Mattias is starting to talk about the PUF closing

[jfrichards]

...there are wars & poverty & hunger in the World, all the technologies & sciences doesn't worth a shit!

Because it is used against us, it is much worse than being useless.  The issue rests on what we do about it.  And music can certainly play a role in that, instead of just being a diversion.  No money or fame in that though, maybe jail and death.  Ready?

[avasopht]

I mean, how can you have any meaningful and logical discussions if you are overly suspicious like that? You can't.

There is a difference between being skeptical and suspicious. A similar case is described by George Graham (2010, p. 338): "The remarks of a philosopher may seem as deluded as those of a patient in a schizophrenia ward. Each has a different voice with which to speak, however. The philosopher who denies that they exist or that there is an external world lives in the real world and fits in. The deluded patient, by comparison and contrast, cannot effectively fit in the actual world. Or they do so only with much luck and many difficulties".

The skeptical stance is a very possible and valueable onset for philosophical and scientifical research, wherease being suspicious is rather not.

Bibliography:
Graham, G. (2010). Are the Deluded Believers?: Are Philosophers Among the Deluded?

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 17

(4), 337-339.

Okay then to rephrase, you cannot have any meaningful logical discussion with someone who is exorbitantly sceptical. Scepticism has its place, but excessive scepticism, particularly in this case demonstrates more bias than healthy scepticism IMHO.

I'm very sceptical in thought, and I also dance with many different theories to explore alternative possibilities, but there are useful avenues for them and even in the right avenue there is a point within which it becomes communicatively destructive, which I believe is the case here.

I'll also go further and say that applying excessive scepticism to everything would probably demonstrate a behavioural disorder, but when confined to corporations, as in this case, it's just another way of saying, "I think Reason 8 didn't sell well therefore I'm going to ignore Propellerhead's sales report and question their integrity."

Yes I know, a positive report can have a positive effect on sales, though I highly doubt there would be any benefit in lying to the 100 or so forum members who read that statement!!

[jfrichards]

...No money & fame in what? In Music?
Jail & death, ready? What are you talking about here? ...

Meaning if you choose a life of making music to help the fight against those who use music and technology to screw us, you may end up in jail or dead.  I always thought Rage Against The Machine and Public Enemy came close to it, but they were commercialized and corrupted out of the game.  Same with some earlier attempts, The Last Poets, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Hendrix to a degree,  Bruce Cockburn, etc

[Territan]

One of the things that has been baffling me about a lot of this is: what's the end game? What do Reason users stand to gain by constantly second-guessing the Props' decisions and statements?

Is "the nigh-unto-masturbatorial stroking of one's own years-grown sense of entitlement toward a business" an option on the table? Because I'd like to bet a few dollars on that being the answer.

If you want to see where the Props first became aware of the problem, I think you need look no further than the "pay what you want" upgrade that was Reason 6. Quite a few people then boasted on the forums about paying one dollar. The "Props Owe Me, Man" attitude had a bit of a start before then, but the "pay what you want" sale was the first quantifiable metric showing just how widespread it was. After that, the Props really had to reappraise the value of both their software to the community, and the community itself. And I bet the community lost big in that assessment.

In versions 7 and 8, when the Props didn't cough up enough shiny enhancements, a good portion of the community lost their collective shit. And they not only lost it on the forums, they spread it into every nook and cranny they could—a moderator's nightmare.

And when Reason 9 is announced, and it doesn't have every feature that the people want, any forum they're on is going to develop its own stanky funk too. (Good luck, fellas...)

[CharlyCharlzz]

  ..)

this is so right ! I payed full price for reason 6 so I had a normal Customer comportement but a lot of guys where not giving a damn about anything and it only hited me now that it was the two bucks users LOL :s0238:  

I did not upgrade yet to 8 bit I dont mind paying 120 bucks for it but I can anderstand that the 2 bucks guys that got there FL studio try to troll it down to get a discounted version of reason within a few months .
if props did a pay what you want now it would be crazy , i only buy box versions in shops so I rather a : register your update today and get parsec and radical something offer but I trully tryed to act normal at first on that forum , I really needed the forum to learn so I fighted my way in LOL .
feels nice to be in a civilised one

[jfrichards]

...years-grown sense of entitlement toward a business...

