Rack Extension subscriptions in shop closing 13th of April

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avasopht
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10 Jan 2023

The difference with PluginAlliance is that they are one company.

It's a very different proposition.

For every $10/mo spent on subscriptions, how much can that really be split with RE developers before it's basically paying them peanuts??

avasopht
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10 Jan 2023

joeyluck wrote:
10 Jan 2023
I only ever heard comments about the fairness of RE subscription from the side of the dev and not from the side of the customer.

I only ever used the $9 subscription a few times and it went a long way. Back when I suggested RE subscriptions, I thought it would be worth $9 for myself to get an extra 30 days to just one or far fewer REs.
The deal always has to be fair to developers otherwise you will NEVER see them target the platform (because they couldn't because they wouldn't be able to pay their rent and would eventually be forced to stop making REs).

That's why most developers target VSTs - it's a much larger market.

Of course, it needs to be fair to both.

Maybe there just isn't enough money in REs to make it fair to both developers and consumers.

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joeyluck
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10 Jan 2023

avasopht wrote:
10 Jan 2023
joeyluck wrote:
10 Jan 2023
I only ever heard comments about the fairness of RE subscription from the side of the dev and not from the side of the customer.

I only ever used the $9 subscription a few times and it went a long way. Back when I suggested RE subscriptions, I thought it would be worth $9 for myself to get an extra 30 days to just one or far fewer REs.
The deal always has to be fair to developers otherwise you will NEVER see them target the platform (because they couldn't because they wouldn't be able to pay their rent and would eventually be forced to stop making REs).

That's why most developers target VSTs - it's a much larger market.

Of course, it needs to be fair to both.

Maybe there just isn't enough money in REs to make it fair to both developers and consumers.
Of course. I was explaining that what I saw was more RE devs found it unfair than customers, the latter which seems to be the viewpoint being shared here by some. I never felt that way. And I guess some people think devs should get less than that in favor of an even greater value for customers? Again, I'd be willing to pay $9 for another 30 days with just one or two plugins.

Devs were getting very little from a service that was less much less predictable than something like the PA subscription where it is a fixed package.

Mataya
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10 Jan 2023

I agree. Seems like the most fair deal when coming up with such model would be, pick a product and subscribe and we will give a piece of that money to the developer/s. For some reason it did not work and my opinion is that it's because nobody was really getting a lot. Again it seems like the best deal for RS. Not a great deal, but slightly better then dev's or a subscriber. I don't know. It was not working and it's gone. Maybe they should of just raise the minimum value for the same amount. 9us for 800us.

M

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joeyluck
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10 Jan 2023

I don't know about that. $9/month probably wasn't worth it for the devs. One user's $9 could be split between up to 44 devs + Reason Studios. I mean the chances of someone subscribing to 44 $9 REs that are all by different devs is probably very slim, but it give an idea of how complex it could be. I think it is $19 for $1000 value?

The value in the RE subscription is the flexibility. They could maybe make some fixed options that benefit customers and devs alike, but that could cause confusion and customers would still ask for flexibility.

I don't think the value to the customer could've been any better. Like I had said, when I suggested RE subscription, I was thinking $9 was worth it for a single RE. The couple times I used it, it was primarily to use one particular RE...and I ended up spending time trying to figure what to add to my subscription cart to fill it up. And I never really used those others aside from having a quick play with them.

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JiggeryPokery
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12 Jan 2023

joeyluck wrote:
10 Jan 2023
I don't know about that. $9/month probably wasn't worth it for the devs. One user's $9 could be split between up to 44 devs + Reason Studios. I mean the chances of someone subscribing to 44 $9 REs that are all by different devs is probably very slim, but it give an idea of how complex it could be. I think it is $19 for $1000 value?

The value in the RE subscription is the flexibility. They could maybe make some fixed options that benefit customers and devs alike, but that could cause confusion and customers would still ask for flexibility.

