Why all this hate on subscriptions?

[tc13]

I really don't get it? If you have all you need, bought suite and a lot of reack extensions, you have it all allready. For me it would be like $1000 to get all the racks. And that is not going to happen. Why this "Oh I need to own my tools" like if I need something for a week why spend $119 for that, when I can have it, and a lot more, for $20?

I pay monthly for things like Netflix, World of Warcraft, My cellphone, rent and a lot of other stuff. Soon it is summer and I wont be using Netflix that much, just end the subscription and not pay for anything I don't use. Bring back autum and dark evenings and i just start my subscription again.

Ok, I have R11 and maybe like 40-50 rack extension that I bought. For real I probably wont need another thing in my lifetime. But if I do want to have more stuff I rather prefer to have them for a month or two for the cost of a couple of beer.

I dont get the idea of software ever being something you own. Like wht ever happend to the very expensive plugins I bought like 15 years ago that didn't make it when Windows 7 was released. I still have a Mac G5 just to use Powercore Firewire. And that cost me sooooo much money.

I dont, and I really cant think how anyone would need to have like 50+ synths and effects around all the time. Like when you need it, just rent it for a month and be done with.

I buy a beer to get some satisfaction for the moment, you might argue that it is throwing money away. I see a film, watch a concert or whatever. All money that in a way are lost. But at the same time not, I got what I was paying for at the time...

And also this notion of oh if I stop paying and end my subscription I have nothing. Either I'm stupid or missing something, you had the time using all the stuff the period you paid for? So I can't see any valid reasons for complaining about subscriptions. HEck I even pay for Premiere Pro and there it is not even possible to have it if I stop. Reason, still at least, have the option you can buy it should you hose to not renew your subscription.

Confused as f--k

[soroc sosta]

Hello for me it's not as much about hate for subscription. Surely anyone that feels that deeply about it will not buy in.

It's seems more about all the basic features and request that I (we) have been asking for not being addressed. I don't claim to know the resources RS has to create their software, but judging from the past technologies (allihoopa, balance, iOS app), it seems that attention would be best suited to addressing users request.

It's very frustrating imo

[PhillipOrdonez]

It may be a good idea for someone like you who is a hobbyist and sporadically uses such tools. A few months here and there. Great! Good for you. For me it isn't a good investment to pay forever to keep using the tools I need for my job. ‍♂️

[guitfnky]

if I could shut off my desire to make music for a few months every so often, a Netflix-like experience might be a good idea.

[Auryn]

It may be a good idea for someone like you who is a hobbyist and sporadically uses such tools. A few months here and there. Great! Good for you. For me it isn't a good investment to pay forever to keep using the tools I need for my job. ‍♂️

Yeah this, music software is a tool, not an "experience" you buy, enjoy and discard. How would the OP feel if his car or kitchen appliances all stopped working because he stopped paying his monthly fees to the manufacturer?

[Philup]

How much resource is put into the subscription model and framework that no one requested? If their homepage is any indication, they went "all in" with a tiny #youcanstillbeperpetual at the bottom of the page.

Instead of re-investing their capital in the core product to improve the user experience, the are re-investing in more nipples to milk their legacy for an improved wallet experience.

I am a fan of the Reason Rack experience I use it as a creative tool for inspiration and when inspired.
I an not a fan of Netflix it inspires me to do nothing.

Right now, all of the companies marketed attention on subs makes me feel like my need for creativity is being taken advantage of.
I don't like how that makes me feel.

[joeyluck]

It's funny, before there was a Reason subscription, any time I saw someone complaining about Propellerhead/Reason Studios not introducing the features they want into a point update or into the next version, I would remind those people that they have exactly what they paid for.

In my eyes, many of the complaints and demands would come across as if these users are paying into a subscription. Well now you can be a subscriber. Sign up for a subscription and IMO you have more ground to stand on about demands for continued updates, new features, and what you think they should be spending their time on... I typically prefer perpetual licenses, but in that sense, I have exactly what I paid for. I can really only hope for bug fixes.