The constant anger towards the Props around Reason 8 is way more complicated than a sense of entitlement to free stuff, although that may be a part of it for some.  The music software environment has changed dramatically in the last decade.  Prices have dropped and products have improved for all ten leading companies.  Some sections of the worldwide population are raking in the cash from their economic good fortunes, while others are sliding into poverty and even the devastations of war.  The music industry is experiencing both.  The ripples from these turbulences find their way into our little world, and for a few, the self-entitlement is a weird reflection of it all.  But there are other legitimate concerns facing the Reason user, like the future of the product lines and their cost.  It is a completely legitimate exercise to compare Reason/Refills with Logic/AUs, or Cubase/VSTs.  People compare price and value in every other purchase, from soap to houses.  Another factor is internet speed and price, and growing internet dependency.  Yet another is fear of a growing disconnect with the leaders and technicians in Stockholm.  Or even worse, a buyout that could change everything in a year or less.  And there are more big issues related to music trends, mobile technologies, independent music production, giant music monopolies, web stores and privacy, etc.  Any analysis of the Props decisions around R8 have to be looked at from these angles or it's pure speculation, and they may not have a clue about how to deal with half of these things so it may all have to be a wait and see approach.  Let's hope for our sake that they can keep their little boat floating as the undercurrents clash with each other.

edit:  I think another giant undercurrent is that Props had a market with the production related middle classes (or at least their children) in Europe and America, but that production has shifted to China and other Asian countries, where production employees are far from middle class at this stage.  Props has to shift their marketing to those upper middle class sections that are referred to as yuppies, or the me generation, or ( I forget the term used to describe the new residents of the Mission District in San Francisco, maybe hipsters) because that's where the disposable income is.  Asking them to stay focused on the core 500 on the forum is a little odd.  They may do far better to get a China-based product going in the long run.

[Flandersh]

Okay then to rephrase, you cannot have any meaningful logical discussion with someone who is exorbitantly sceptical. Scepticism has its place, but excessive scepticism, particularly in this case demonstrates more bias than healthy scepticism IMHO.

I'm very sceptical in thought, and I also dance with many different theories to explore alternative possibilities, but there are useful avenues for them and even in the right avenue there is a point within which it becomes communicatively destructive, which I believe is the case here.

I agree that excessive scepticism may make it harder to come to a useful stance, but I have not experienced this actual situation to be any more sceptical than the most cases in my academic field.

I'll also go further and say that applying excessive scepticism to everything would probably demonstrate a behavioural disorder, but when confined to corporations, as in this case, it's just another way of saying, "I think Reason 8 didn't sell well therefore I'm going to ignore Propellerhead's sales report and question their integrity."

The integrity of a company is situated in a broader context for me, which ask for as much questions as education do in relation to what kids should learn, how they should learn it, how the education should be organized, how the results of it should be measured etc. But the answers to it is not absolute, it is prudence and wisdom. So I'm compelled to ask, as a social scientist, about Propellerhead's integrity according to the seemingly change in direction of their software development.

Yes I know, a positive report can have a positive effect on sales, though I highly doubt there would be any benefit in lying to the 100 or so forum members who read that statement!!

It may have all to do with the longtime effects of it. A statement which make the true relationship between a company and the customer hidden may actually make the relationship stronger. It all has to do with what kind of relationship it is.

[platzangst]

But there are other legitimate concerns facing the Reason user, like the future of the product lines and their cost.  It is a completely legitimate exercise to compare Reason/Refills with Logic/AUs, or Cubase/VSTs.  People compare price and value in every other purchase, from soap to houses.

The difference being, if a soap or house doesn't have something you want it to have, like a fragrance or a garage, you don't spend long hours demanding the makers put these things in because they're "industry standard". If the 2015 Chevy Whatever doesn't offer 4-wheel drive, you don't consider it an insult to car lovers if the 2016 model also does not have 4-wheel drive, and you don't predict that Chevy is going to go belly-up if that year's sales are a little slow (and you don't assume they're slow just because you personally don't like the 2016 Chevy Whatever...).

There are legitimate concerns, but they are relatively few and far between, compared to the list of things people often complain about.

Any analysis of the Props decisions around R8 have to be looked at from these angles or it's pure speculation,

I would say any analysis of the Props' decisions by anyone not the Props is pure speculation...

[jfrichards]

...The difference being, if a soap or house doesn't have something you want it to have, like a fragrance or a garage, you don't spend long hours demanding the makers put these things in because they're "industry standard"....

