I guess we're just looking at things differently - when you're talking about buying REs you're using labels like "sensible decision", "reckless purchases", "properly manage money", "prioritize spending". It seems like an investment to you, a return-on-equity kind of thing or maybe you're approaching to all your finances like that. That's fine.platzangst wrote: ↑18 Jan 2019"Safer" from what? You're making my point. If you're not buying as many REs now because you don't want to have to eat that entire cost on your own, then good, I think that's a sensible decision. Enabling reselling of REs only provides you with a motive to be more reckless with your purchases, and as you yourself point out, it doesn't benefit Props or the RE developers in any way, so without showing such a benefit, I don't know how any of the people arguing for re-sale think they'd ever make a convincing argument for it.
And just declaring my "image of how to run a business" as being ridiculous doesn't say anything, doesn't say how it's ridiculous. That's just namecalling, son.
This whole business is incoherent. If you think selling your REs to others is unfair to the developers and you wouldn't sell them anyway, then I don't know what the point is of you starting a thread about how it would be nice if one could re-sell REs.
For me, music is just a hobby and thus I sometime spend the money irrationally, under the influence of an impulse. And I know I'm not alone. For me, it's ultimately not about the money. I could go right now and buy all the REs I ever laid my eyes on with interest and there wouldn't be a dent in my disposable income. It's just that I don't like having something I don't use and if I could pass it on to someone else at reduced price, with Props & devs still benefitting from it (THAT's how I described my idea, don't know why you said otherwise) then what's wrong with that?! And BTW, Reason does really lousy job constantly reminding me of the things I bought but don't need, by installing ALL THE REs when I click "sync all", so that's not helping. With VSTs at least I can delete them from my HDD and never install again. I just don't like clutter and find it annoying browsing through an endless list of devices, so - as stupid as this may sound, I know - an option to hide and not install/update REs I choose would be enough for me to buy more REs
I never sold any VST or DAW that I own, because a) I still think I might need it in the future, when I have more time for music, b) as I said it's not about the money (for me, at least). But I take comfort in having that option available to me, should I ever need it.
Lastly, I appreciate your idealistic stance that you'd prefer to sell fewer copies to people that really want your stuff, as opposed to sell more but to people who might be there to only "try it out". But Props are owned by an investment fund now, so running business is about squeezing every penny out of each invested Dollar. So if there's money to be made on 2nd hand market, then it's smart to at least investigate that possibility. Maybe the cut they'd take on re-sold REs would be 50% lower, but maybe having the "safety net" they'd sell 2x more REs to the 1st time users too? Or people would re-sell the REs numerous times, thus actually multiplying that profit? It's obviously anecdotal evidence, but on a local Reason FB group I've seen no RE mentioned in last 7-8 months, even a HUGE one like Complex-1! People either post their music, or ask for feedback about ...VSTs, their performance, etc. So if Props made the 1st step and opened their DAW to VSTs, they should make the next one and give the RE developers a fighting chance to compete.
I really keep my fingers crossed that Props are able to pull off everything they've been showcasing in that JUCE presentation, but let's be realistic - there's huge amount of money involved in standardising the cross-platform audio protocols, there's many more much bigger players and rarely the best solution wins. Props might have had the foresight, the vision and the technology. But they don't have the numbers - of both users and developers. When was the last time you saw a big developer entering the RE platform?