I don't think the value to the customer could've been any better. Like I had said, when I suggested RE subscription, I was thinking $9 was worth it for a single RE. The couple times I used it, it was primarily to use one particular RE...and I ended up spending time trying to figure what to add to my subscription cart to fill it up. And I never really used those others aside from having a quick play with them.
FYI subs have been a consistent revenue stream here. Massive? Oh Jesus Christ no, but even the subs returns for a lowly ol' dev like me have been surprisingly solid and stable for the past couple of years to the effect that RE subs being killed is actually going to hurt significantly in these extraordinarily tough times. RS are literally taking food away from the table, or heating out the pipes. (Wearable blankets: SaF !! :cool: )

And yes, I am on record as not being a fan of subs from a user standpoint, but I was generally in favour of RE subs when the idea was first proposed (the implementation and revenue splits just were a bit hamfisted, largely because the guy running the subs product rather oversold their intentions and likely success to us in conversation, then he left barely had it launched and I suspect no-one else in the company gave a flying toss so it was left to wither on the vine in favour of fresher shit to throw at the wall) : people make their decisions how they want to spend their money, and for whatever reason some like paying subs. That's choice. As you note with your experience, I've also subbed RE's a couple of times for similar purposes, and literally just added the two things I needed to access. The cynic in me doubts the payment share to those two devs of that $9 was split 50/50 between the two of them. Sadly it wouldn't surprise me if they probably got a same quid and a bit each they would have got for an instrument in a full basket and RS pocketed the rest.

FYI it seems devs, or at least some of them, are the last to know, as usual. This thread is literally the first I've known of this. Which again speaks volumes about the amount of respect certain parties running the show have for communicating with all the third party developers.

Someone needs to start a new website: www.killedbyreason.com

1. ReBirth (1996-2017)
Last edited by JiggeryPokery on 12 Jan 2023, edited 1 time in total.

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12 Jan 2023

JiggeryPokery wrote:
12 Jan 2023
joeyluck wrote:
10 Jan 2023
I don't know about that. $9/month probably wasn't worth it for the devs. One user's $9 could be split between up to 44 devs + Reason Studios. I mean the chances of someone subscribing to 44 $9 REs that are all by different devs is probably very slim, but it give an idea of how complex it could be. I think it is $19 for $1000 value?

The value in the RE subscription is the flexibility. They could maybe make some fixed options that benefit customers and devs alike, but that could cause confusion and customers would still ask for flexibility.

I don't think the value to the customer could've been any better. Like I had said, when I suggested RE subscription, I was thinking $9 was worth it for a single RE. The couple times I used it, it was primarily to use one particular RE...and I ended up spending time trying to figure what to add to my subscription cart to fill it up. And I never really used those others aside from having a quick play with them.
FYI subs have been a consistent revenue stream here. Massive? Oh Jesus Christ no, but even the subs returns for a lowly ol' dev like me have been surprisingly solid and stable for the past couple of years to the effect that RE subs being killed is actually going to hurt significantly in these extraordinarily tough times. RS are literally taking food away from the table, or heating out the pipes. (Wearable blankets: SaF !! :cool: )

And yes, I am on record as not being a fan of subs from a user standpoint, but I was generally in favour of RE subs when the idea was first proposed (the implementation and revenue splits just were a bit hamfisted, largely because the guy running the subs product rather oversold their intentions and likely success to us in conversation, then he left barely had it launched and I suspect no-one else in the company gave a flying toss so it was left to wither on the vine in favour of fresher shit to throw at the wall) : people make their decisions how they want to spend their money, and for whatever reason some like paying subs. That's choice. As you note with your experience, I've also subbed RE's a couple of times for similar purposes, and literally just added the two things I needed to access. The cynic in me doubts the payment share to those two devs of that $9 was split 50/50 between the two of them. Sadly it wouldn't surprise me if they probably got a same quid and a bit each they would have got for an instrument in a full basket and RS pocketed the rest.

FYI it seems devs, or at least of them, are the last to know, as usual. This thread is literally the first I've known of this. Which again speaks volumes about the amount of respect certain parties running the show have for communicating with all the third party developers.

Someone needs to start a new website: www.killedbyreason.com

1. ReBirth...
That sounds awful 😞

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JiggeryPokery
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12 Jan 2023

nooomy wrote:
09 Jan 2023
REASON INFORMATION

Hi,
We are writing to let you know that we will be closing the Rack Extension subscription service available in our shop. We believe the Rack Extension subscription service was too complex to manage for customers (and quite complex for us to maintain too!).

The final day for customers to renew their Rack Extension subscriptions will be the 13th of April 2023.

If you have an existing Rack Extension available on subscription there is nothing you need to do.

Thank you for being part of Reason!

Best regards,
Reason Studios
What do you guys think?

