joeyluck wrote: ↑21 Feb 2020
Well I think that's exactly what you can do with subscriptions—turn them on and off on a whim. For instance, someone currently on a previous version that has taken a break who wants to be up to speed with all the new features needs to pay to upgrade (albeit the most affordable and least complicated upgrade path out there). But with a subscription, you could pay a small single monthly fee and be using all the new features. Take a week or two months off, come back and pay for another month. I think the attractiveness in any subscription model comes down to the pricing and annual vs monthly costs.
For instance, Adobe Audition for $20.99/month (annual plan, paid monthly) totals at $250/year...The prepaid annual plan only saves you about $10 on that.... And then the true monthly plan (cancel anytime) is $31.49/month, which for many is simply too much per month. I think if Reason were $10 or $15 a month, many people would find that very attractive.
Who on earth uses Audition for making music ? I mean, it's capable and all, but I don't think I've ever read about Audition being anyone's choice for tunes, and I'm not sure I've even seen it covered in magazines too often when talking about DAWs. Adobe's subscription-only model came about because the bulk of users are commercial customers, who would most likely be 'buying' into the whole suite, and they determined that culling the amateurs was of no consequence to their profits.
How many other DAWs are by subscription ? Pro Tools is - and again it's a software that's aimed primarily at the commercial market. so the monthly fee is just a cost of doing business.
For hobbyists/amateurs, which I would speculate that the vast majority of Reason users are, the option of 'taking some months off' is crazy. Inspiration strikes at any time, and it would be more of a deterrent to know that each time that random urge arises, it's going to cost $10 for the privileged to use Reason. It can't even be compared to say Netflix, where if one feels the urge to watch something, there are dozens of other options if one does not have available $$ to restart a membership.
Going by some polls on this forum, there is a significant chunk of people who don't upgrade every release cycle, but maybe every second one. That's three years, or the equivalent of $3.50 per month. It's very unlikely for a subscription model would be that low price. And if it were, the $2 international currency fee suddenly increases the monthly access fee by a whopping 30%
There are plenty of business tools that are subscription only , often because they are also cloud based, that make sense, and I might argue are in fact better for being subscription only. But Reason does not fall into that category. We cannot assume that 'only $$$ per month' is viable for non-commercial private users.
Perhaps you don't realize that many many people these days are struggling, and living pay packet to pay packet. We are on the technological cusp where automation will take away many jobs, manufacturing is sent offshore, and back office services are being outsourced to countries with a cheaper cost of staff. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make end meet, and will continue to do so in the coming decade. This is already being recognized as raising alarm bells from the likes of Elon Musk & Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang, to name but two of many people having this discussion in the public forum.
A subscription model suddenly excludes those people from having anytime-access. Me personally, I do not work at present due to ongoing heath issues. Each month, my income is less than my apartment rent, let alone bills, food, etc. I have several friends who live in a dual-income household with kids, and with the cost of living skyrocketing, they too struggle to get by while maintaining a basic standard of living. The growing problem of poverty extends beyond the unwell, but also to the 'working poor'
Here are some more considerations. If a fixed-agreement debit attempt fails due to insufficient funds, my bank charges me $10 penalty ! If at any given month a subscription debit is attempted, I'm penalized, maybe for the same price as the subscription, but without the access to the subscription I'm being debited for. There is also a fixed (not %) international currency charge for buying stuff from Propellerhead. So that 18 months of extra fees on a month-by-month billing cycle, rather than a single, one-off fee when buying an upgrade. Making music is one of the few things I can do to escape from the reality of bad circumstances, and a subscription model suddenly takes that small pleasure away.
Sure, you can argue that pre-existing software will still work, but for how long ? Support for versions ends, great new feature changes are no longer achievable, and one will be stuck in the past forever. If one were to be in a dire financial situation, but might want to upgrade every two or three releases, gear can be sold, I might ask family to 'gift' me a licence rather than give me some useless physical product that I'll never use, or other means can be found to rustle up $129 to be covered for the next three years.
Or let's say that Reason 12 (or whatever it might be called) is subscription only. My attempts to perhaps use another DAW and still use the thousands of dollars of RE's I've bought (I haven't always been in poverty, quite the opposite) will not be possible, because the RRP will exist only behind a subscription paywall.
Should access to using Reason be limited to only those with financial stability ?