think contracts and terms cannot be abusive just because someone can read them up front, you’re probably going to excuse everything corporations do as “acceptable capitalism”. I’m not sure I should even continue replying at this point.

Plugin renting is like netflix subscribtion, so maybe netflix is also abusing consumer?

It’s absolutely not the same. One is the rental of the ability to use tools and the other is the rental of entertainment. Since Netflix recently increased prices without adding much value to the service for me, I might entertain the notion that they’re being greedy, though.

I strongly believe you had finished first grade but i will explain how it works. You pay lets say 10 dollars per month (as the compnay says). A year has 12 months, so thats why at the end of the year you have more money (12 months x 10 dollars per month = 120 dollars).

Leave your ad hominem commentary in your pants.

I should probably talk longer term than yearly, but what products are you renting for only $10 per month? Not even Netflix costs that little. How many other bills do you pay monthly? Are you a business?

I am not a business, and that means this perpetual pay licensing model cannot be cushioned by increasing charges to customers.

Also I already noted that people better at math than myself have done the math for various products that went subscription after having been perpetual licensing. It always works out that consumers are spending more in the subscription model. The notion of spending less is an illusion, and people have demonstrated it on other threads. If you can compensate for the increased costs by charging your clients more, and if you choose to justify it as acceptable TO YOU, that’s your choice. Companies always fare better than individuals, though, and that’s part of what’s wrong in this economic system.

And capitalism is good because: capitalism means competition between companies, competition between companies means better prices for consumer, competition means company has to offer something for consumer more, that means progress in development.

“Capitalism is good” is a strange way to start any sentence, unless you’re defending capitalism (and it absolutely doesn’t need your efforts because it’s the world-dominating model at this time). I’m not attacking basic capitalism. What I’m criticizing is laissez-faire/unregulated capitalism.

While there currently is a good amount of developer variety in the music software plugin market, it is an exception, not a rule. There is only just starting to be any competition at all in the market Adobe has for many decades totally dominated, and Adobe is the key player in initiating this “software rental for consumers” model. You might call them the instigator here. Most other industries are going the exact opposite direction of competition: consolidation (and price-fixing between the few remaining companies).

Sorry but i cant take this stereotypical hippie stuff. Peace man, believe what you believe.

No, don’t believe. Learn the facts. For examples of anticompetitive markets, examine the very few (and very much de facto monopoly) internet service providers in the USA (who behave like they believe they’re in the business of selling and renewing contracts, rather than in the business of providing actual services or maintaining the equipment for said services). https://www.thedailybeast.com/chattanoo ... every-city

Look at the business of eyeglasses & frames (it’s all one company that has used its dominance to crush and absorb the rest). https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does- ... -industry/

Hell, even your local grocery store, despite its thousands of SKUs and brands on shelves, really is only representative of about ten companies: https://www.businessinsider.com/10-comp ... ry-2017-3/ (this number may have changed, as further consolidation continues)

These facts and more are out there for people to learn about. But by all means just keep throwing ad hominem commentary to attack my credibility or my character rather than my argument, just because I’m daring to challenge an economic model that is quite literally ruining everything on this planet.

I kind of do understand your point of view a bit. But i view to this a bit differently, i grew up not in North America but in country with anticapitalist regime and know how that fair in the end (spoilers: mom had to wait in lines for hours just to buy bread milk ect) and saw very different life. Capitalism may not be the ideal solition but its the best that works. And to subscribtion doesnt matter if its for entertaiment or not. If you are subscribing a tool to do while not being in buisiness it means its for your leisure entertaiment or whatever reason you think off (music is also an entertaiment for me besides buisiness). If you cannot afford it it doesnt mean its bad simply you cannot afford it. And thanks to capitalism you can increase your capital so you could afford it by doing some smart decisions. Be aware not everyone is good with money and not everyone has been schooled by parents (or at school/college/uni) to be economicaly literate or just in general not cut to that.

[mladi]

GAS = The desperate attempt to compensate the deep frustration which originates from the inability to create something presentable with the given resources.

PS, My English isn't good enough for such kind of sentences normally. Please excuse me.

[vurt]

But thats not consumer abusing? the rules are litteraly written and you either agree with them or not. . You are not being scammed, pushed in to some fraud, lied ect.

First: If you’re going to make an ad hominem attack on me for my education, you really ought to bother spelling “etc” correctly.

Second: If you think contracts and terms cannot be abusive just because someone can read them up front, you’re probably going to excuse everything corporations do as “acceptable capitalism”. I’m not sure I should even continue replying at this point.

Plugin renting is like netflix subscribtion, so maybe netflix is also abusing consumer?