Is this good or bad for the rack extension market?
What a crock of shite.

Translation: "We believe customers [that's all of you, btw] are too stupid to add something to a basket and click 'OK' (and we're too lazy to offer the requisite support to help users, so it's easier just to nuke the function entirely, damn you all to hell!)"

"and quite complex for us to maintain too!" They write that crap as if they don't have automated accounting and upload/download/checkout management systems for most of and probably all of it. (Note too the careful faux-friendliness of the exclaimation mark at the end. "There's no arsenic in our soup, sir!" "I never suggested there was!" It tries to imply that "complex" is synonymous with "unsolveable". But note it's only "quite complex", so any issues are, equally, quite solveable if they had even a half a yen to do so).

Whenever you read statements like the one quoted above, it's always disingenuous and misleading and should never be taken at face value, because if I'm making a little coin enough I think it's worth keeping, they presumably are doing at least the same per comparable dev. That's definitely not pocket change: iirc they still take 30% of the amount the user pays?

I can't imagine the cost to run a few automated RE Subs processes would come close to outweighing the profit on the subs revenue alone, but assuming that's a false assumption, if everything else being equal Reason Studios overall revenue was in a good place then RE Subs running costs peanuts in the grand scheme of overall gross revenue and total operating costs, yet has a net benefit in offering users a real choice—the choice, in their own words remember!—where subs lower the barrier to entry. They keep telling us how successful their Reason+ Subs are. Heck, + Subs were nearly beating full license sales last we heard! (Of course, if you're only selling a hundred licenses per quarter now instead of 1,000 per quarter ten years ago, then it hardly takes many subs to actually beat the full license amount, does it? :rolleyes: Lies, damned lies, and Reason Studio statistics!)

So for them saying it's too difficult for customers, I call shenanigans: it's insulting to users.

Any real issues with complexity in the RE subs system, last time I did a month's paid retrial last year it was soley down to the terrible UI website interaction that didn't cleanly acknowedge you've added a product to the subs cart. I think I went back and forth from product to cart about four times before I realised what was going on. It's the Propellerhead equivalent to a dark pattern. No pattern, just dark. And encourages you not to click the button that benefits them!

So, the web ui and the shop generally need fixing.

It's an oddly baffling decision too given that RE sales have largely collapsed in the sense that only a very few new users seem to be buying older REs during sales, to the extent there is virtually no RE purchase revenue between sales periods. So removing RE subs will likely reduce their RE income during non-sale periods! And yet the other whole well-worn argument companies use to push subs is consistent, on-going predictable revenue!

FWIW "old-timers" usually complaining there's nothing they're interested in during sales is totally understandable when all of us have already bought everything pre-existing that we ever going to be interested in, and there isn't enough new stuff being made in RE cos it's just not worth the effort anymore. A lot of people have probably already bought the same Gorilla effects half a dozen times by now. Outside of sales periods, most RE revenue now is RE Subs, in my experience. It's small, yes, but it's not insignificant. I could well be wrong yet I doubt removing RE subs is going to improve RE product purchases between sales.

"Thank you for being part of Reason!"

Scunny!
_____

2. ReWire (1998-2019)

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moneykube
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12 Jan 2023

JiggeryPokery wrote:
12 Jan 2023
nooomy wrote:
09 Jan 2023


What do you guys think?

Is this good or bad for the rack extension market?
What a crock of shite.

Translation: "We believe customers [that's all of you, btw] are too stupid to add something to a basket and click 'OK' (and we're too lazy to offer the requisite support to help users, so it's easier just to nuke the function entirely, damn you all to hell!)"

"and quite complex for us to maintain too!" They write that crap as if they don't have automated accounting and upload/download/checkout management systems for most of and probably all of it. (Note too the careful faux-friendliness of the exclaimation mark at the end. "There's no arsenic in our soup, sir!" "I never suggested there was!" It tries to imply that "complex" is synonymous with "unsolveable". But note it's only "quite complex", so any issues are, equally, quite solveable if they had even a half a yen to do so).

Whenever you read statements like the one quoted above, it's always disingenuous and misleading and should never be taken at face value, because if I'm making a little coin enough I think it's worth keeping, they presumably are doing at least the same per comparable dev. That's definitely not pocket change: iirc they still take 30% of the amount the user pays?

