Pro Tools Update Subscription is Doubling July 1st (for Perpetual Licenses)

[Passing Bye]

Exactly, than Avid and Apple were interested in getting money from newcomers, semi-pro's and "average creative" pro's, now they suddenly are all about post production houses&co when market actually is focused on newcomers, bedroom producers and etc, even SSL made affordable piece of gear for the masses...

[reggie1979]

What I didn't like was being tied to m-audio. They make stuff that is just good enough to fail

I still have a profire 610. It sounded great but if the host crashed, and you tried to restart the host, it would blue screen. The only solution was to just make sure you restarted the computer first. PITA. Long live RME!!!!!!

[rageix]

What is really unfortunate, is that that Avid is not a person. They don't care and have no idea we're talking about them here.

Going from $0.27+ a day to $0.55 day is not the issue. It's doubling what you found value in paying for at the price you agreed to pay. THAT, is one issue.

Avid says they want to provide affordable plans to their customers...yea, by subsidizing the cost of the subscription crossgrades with the exorbitant price increase for the perpetual license holders. THIS, is another one.

Great way to treat people that commit to $100 a year which roughly, can come out to the upgrade cost of most DAWS after several years.

It’s funny that you mention the small increase when viewed daily... Avid is a publicly traded company and it appears their investors are happy with the move (just search for Avid, which is still AVID on the market).

Subscriptions make more money than non-subscriptions (this should be no shock to anyone paying attention to the way big software companies are going in recent years). This is not news, such things as doubling subscription prices should make investors happy, at least in the short term because such investors are merely speculating the stock should increase on such news. Only time will tell if it plays out as a positive or a negative.

[Jace-BeOS]

https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-p ... rade-plans

Q - Will Avid still offer BOTH perpetual and subscription offerings?

A - We will continue to offer perpetual pricing as an option. However, going forward the preferred pricing model will be subscription-based pricing, because this is the direction of the entire industry and the way people would prefer to license software.

What a bunch of bullshit. The company might prefer a subscription model, but it's pretty obvious from just about any thread on subscriptions that the majority of consumers do not like it and prefer perpetual licensing.

Exactly. It’s marketing bullshit from a company that believes they can suck more money out by converting all users into subscribers. Any company that goes the subscription route is abusing their customers and is anything but customer-oriented. Avid is a company that thinks they can get away with this because they think they’re a global standard... which will erode, the more blood they suck from their users.

[\RU]

Avid might completely remove the reinstatement upgrade option...
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?p=25 ... ost2530465

[Mathematics]

I believe Avid hires the same phone operators as PayPal. The way they answer back is very PayPal-ish. They listen to your question and keep changing the answer or they answer a different question that you didn't ask.

[Tronam]

Any company that goes the subscription route is abusing their customers and is anything but customer-oriented.

That doesn't necessarily have to be true in every case. It's a value proposition dependent on how often we use the product, how much we value frequent updates over time and longterm support. Adobe was one of the first companies to fully embrace the subscription model and while I wish they still offered persistent licenses, $10/mo for Lightroom + Photoshop has been worthwhile for me since they have done well to continue adding useful editing features and tools, along with timely support for new cameras with all their reverse engineered color profiles and lens corrections. They used to cost $600-900 (depending on version) and $299, with near annual paid upgrades, so this subscription model made them far more accessible to me and I haven't felt abused in this case. I don't know if I'd pay over $20/mo just for Premiere though.

[Hadrondrift]

I don't know if I'd pay over $20/mo just for Premiere though.

[OT] Especially with DaVinci Resolve available for free... [/OT]

[mgw38]

Subscription models are beneficial for corporate clients as they make it easier to manage operating costs. There is no initial investment needed and the annual subscription fees are easier to plan for. However, they do no necessarily work well for individual users, especially when subscription fees are high. As a hobbyist, I do not have a steady revenue stream that is supposed to offset the cost of ownership of Pro Tools. I simply can't commit to high subscription fees, it would be financially way too risky on my part to do that.

It appears that Avid is trying to consolidate revenue coming from their business clients at the risk of losing individual customers. It could be that they just figured that hobbyists usually don't use Pro Tools anyway, so if the few that use it move elsewhere that probably won't matter. Personally, I find that move exceptionally risky on their part. The individual user of today is the entrepreneur of tomorrow. If today's hobbyists are no longer using Pro Tools, tomorrow's businesses won't use it either.

I am in higher education. When Adobe forced everybody into their subscription model there was a time when the Adobe Creative Suite became too expensive for Universities to maintain. We are a Media Arts and Design college and there were two years where we decided to discontinue the use of Adobe software because we simply could not afford it. Adobe later changed their educational pricing strategy and we now have licenses again, but the two years were enough to completely change our production workflows. Most noticeably, we completely moved away from After Effects towards Nuke. There is an entire generation of students graduating now for whom Adobe is no longer the gold standard.

It is interesting to note that Steinberg went the exact opposite direction. They made their Nuendo platform (which is more feature rich than Pro Tools Ultimate btw) financially accessible to the average user.

[\RU]

The funny thing is that the reinstatement plan for Sibelius perpetual license has been on sale for 50% off. The sale was planned to be ended by the end of June, but it has been “extended indefinitely” as reported by Scoring Notes. https://www.scoringnotes.com/news/avid- ... ly-1-2019/

[Daimonicon]

Doubt many serious ones, that are making a living using Pro Tools, gonna jump ships because of 100 bucks...

I think the direction of travel is very clear - Pro Tools will rule forever in Audio Post, but will become steadily eroded over time for music use. The cost of a few licenses for full studios is trivial, but less so for individuals. Moreover, there are less and less compelling reasons to stay with PT. So I think we'll see music studios increasingly offering other DAWs alongside PT due to client demand.

Client demand? Are you kidding? Clients don't care or don't know what DAW is used neither how to use one in most cases. They care only about one thing and that's the end result.