[zoidkirb]

Is there really so much hate though? Reason Talk doesn't seem to be the target audience for R+ as most people own enough already.
I think there was a lot of hate here for how it was launched, but nowadays it's more a case basically 'that's just not for me but nothing against it'

[Bes]

zoidkirbs right i don't think ive seen much here since it was launched but i have thoughts anyway so im going to try and work this out as i type it

firstly, if reason is as transient in your life as drinking a beer then subscriptions suit you and you might be the very kind of customer reason studios were looking for when they introduced the service.

there are people for whom the reason daw is not so transient. i have been using reason for 20+ years, i know what it was like to use reason before it had recoding capabilities heck i remember making entire tracks using the matrix. we grew up together, it has become part of my identity and my music became what it is through exploration of the perculiar quirks that i chose to use and those i chose not to use. i have learned and forgotten more reason daw technical jargon than i remember, i am not just a music maker i am a reason music maker or more specifically i have become a reason rack extension music maker, thoughts of combining rack extensions occupy my mind when i'm away from the computer and they will be my memories when i'm no longer making music

there are folks much smarter than i who develop rack extensions solely for the reason daw ecosystem, RE's make the reason daw a much better more versatile and functional tool and i reckon reason studios benefits from selling a better tool. for some RE Devs reason studios is a marketplace for them to make a name for themselves that might lead to other work and a revenue stream that is potentially sustainable but ultimately that marketplace is wholly owned and governed by reason studios who are able to make decisions (like introducing a new fee structure for the daw that doesn't integrate with the RE shop or changing the layout of the website to reduce RE shop traffic) without consulting or communicating to the devs which is what happened at the time of introducing the subscriptions. again though, i'm not a dev myself but some are active on this website and have posted concerns similar to this here before, if ive mispoken on their behalf i'm sorry thats not my intent. since the subscriptions have been released reason studios have worked to enable 3rd party re licenses with R+ but my point was about re devs not having agency about the governing of the marketplace and i think this potentially discouraging to rack extension developers. a lot of re devs have silently become no longer active over the years which has been sad every time

i think 'hate about subscriptions' is a misread of the situation. i see folks like me who have invested in something they have no agency to control, having feelings sometimes anticipation and joy but also sometimes with frustration and fear because that investment can be jeopardised. it seems pretty human to me to try to protect our investments, and i'd argue that a healthier relationship would be one where we actually did have more agency about the things we were invested in

[integerpoet]

It's funny, before there was a Reason subscription, any time I saw someone complaining about Propellerhead/Reason Studios not introducing the features they want into a point update or into the next version, I would remind those people that they have exactly what they paid for.

In my eyes, many of the complaints and demands would come across as if these users are paying into a subscription. Well now you can be a subscriber. Sign up for a subscription and IMO you have more ground to stand on about demands for continued updates, new features, and what you think they should be spending their time on... I typically prefer perpetual licenses, but in that sense, I have exactly what I paid for. I can really only hope for bug fixes.

One thing it seems people forget is that software is an ongoing compatibility journey.

I don't plan to stay on a particular operating system version or hardware forever and, within limits, I don't expect an app developer to support new versions of their app on old configurations or old versions of their app on new configurations. I was most likely going to "buy" all the upgrades eventually anyway, unless I became disenchanted with the app in general and, say, jumped to Logic or something. In other words, I always perceived my relationship with RS as — informally — being much like a subscriber anyway. It was on a looser schedule with less predictable pricing, sure, but I never really thought I owned anything in the sense of owning, I don't know, a truck.

Are there some differences implied by a more formal subscription? Absolutely. It makes RS more sustainable if for no other reason than that more predictable revenue is less stressful to employees and more attractive to investors. Is there reason to believe the flow of things I enjoy will slow? Not really. About the only thing I can think of that I truly lose is the ability to skip an upgrade. To make this more concrete, I might have skipped Reason 10 and jumped from 9 to 11. Do I prize the ability to do that? Not really. Certainly not enough to get up in arms about the loss.