I just bought a cheap house for retirement and while I wish what you're saying was true, I had to go back and forth getting the seller to fix or install several things before buying it.  It was way more than long hours.  It was long weeks.  Plus I found out that many more things had been hidden by the seller and am now paying for those things, so now it is long months of dealing with the problems, and lots of unexpected expenses.  The parallels with getting a music software that has some holes in it are there.  The statement, you get what you pay for is sort of appropriate, but unfortunately, you often don't due to marketing.  At the same time, the statement that the grass is always greener in the other software often applies.  With Reason and my little house, I have learned to appreciate and use what I have, get the best out of it that I can, and share my happiness with friends and family.  I sorted out soap decades ago.  Dr Bronners Peppermint is awesome.

[Flandersh]

I would say any analysis of the Props' decisions by anyone not the Props is pure speculation...

Or predication. In the same way as all in Reason is based upon an analysis by Props upon science and technology discovered or created by others than the Props. The difference between speculation and predication is the difference between belief (doxa) and justified belief (episteme).

[platzangst]

...The difference being, if a soap or house doesn't have something you want it to have, like a fragrance or a garage, you don't spend long hours demanding the makers put these things in because they're "industry standard"....

I just bought a cheap house for retirement and while I wish what you're saying was true, I had to go back and forth getting the seller to fix or install several things before buying it.  It was way more than long hours.  It was long weeks.  Plus I found out that many more things had been hidden by the seller and am now paying for those things, so now it is long months of dealing with the problems, and lots of unexpected expenses.  The parallels with getting a music software that has some holes in it are there.

But even so: The issues you wanted fixed, you had the seller work on before the sale - otherwise, I presume, there would have been no sale. You didn't just blindly fork over the payments and then demand satisfaction. Hidden defects may not have been ethical on the seller's part, if it was a deliberate deception, but from your comments I take it you haven't braced the seller about them, post-sale. There are some parallels, but it seems that people expect a different level of obligation from the makers of Reason than they would from most other products...

The difference between speculation and predication is the difference between belief (doxa) and justified belief (episteme).

Perhaps, but that dances around the issue of whether any of the beliefs about Reason and/or the Props are actually justified. I submit that of the beliefs held by non-PH employees, many, if not most, are not.

[Flandersh]

I submit that of the beliefs held by non-PH employees, many, if not most, are not.

And that is a belief or a justified belief?

[platzangst]

I submit that of the beliefs held by non-PH employees, many, if not most, are not.

And that is a belief or a justified belief?

I believe it to be justified.

1) Non-employees are not in a position to know crucial facts about the motives and reasonings behind any decision by PH.

2) The logic shown in many of the declarations (from non-employees) about what PH is doing or likely to do is tenuous at best. A good deal of it is purely emotional.

3) Much of it revolves around suspicion and unfounded assumptions, or attempts to impose one person's personal moral stance on another.

In my experience, the more alarmed and dramatic a claim about PH is, the more it is likely for that claim to be unjustified.

Or, to put it another way, when I say things like this, I rarely get a convincing justification for such beliefs delivered in reply; what I am more likely to get is things like "but no, your belief!"

[jfrichards]

...when I say things like this, I rarely get a convincing justification for such beliefs delivered in reply; what I am more likely to get is things like "but no, your belief!"

OK, if you're going to get all epistemological on my ass, how come you didn't respond to any of the undercurrent reasons I offered for the seemingly irrational outbursts on the forum?  Eg., raised quality and lowered prices of Reason's competitors, increased poverty of European and American middle class workers families, uncertainty about the continuation of particular product lines from Propellerhead, growing price of the internet and computers needed to stay current, shift in focus by Props staff away from forum members, a potential buyout, the future of EDM, increases in consumer tracking, and mistrust of focusing on hipsters.

None of these are minor issues and all affect members to varying degrees.  I'm certainly not saying I agree with all these reasonings, but they are real and do matter.  My experience is that emotional outbursts are almost always based on legitimate concerns, except those few where the person is spoiled rotten and is exclusively seeking attention and likes to put down others to make themselves look or feel good.  It is hard to take in the ideas of someone yelling and being disrespectful, but it needs to be done.  Props are actually pretty good at that, but they have let the rants go on way too long without addressing the underlying causes.

[Flandersh]

I believe it to be justified.

1) Non-employees are not in a position to know crucial facts about the motives and reasonings behind any decision by PH.

