Is Reason Studios falling apart?

[altron]

I've observed these gloomy signs in the recent years/months/days ...

A below expectations Reason 11 upgrade was released.
A disappointing Reason 12 upgrade was released.
Reason+ was introduced.
Amount of negativity about Reason on YT has increased.
A few days ago the Reason licensing server was down over the weekend.
I'm seeing REs in the Reason RE shop with broken thumbnails.

It does not require a genius to count all these doom-suggesting signs together.
Maybe it's just the recent global trend of war, non-stop deadly pandemics, and trite new world order ambitions by elitists that spoil the soup but Reason Studios not displaying any attempts in getting Reason at least somewhat up-to-par with often requested features of leading DAWs seems concerning.

I've tried Bitwig Studio yesterday, used it for roughly 15 minutes and then was uninspired and irritated by the fiddly UI and uninstalled it again (after it also re-programmed my Arturia Keylab without asking me). Yes I know it's more powerful than Reason but I'm oldschool and like skeuomorphic UI and I guess will just stick with Reason even after it has long been abandoned and forgotten. Call me a dinosaur. But Reason - while leaving a lot to be desired - works for me in its current state.

[MrFigg]

Yes it is.
No it's not.
Yes it is.
No it's not.
Etc etc etc.

[RobC]

Gotta ask Mattias about that!

[bxbrkrz]

To be fair, we'll know a bit more @ Lucky Number Reason 13. It has been way worse doom and gloom in the past, and Reason is still it's own company, unlike Steinberg, Emagic, etc...

I never know when there are server issues. Ignition key club member here.

[MuttReason]

Hard to answer this really because a lot of companies (including music software companies) go through a rough patch when a product launch isn’t up to scratch but then recover from it. The old Props dropped the ball several times along the way but always got back on track eventually. The Props were (and RS remain today) a small business with fewer employees than my local high school, so stumbles can take a while to put right. They haven’t got an army of people to throw at a problem.

No doubt that RS screwed up the launch of R12 (they’ve openly said as much) but recent builds have begun to put things right and (IME) the latest build is rock solid. Although - to be clear - I know that it is not solid for everyone and some people are still having problems.

Not sure the other points you mention are signs of the company “falling apart”. Annoying errors and glitches? Yes, for sure, especially the authorisation server outages… really bad for user confidence in Reason as a professional product. Although TBF RS have said that enabling offline access is part of their plan so maybe this won’t be so much of a PITA in future.

Negative YT comments? Definitely when R12 dropped but much less so in recent months from what I’ve seen. But trying to gauge a company’s success from the balance of YT comments is (to put it mildly) rather imprecise, YT comments are so often just a zoo of mad randomness mixing the well-informed with the lunatic. A much better guide is the mood on this board which was seriously negative for months after R12 but now seems collectively a lot calmer and more positive (on balance…. not every post).

Overall I’d say the company feels a lot less flaky than it did shortly after the Verdane acquisition when they screwed up quite regularly (eg the bizarre price rise within days of acknowledging the mess of the R12 launch… that was Marketing 101 stupid).

And I’ve had much worse experiences with other companies recently (eg Akai, Roland Cloud)… really poor QC involved, and (unlike RS) absolutely zero communication with their customers.

[RobC]

To be fair, we'll know a bit more @ Lucky Number Reason 13.

They should release it on a Friday 13th date! : )

[bxbrkrz]

To be fair, we'll know a bit more @ Lucky Number Reason 13.

They should release it on a Friday 13th date! : )

Announced by Jason Voorhees, our new RS/RT relationship manager.

[fullforce]

They should release it on a Friday 13th date! : )

Announced by Jason Voorhees, our new RS/RT relationship manager.

His favorite RE is the Executioner.

[bxbrkrz]

Announced by Jason Voorhees, our new RS/RT relationship manager.

His favorite RE is the Executioner.

[moofi]

Yawn

[dakta]

A below expectations Reason 11 upgrade was released. - subjective
A disappointing Reason 12 upgrade was released. - subjective
Reason+ was introduced. - I'll admit this did happen, I have to as I benefit from it. Considering it's easier for me to pay a small monthly sum than buy it all at once, I don't love subscriptions but in realistic terms was a deal maker not a breaker
Amount of negativity about Reason on YT has increased. - I think peoples priorities are falling apart perhaps, its not that long ago you had to build your rack out of actual stuff
A few days ago the Reason licensing server was down over the weekend. - cap gone bad in the power supply? telecom engineer next door cut the wrong wire? bit early to tie this to the company falling apart
I'm seeing REs in the Reason RE shop with broken thumbnails. - a glitch in the matrix?