But of course the question that started this thread probably doesn't have an answer which explains the drama because it's not as if RS have asked us to vote in a referendum on software subscriptions in general. They've stopped offering something very specific and started offering something else very specific instead. People might reasonably be unhappy with the specific differences in the short term regardless of subscription issues. For example, I can see how some people who ponied up for Reason Suite and/or have been building a similar RE library for years would resent that any yahoo can now jump into Reason+ for a mere US$20 initial investment, but I prefer to take the longer view: those folks will be US$240 deep after the first year just like anybody else (or US$200 for those whose foresight tells them they're in for the long haul anyway).

[R303]

I'm sure some people don’t want to discuss it anymore.

The main problem seems to be that nobody asked for it and now resources are "wasted" on it.
But the cost of offering a subscription is quite small, in any case, it will not fail.

I have a problem with young people being excluded, because at the same time the cheapest version was abolished. Of course, it's nice to be among the youngest here, but Reason will also lose relevance.
The timing in the middle of the crisis was bad, the release video was more of a fiasco (and btw much too long). Thumbs up also play a role in the reach of a video.
Besides, it’s not an entertainment subscription. You have to actively put work into it, otherwise nothing will come of it. Compared to other DAWs (I know Studio One in particular), there are too many vulnerabilities in the way Reason works.

Additionally there are expenses for other plugins. I think you pay more than with the standard licence, plus I don't need some instruments from the subscription at all, but still pay for it. And Bes is right, for some it is not a program that you can just cancel and ignore for a while. Some just open it and have a clear conscience, it’s there.

Offering a subscription is the right thing to do because there is demand (regardless of Reasontalk, even if it is only 10 percent). It would just be wrong to exclude other people.
There is no need to put an expensive fabric on the luxury seat to produce a software licence.

[guitfnky]

I agree with others in that I don't think there's any real hate for subscriptions, though there is a whole lot of "yeah, that's not for me". most of the strong feelings about it were about what a clusterfuck the announcement was.

[PhillipOrdonez]

With Windows 10 remaining Windows 10 forever, what are the chances of not being able to use your old Reason 11 version for a few years? Say in 10 years it stops working, right? Okay, and you've been using Reason all this time. Didn't really need all Res and you didn't need any the newer features. What do you do? Well, you just upgrade to the latest version and have another hypothetical 10 years of use out of it. That's why owning is the better choice financially.

I know that this is not a great example because anyone doing it professionally is going to want to upgrade often to take advantage of the workflow enhancements that mean more money earned per fewer hours of work, assuming they put the work in such features, however skipping a few versions and upgrading instead of paying monthly or yearly is still cheaper and if for whatever reason something ever happens to you financially, you can still work because you own the license whereas you'd lose access to your source of income of you cannot pay the subscription.

[Neo]

How much resource is put into the subscription model and framework that no one requested? If their homepage is any indication, they went "all in" with a tiny #youcanstillbeperpetual at the bottom of the page.

Instead of re-investing their capital in the core product to improve the user experience, the are re-investing in more nipples to milk their legacy for an improved wallet experience.

I am a fan of the Reason Rack experience I use it as a creative tool for inspiration and when inspired.
I an not a fan of Netflix it inspires me to do nothing.

Right now, all of the companies marketed attention on subs makes me feel like my need for creativity is being taken advantage of.
I don't like how that makes me feel.

+1

"Its the perception of poor value, or being taken advantage of..."

For reference:
Subscription Psycho : Analysis Of The Subscription Economy & Its Bad Actors
https://medium.com/@guisebule/subscript ... dec71bf7d0

[joeyluck]

With Windows 10 remaining Windows 10 forever, what are the chances of not being able to use your old Reason 11 version for a few years? Say in 10 years it stops working, right? Okay, and you've been using Reason all this time. Didn't really need all Res and you didn't need any the newer features. What do you do? Well, you just upgrade to the latest version and have another hypothetical 10 years of use out of it. That's why owning is the better choice financially.

I know that this is not a great example because anyone doing it professionally is going to want to upgrade often to take advantage of the workflow enhancements that mean more money earned per fewer hours of work, assuming they put the work in such features, however skipping a few versions and upgrading instead of paying monthly or yearly is still cheaper and if for whatever reason something ever happens to you financially, you can still work because you own the license whereas you'd lose access to your source of income of you cannot pay the subscription.