2) The logic shown in many of the declarations (from non-employees) about what PH is doing or likely to do is tenuous at best. A good deal of it is purely emotional.

3) Much of it revolves around suspicion and unfounded assumptions, or attempts to impose one person's personal moral stance on another.

In my experience, the more alarmed and dramatic a claim about PH is, the more it is likely for that claim to be unjustified.

Or, to put it another way, when I say things like this, I rarely get a convincing justification for such beliefs delivered in reply; what I am more likely to get is things like "but no, your belief!"

The concept of justified belief as episteme make the possibility of a position to predicate motives and reasonings behind decisions by a company (O'Brien, 2010), so I do not buy your first argument. Research on the way; nature of things, people, institutions etc. has been the goal for philosophy as well as science for over 2000 years so (Strauss & Cropsey, 1987), and there exist a great amount of knowledge (some random examples: Riesman, 2001; Melzer, Weinberger & Zinman, 2003; Dufour, 2003; Strauss, 1978) for making justified predication about the motives and reasonings behind PH's decisions. But your other arguments I find good enough to buy. 

Bibliography:
Dufour, D. R. (2003). The Art of Shrinking Heads: On the New Servitude of the Liberated in the Age of Total Capitalism. UK: Polity Press.

Melzer, A. M., Weinberger, J. & Zinman, M. R. (2003). The Public Intellectual: Between Philosophy and Politics. US: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

O'Brien, D. (2010). An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. UK: Polity Press.

Riesman, D. (2001). The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. US: Yale University Press.

Strauss, L. (1978). The City and Man. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Strauss, L. & Cropsey, J. (1987). History of Political Philosophy. (3rd Edition). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

[platzangst]

...when I say things like this, I rarely get a convincing justification for such beliefs delivered in reply; what I am more likely to get is things like "but no, your belief!"

OK, if you're going to get all epistemological on my ass,

--Technically, the other guy's ass--

how come you didn't respond to any of the undercurrent reasons I offered for the seemingly irrational outbursts on the forum?

Well, because whether or not these are the reasons for such outbursts, that does not make them particularly valid reasons.

I'm certainly not saying I agree with all these reasonings, but they are real and do matter.

I agree that they are "real", in the sense that these theories and concerns exist, and that to people who believe in them they may certainly matter, but just because someone has a fervent belief or fear does not make that belief sensible. It is not that I don't understand that people have reasons to believe certain things, it's just that a lot of professed reasons are not based on anything approaching reality. Why, for example, would it be at all rational to flip a lid over Reason if Ableton costs less or has certain features? What contract or obligation is betrayed? What moral statute is lacking? "Mistrust of focusing on hipsters" is loaded with assumptions - that there are "hipsters" (and how is that defined?), and that PH is somehow focusing on them (by doing what?) and that there is any reason at all to mistrust such a situation. Do any of the people complaining about this have anything but their own prejudices and hunches to support that kind of theory? If not, how then do we call that "legitimate"? I'm not going to call any old opinion legitimate simply because someone holds that opinion. I respect everyone's right to have an opinion; but that respect does not extend to the opinions themselves.

[EnochLight]

Yes.  I think we can put that one to bed now.  They keep repeating it so we have to take them at face value.

I'm certain that some will chime in here and say it's marketing BS and lies,

It's going to be a long 2015.

[KEVMOVE02]

Why was PUF considered the gold standard/source for customer info and feedback? Most consumer oriented companies rely far more or focus groups and "Nielson Family" type surveys. User forums would provide extremely biased information that is not indicative of the average consumer experience. PUF users represented an extraordinarily small segment of the total number of Reason users. In my experience, we had an astonishing level of access to the company spokespeople and employees. We also had almost unrestricted access to beta software. All of these factors led many to overvalue the relationship with Propellerhead. The perceived trend of indifference and apathy exhibited by Propellerhead was more a function of an emotional response to a change in relationship than a deliberate campaign by the Props to ignore their customers. Even if it was, it would not likely matter: the top grossing companies receive astonishingly low customer satisfaction scores, yet rarely exhibit a loss in customer base and/or revenue. I attribute this to the nature of most people to expend 4 times the effort expressing a complaint than they would to expend a compliment. 

[CharlyCharlzz]

I think Props will have so much work in making tutorials or even there manual up to date now

I never finded a group of tutorials going around all the features and same for the manual ,
there is a bit in one manual and a bit in the other and same for the videos but if your are new to Reason you just will never know all the features or maybe after a few years .

