chaosroyale wrote: ↑31 Jan 2021
The post below ended up in a RRP thread, but I think it might fit better here, because it deals with the future of Reason as a DAW;
Disclaimer - I am not a marketing person, and I am probably horrifically out of touch!
But I feel like RS are half-assing two things, instead of whole-assing one thing.
Reason is a...plug-in? a VSTi? a DAW?
This leads to some very mixed messages. Why not clearly divide the Rack Plugin from the DAW for marketing purposes.
Just an example -
Reason Rack Plugin $199 or 10$/mo - no DAW features.
>Advertise directly to Live, Cubase, and FL users
>The competition is Omnisphere / Komplete
>Strong point, Reason is cheaper than them and has easy modular style routing and a friendly interface.
Needs: improve the legacy units to modern standards - add oversampling, finer grained filter sweeps, etc.
Reason DAW $399 or 20$/mo - "traditional" Reason; all the Rack features plus the DAW
>Your competition is Bitwig and Studio One, Ableton Live to a certain extent (*similar nerdy users)
>Strong point, Reason's modular stuff is more "hands-on" feeling than the competition, Reason's built-in instruments are better designed*
*with the proviso that some updating is done as mentioned above
>By promoting it separately from the RRP, it gives a stronger image to each package. The RRP is a "killer plug-in", the DAW is "the modular sound design DAW". Neither feels like an add-on or afterthought.
>Updates can focus on quality of life, and not make all the Reason-as-a-DAW users hate you so much.
Needs: bring the modular aspect such as combinator up to the standard of the competition. The Basic concept is already good. Copy a bunch of quality of life updates from Studio One - those guys have already done all the hard R&D for you.
I think that would give Reason a much stronger image with all the potential customers.
However; I think I am 180º from the intentions of Reason Studios. The tone of the advertising is going in the exact opposite direction.
My idea assumes that Reasons "killer app" is to be a powerhouse for sound design, embracing the slightly "eccentric" and non-mainstream nature of Reason. Not a "lite" product aimed at kids or very casual users. Recently, everything they do looks like it is aimed at complete beginners - they never show Reason as being a professional product, or something you would use to make an album or a movie soundtrack.
The casual kids already have a pirate copy of FL studio and Serum, so I don't think they are going to hurry to buy the full version of Reason.
Like I said, this is just my dumb idea, and I am probably not the kind of user Reason wants any more. Maybe one of you guys has a better idea.