You've also described a benefit of subscribing, and the bonus coming from owning a version that doesn't go away.

With a subscription, you can cancel anytime and pick back up at any time. You can pay for a one or a few months now to finish a project and then pay for a few months down the road for the next project, but then with new features and new REs included.

And then the bonus is, it doesn't matter if you own Reason 1 or Reason 11 or anything between... You can still upgrade down the road even if you use the subscription here and there in between.

[EdGrip]

Simply because companies get more money from subscriptions than they do from sales. That's why everything is moving that way. The model generates more money from users - you - than sales. That's it. That's the whole thing.

"Actually when you work out how much it costs to upgrade every 2 years..."

We don't all upgrade every two years. And even if we did.

Also it's about how much you use the service. When I think back to how much I used Spotify, I'd have been better off spending the money on albums.

Monthly subscriptions seem individually small, but they add up.

[EdGrip]

Also, there's a psychological element. Once I've paid for software, in my mind it becomes "free".

If I had no current subscriptions for any music software, and needed to pay £10 (or whatever it is) to activate a DAW to play with one evening... The chances are high I'm gonna go, ahhh, what's the point? It would feel like paying £10 to rent a guitar to have a noodle on for 20 minutes.

Needs to feel "free at the point of use" otherwise it just won't happen (for me - totally get that everyone's different!)

[DaveyG]

Simply because companies get more money from subscriptions than they do from sales. That's why everything is moving that way. The model generates more money from users - you - than sales. That's it. That's the whole thing.

This.

Subscriptions squeeze more money out of most users in the long term because once you start there is a powerful temptation to keep paying even if you are not using it so much. Subscriptions are always promoted as a benefit but actually to many people they become a drug.

It's the way it all adds up. You could rent a daw, a sounds library, some VSTs, some cloud storage, some office software and suddenly you are spending well over $100 per month on stuff you stop being able to use the day you stop paying.

The only reason companies introduce subscriptions is because it makes them more money.

[EdwardKiy]

the reasons are manifold. Some have already been stated.

One of the reasons is biological and it represents a problem with our society. We have a biological need for possession and ownership. It's a function of security, it reinforces emotional and memory output, trains and facilitates memory and emotional recall. That's why we have family photos, that's why we developed art, that's why we have more than one brand of anything including door knobs, that's why we stopped being nomadic, that's why a dog wants to burry the bone, that's why birds make nests, that's why predators are territorial etc. There is pathology in extremes, of course, such as hoarding, but it is even more pathological to not own things. Unlike hoarding, which can be treated even in severe cases in the elderly, being underdeveloped emotionally and intellectually (memory) cannot be as easily cured after you reach a certain threshold during early development ( <27 years). You then just become corporate fodder. Good luck doing what you like when you are 35+ and have been in the loop of work-rent-subscription for 10 years, own nothing and have kids. If you still have the capacity to maintain a partner's interest long enough to have kids, that is.

[avasopht]

You've also described a benefit of subscribing, and the bonus coming from owning a version that doesn't go away.

With a subscription, you can cancel anytime and pick back up at any time. You can pay for a one or a few months now to finish a project and then pay for a few months down the road for the next project, but then with new features and new REs included.

And then the bonus is, it doesn't matter if you own Reason 1 or Reason 11 or anything between... You can still upgrade down the road even if you use the subscription here and there in between.

This is incorrect.

You can't use Reason if you stop subscribing.

He was talking about skipping a few version upgrades while continuing to use Reason (something many users do).

[PhillipOrdonez]

With Windows 10 remaining Windows 10 forever, what are the chances of not being able to use your old Reason 11 version for a few years? Say in 10 years it stops working, right? Okay, and you've been using Reason all this time. Didn't really need all Res and you didn't need any the newer features. What do you do? Well, you just upgrade to the latest version and have another hypothetical 10 years of use out of it. That's why owning is the better choice financially.