It’s absolutely not the same. One is the rental of the ability to use tools and the other is the rental of entertainment. Since Netflix recently increased prices without adding much value to the service for me, I might entertain the notion that they’re being greedy, though.

I strongly believe you had finished first grade but i will explain how it works. You pay lets say 10 dollars per month (as the compnay says). A year has 12 months, so thats why at the end of the year you have more money (12 months x 10 dollars per month = 120 dollars).

Leave your ad hominem commentary in your pants.

I should probably talk longer term than yearly, but what products are you renting for only $10 per month? Not even Netflix costs that little. How many other bills do you pay monthly? Are you a business?

I am not a business, and that means this perpetual pay licensing model cannot be cushioned by increasing charges to customers.

Also I already noted that people better at math than myself have done the math for various products that went subscription after having been perpetual licensing. It always works out that consumers are spending more in the subscription model. The notion of spending less is an illusion, and people have demonstrated it on other threads. If you can compensate for the increased costs by charging your clients more, and if you choose to justify it as acceptable TO YOU, that’s your choice. Companies always fare better than individuals, though, and that’s part of what’s wrong in this economic system.

And capitalism is good because: capitalism means competition between companies, competition between companies means better prices for consumer, competition means company has to offer something for consumer more, that means progress in development.

“Capitalism is good” is a strange way to start any sentence, unless you’re defending capitalism (and it absolutely doesn’t need your efforts because it’s the world-dominating model at this time). I’m not attacking basic capitalism. What I’m criticizing is laissez-faire/unregulated capitalism.

While there currently is a good amount of developer variety in the music software plugin market, it is an exception, not a rule. There is only just starting to be any competition at all in the market Adobe has for many decades totally dominated, and Adobe is the key player in initiating this “software rental for consumers” model. You might call them the instigator here. Most other industries are going the exact opposite direction of competition: consolidation (and price-fixing between the few remaining companies).

Sorry but i cant take this stereotypical hippie stuff. Peace man, believe what you believe.

No, don’t believe. Learn the facts. For examples of anticompetitive markets, examine the very few (and very much de facto monopoly) internet service providers in the USA (who behave like they believe they’re in the business of selling and renewing contracts, rather than in the business of providing actual services or maintaining the equipment for said services). https://www.thedailybeast.com/chattanoo ... every-city

Look at the business of eyeglasses & frames (it’s all one company that has used its dominance to crush and absorb the rest). https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does- ... -industry/

Hell, even your local grocery store, despite its thousands of SKUs and brands on shelves, really is only representative of about ten companies: https://www.businessinsider.com/10-comp ... ry-2017-3/ (this number may have changed, as further consolidation continues)

These facts and more are out there for people to learn about. But by all means just keep throwing ad hominem commentary to attack my credibility or my character rather than my argument, just because I’m daring to challenge an economic model that is quite literally ruining everything on this planet.

I kind of do understand your point of view a bit. But i view to this a bit differently, i grew up not in North America but in country with anticapitalist regime and know how that fair in the end (spoilers: mom had to wait in lines for hours just to buy bread milk ect) and saw very different life. Capitalism may not be the ideal solition but its the best that works. And to subscribtion doesnt matter if its for entertaiment or not. If you are subscribing a tool to do while not being in buisiness it means its for your leisure entertaiment or whatever reason you think off (music is also an entertaiment for me besides buisiness). If you cannot afford it it doesnt mean its bad simply you cannot afford it. And thanks to capitalism you can increase your capital so you could afford it by doing some smart decisions. Be aware not everyone is good with money and not everyone has been schooled by parents (or at school/college/uni) to be economicaly literate or just in general not cut to that.

you seemingly grew up in opposite extremes to one another.
neither of you is wrong, just have seen the negatives of such extremes so wish to avoid them. nothing at all wrong with that.
but the answer probably lies somewhere in between.
i cant imagine what its like to need to queue for bread, sometimes not even getting any.
nor can i imagine having to go without medicine because i don't have insurance.
both of these things are shitty things to go through

[JerGoertz]

GAS = The desperate attempt to compensate the deep frustration which originates from the inability to create something presentable with the given resources.

Ouch! Hey buddy, did you think about our KVR-feelings before you posted that??

[Jace-BeOS]

GAS = The desperate attempt to compensate the deep frustration which originates from the inability to create something presentable with the given resources.

For me, the desire to buy new stuff comes from my desire to make music-making less tedious and possibly, maybe, even fun.

[punkfest2000]

Subscriptions are a terrible deal. Buying used on KVR is the most economical way, but you need patience.

Probably appeals to the crowd making interest only payments on multiple credit cards, yet still finds a way to buy smokes, drugs, and booze.