Most of my responses are more than a bit tongue in cheek but still. Niche product, niche market trying to make a constant living in a pay once permanent benefit world yes - - there will be some issues along the way

[killhamster]

I'm seeing REs in the Reason RE shop with broken thumbnails. - a glitch in the matrix?

Looks more like a glitch in AWS to me

[crimsonwarlock]

Looks more like a glitch in AWS to me

AWS does indeed appear to have regular glitches lately. Reason why I'm running my own cloud stacks

[BRIGGS]

Will Reason become open source, if it does fall apart?

If that's the case, we can rebuild Reason Studios, into a better Reason Studios.

[Aosta]

All I know is I'm on R11, I open it up and get that comfort and familiarity I'd loved all these years knowing what ever I do in there it will be interesting, fun and I will have something I like at the end of the session. I will enjoy experimenting with different instruments and effects and cables, explore patches, tweak knobs and dials and have a sonic journey without any crashes or loss of work.
Reason is absolutely fine for me

[BRIGGS]

All I know is I'm on R11, I open it up and get that comfort and familiarity I'd loved all these years knowing what ever I do in there it will be interesting, fun and I will have something I like at the end of the session. I will enjoy experimenting with different instruments and effects and cables, explore patches, tweak knobs and dials and have a sonic journey without any crashes or loss of work.
Reason is absolutely fine for me

+1

Yep, no problems here either, other than user errors.

[dakta]

I'm seeing REs in the Reason RE shop with broken thumbnails. - a glitch in the matrix?

Looks more like a glitch in AWS to me

Touche

I just don't want to get dramatic about it - I don't dispute reason has flaws but there seems a weird eternal interest in how close it is to its demise

[Carambo]

Why Reason+ is necessarily something negative ? I subscribed to many editors (Output Arcade, Plugin Alliance,...) on a monthly basis, though not to Reason+ because no needs so far, and they are all with growth momentum with happy users. Reason is still an extraordinary creative tool, even more now that I finally found out how use midi infos from the Rack in Logic

[dakta]

I prefer perpetual license to be fair, and I'd prefer to have one any day of the week but there's two big problems

1) as its a fixed price it won't go far to fund future development.

2) Looking at the RE's I use buying perpetual would just not be realistic unless I happened to come into a nice tidy windfall.

The good news is they don't hold you to a contract with it, so with some limitations it is quite flexible, once upon a time you could spend hundreds on a single piece of hardware and that's per instance of said type of hardware now its 30 quid or so for a bundle of different types of hardware, no real limits except your own pc on the amount of instances and its yours for a month and if you dont want to use it beyond that thats fine and if you do thats fine and if you dont next month but do the month after thats fine too

what its done, is made something great quite accessible - I bought a round of coffee in the cafe for my family at a garden centre the other week that has cost more than 30 days access to the entire reason suite. If you told me 20 years ago i could have a dozen synths for the price of a garden centre cup of coffee for my family for 30 days unrestricted use I'd have said go give your head a wobble

[guitfnky]

1) as its a fixed price it won't go far to fund future development.

I dunno, the vast majority of software companies have managed pretty okay for the last, what, 40 years charging fixed prices. Propellerhead included.

[dakta]

All I can say in response is I dunno, ther'es a lot of software makers that have come and gone over the years - notable accounting software even big names like sage are now pushing SaaS and whilst it hasn't been a thing I think if you want to today make a software house work i think it's something you need to consider. Unless you're selling something to a wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide audience you need regular income - one time purchase to a niche or specialist audience doesn't sound very sustainable to me.

*The pre-paypal world may have been forced to do things differently for better or worse

even games are heading that way with microtransactions and dlc to make it profitable and even BMW appears to be heading that way, if you don't want a perpetual derriere warmer license thats fine but it'l be a subscription if you later do

[guitfnky]

sure, subscriptions work too. but to suggest there’s something inherently difficult about funding new work with previous sales is to ignore decades and decades and decades and decades of precedent.

“doesn’t sound sustainable to me”. again, Propellerhead managed it for >20 years, give or take. seems pretty sustainable.

[Loque]

Yes it is.
No it's not.
Yes it is.
No it's not.
Etc etc etc.

I agree.
I disagree.
Etc etc etc...

[bxbrkrz]

Why do we need a post-paypal world? It's OK not to be connected 24/7, no matter what the machine tells you. It's OK to wait until you have the cash to buy what you want. What you have now in front of you is not falling apart. But for some people it is very hard to imagine a pre-FOMO world. Always looking for reasons to be sad__is sad. Looking for others to join you to your jacuzzi of sadness__even sadder.
But what do I know? I'm happy as a clam, me, my Reason Suite 11 and an old 1080p TV

[dakta]

“doesn’t sound sustainable to me”. again, Propellerhead managed it for >20 years, give or take

managed