I know that this is not a great example because anyone doing it professionally is going to want to upgrade often to take advantage of the workflow enhancements that mean more money earned per fewer hours of work, assuming they put the work in such features, however skipping a few versions and upgrading instead of paying monthly or yearly is still cheaper and if for whatever reason something ever happens to you financially, you can still work because you own the license whereas you'd lose access to your source of income of you cannot pay the subscription.

You've also described a benefit of subscribing, and the bonus coming from owning a version that doesn't go away.

With a subscription, you can cancel anytime and pick back up at any time. You can pay for a one or a few months now to finish a project and then pay for a few months down the road for the next project, but then with new features and new REs included.

And then the bonus is, it doesn't matter if you own Reason 1 or Reason 11 or anything between... You can still upgrade down the road even if you use the subscription here and there in between.

A benefit for the casual user. If you need to use on the daily, it is bad business.

[Auryn]

Weirdly enough, I wouldn't have any problem paying like 10-15 a month for a patreon donation to RS provided they use that for improving the core DAW/product. It's mostly the "keep paying forever or lose access" shit that puts me off.

[R303]

The important thing is simply not to become dependent on small companies. If there's one thing a customer hates, it's uncertainty. And announcing something and throwing away half the product range is a prime example. The normal guy doesn’t even know what happens with his normal licence in the future when Reason+ is written everywhere.

[joeyluck]

You've also described a benefit of subscribing, and the bonus coming from owning a version that doesn't go away.

With a subscription, you can cancel anytime and pick back up at any time. You can pay for a one or a few months now to finish a project and then pay for a few months down the road for the next project, but then with new features and new REs included.

And then the bonus is, it doesn't matter if you own Reason 1 or Reason 11 or anything between... You can still upgrade down the road even if you use the subscription here and there in between.

This is incorrect.

You can't use Reason if you stop subscribing.

He was talking about skipping a few version upgrades while continuing to use Reason (something many users do).

I was talking about those users who own a copy of Reason, which is a majority of ReasonTalk, but who are also interested in subscribing. You will always have a version of Reason to fall back on to write new songs with, to jam with, and to upgrade from later. The trade-off is that you might need to subscribe a month to access a project created in Reason+ (depending on which version of Reason you own). But if you upgrade again down the line, that's all fine. Also...bounce those tracks.

So let's say you are someone who doesn't upgrade every version. Pretend you are still on Reason 8 and you are just waiting for them to add track folders before you upgrade... But you are working on a project that could really benefit from pitch edit, something you don't need often enough to upgrade. Well you can subscribe to get that feature to work on that project. Maybe you want to use Europa or Beat Map... You can even bounce those tracks so you can mix them in Reason 8 later. You can imagine that with any feature or device that they add... You can do that at any point, you can do the smart thing and bounce tracks, and you can upgrade to Reason 13 or Reason 20 or whatever.

You can have subscribed a few times along the way to use any features or devices, but not have to commit to upgrading at that time. That's the benefit.

[ltbrunt00]

I think people generally live in a bubble and unaware of what the industry is moving towards. There are many different digital music products that have some form of subscription service. These services allow people to use tools that they may not be able to afford to purchase outright. I don't plan on using Reason subscription myself. I purchase outright or rent to own anything the Props release that I want. These new revenue streams can only help to make the core product better and possibly bring in new users which helps the product grow.

I suspect the people in the forums that continue to complain about subscriptions must not be aware of products with subscriptions like Protools, Presonus Sphere or my favorite Composer Cloud by East West/Quantum Leap which I subscribe to throughout the year. I'm not sure why some people are all doom and gloom all the time. If people are mad that Reason doesn't have features they want the easy thing to do is start learning another DAW application and learn how produce using multiple products. At some point it isn't worth complaining all the time.

I myself use Reason and Studio One often & Cubase and Bitwig from time to time. For me the one advantage of Reason is that rack extensions continually keep adding value to the tool. There are features I wish they would add and until they do will keep using other software until Reason becomes the one DAW I can do everything I need in. It is sort of sad but in my Studio one and Cubase projects I am using about 50 percent Reason Rack Plugin.