I trully would have never even bother looking for most features without the forum but most of all i would have never knew they where included .

[16161d]

Just checked the forums today and saw that they had been closed down, it's good to see discussion from them about why. To be honest when I saw they closed the forums down I was for a moment very happy with the decision, firstly in a brash way I was happy cause I've been staying away from the forums for a long time now, not just this community, but several overs I've frequented online for awhile now cause there has been for some reason a huge shift in how these online communities work and how the people within it act, it creates an extremely hostile environment for those who wish to stay neutral in such matters of discussing a product, discussing some productive.

Secondly, this has to be the best they could of possibly done, the weeks before they closed it down I was lurking and from the looks of it nothing had changed, people were still calling hearsay about propellerhead failing as a company. Quite notably, Mathias and other mods were sounding more and more frustrated towards the end, which fell on deaf ears and those who wanted to maintain a never ending revolving debate. While it could be seen as propellerheads giving up, and in some ways it is (not giving up, so much as moving on), I believe it is the right call. Towards the end I saw several users and cliches making these Reason websites to migrate the community over, I found this to be very amusing, and looking at it now, I see a connection to the userbase having tried so hard to maintain their community that they literally tore it apart into separate websites. Of course this probably isn't the case but it's easy to see it that way.

This leads me to the immigration of users onto new sites such as this. An absolutely brilliant idea, the PUF for a long time now has pretty much been user run, with very little moderation from propellerheads, I had been messaging the staff on the forums about this very issue and they also sounded to me as if they were pretty frustrated and at a deadend in regards to what to do. In fact the whole period after and before they released Reason 8 seemed to be pretty quiet and uncertain. This closing down of the forums, opening of discover and announcement of going in a new direction is the best news for me, it is clear to me now that they have reignited the embers and that we can expect to see a new propellerheads, albeit that some are not exactly happy with, but by all means one that caters to the current market (and by all means does not stand in the way of the old market still achieving what they need to with the tools they have).

It's interesting that they say that user forums are not really utilised anymore, which I guess is true for some places, not for others. It's clear that propellerheads put more effort into community with the userbase through more contemporary mediums such as twitter and facebook. To be honest, despite having been a forum nerd myself, these days if I wanted news and information about a product/company, I would also refer to twitter, facebook, or a website, it's just the way we have gone with media consumption and interaction.

Perhaps one of the greatest things about this whole ordeal, is that now it is all about the music. Let's face it, the PUF was full of drama, and people are always going to be drawn to drama over the endless stream of fresh, amazing tracks that were being posted daily on the music side of the forum, which was obviously neglected for so long. By removing the forums, and dedicating their time to discover, now we do not visit the website for drama, now we can focus solely on exploring this music, how it should be. We have been liberated.

So where does this leave us? The mass majority of the vocal, fraction of the Reason userbase has set up base here. You as the community now have the structure, the base and power now to create the PUF you've always wanted, to make a real difference now in how you want the community to be run. You can now moderate it efficiently, reach users more efficiently, and focus the forum solely on certain things. The only advice I can really offer, which I've said to a lot of other web/forum owners who started up new communities, is that if you want to thrive, and not just be a community excluded, funded and run only by the dedicated few, then you must work hard to spread and promote reasontalk, be in contact with other forums, websites etc. get working on affiliations, and spread the word. Myself as a long time reason members and community member didn't even know where to go when the forum closed down, how will any other new user know? I was fortunate enough to remember roughly the name of this site.

It shall be interesting to see how thing so, from the looks of it, this forum is already doing very well, I only hope the community doesn't destroys itself. We are not politicians, we are not of any class, race, level or scale, we are all artists with something to express, and it is our strength of understanding and keeping an open mind, which fuels us to create and experience. Whatever is shit to you, let it be shit, my theory is that you cannot deny anything to be untrue or unacceptable, as it exists and therefore is concrete, you cannot change that, you don't have to appreciate it, and any time spent trying to is futile. There's always going to be people with differing opinions, but at the root of it all we have something in common which is why this community exists to give us the chance to argue, debate, talk and have a good time, and that is that we are all reason users, and all love music.

Myself, I just don't feel I fit in to the whole idea of the meta community anymore, and so i'll probably just stick to occasionally lurking and doing what we all try to get ourselves to do. Work on some music.