I can't imagine the cost to run a few automated RE Subs processes would come close to outweighing the profit on the subs revenue alone, but assuming that's a false assumption, if everything else being equal Reason Studios overall revenue was in a good place then RE Subs running costs peanuts in the grand scheme of overall gross revenue and total operating costs, yet has a net benefit in offering users a real choice—the choice, in their own words remember!—where subs lower the barrier to entry. They keep telling us how successful their Reason+ Subs are. Heck, + Subs were nearly beating full license sales last we heard! (Of course, if you're only selling a hundred licenses per quarter now instead of 1,000 per quarter ten years ago, then it hardly takes many subs to actually beat the full license amount, does it? :rolleyes: Lies, damned lies, and Reason Studio statistics!)

So for them saying it's too difficult for customers, I call shenanigans: it's insulting to users.

Any real issues with complexity in the RE subs system, last time I did a month's paid retrial last year it was soley down to the terrible UI website interaction that didn't cleanly acknowedge you've added a product to the subs cart. I think I went back and forth from product to cart about four times before I realised what was going on. It's the Propellerhead equivalent to a dark pattern. No pattern, just dark. And encourages you not to click the button that benefits them!

So, the web ui and the shop generally need fixing.

It's an oddly baffling decision too given that RE sales have largely collapsed in the sense that only a very few new users seem to be buying older REs during sales, to the extent there is virtually no RE purchase revenue between sales periods. So removing RE subs will likely reduce their RE income during non-sale periods! And yet the other whole well-worn argument companies use to push subs is consistent, on-going predictable revenue!

FWIW "old-timers" usually complaining there's nothing they're interested in during sales is totally understandable when all of us have already bought everything pre-existing that we ever going to be interested in, and there isn't enough new stuff being made in RE cos it's just not worth the effort anymore. A lot of people have probably already bought the same Gorilla effects half a dozen times by now. Outside of sales periods, most RE revenue now is RE Subs, in my experience. It's small, yes, but it's not insignificant. I could well be wrong yet I doubt removing RE subs is going to improve RE product purchases between sales.

"Thank you for being part of Reason!"

Scunny!
_____

2. ReWire (1998-2019)
As an old timer, I agree with this statement...
The subscription model is automated... they do nothing but make money... makes little sense to remove it.
("We are writing to let you know that we will be closing the Rack Extension subscription service available in our shop. We believe the Rack Extension subscription service was too complex to manage for customers (and quite complex for us to maintain too!>). Not even close to true in the real world. Perhaps there is a Reason dimension or planet somewhere .
Deletion of their original forum,
Deletion of ignition key use for some,
Extreme problems in the shop knowing what you have purchased when you are logged in,
Many people using Authorizer having VARIOUS issues all the time>it messed up 3 days of my life when I updated to 12
Continual Bugs... as some get stomped , more arrive...
My pet peeve among a few >>>> Deletion of Rewire to use in other daws in order to sync to video, . :shock:
I could go on ...but will leave this with your appropriate observation >>> "I call shenanigans" :exclamation:
BTW> the many racks of yours that I have purchased, are indeed excellent in design and function> Thank You :thumbup:
Last edited by moneykube on 12 Jan 2023, edited 1 time in total.
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DJMaytag
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12 Jan 2023

Super bummed about this!!!

I’ve been subscribing for the $9/mo level for several years now, as a way to trial things without the pressure to demo RE’s in a short time. It’s been a great way to get a little bit of “free/extra money” into dev’s pockets before I eventually buy a decent chunk of the RE’s I’ve previously subscribed to.

Not cool, RS… not cool.

avasopht
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12 Jan 2023

Man, I'd be so pissed if I'd been subscribing, and now all of that money is lost because I can't open my projects without purchasing the REs (meaning I'm paying for the full product plus what I spent subscribing).

...

I recall one RE developer complaining about the low profit margins (especially after the 50% and sales tax were subtracted). But this was barely a year into it.

I always thought it was JP ...

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Pepin
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12 Jan 2023

avasopht wrote:
12 Jan 2023
Man, I'd be so pissed if I'd been subscribing, and now all of that money is lost because I can't open my projects without purchasing the REs (meaning I'm paying for the full product plus what I spent subscribing).
IMO if you've been using the subscription optimally, then you already have plenty of projects you can't open. The subscription only made financial sense if you were regularly swapping out REs and rarely resubscribing to the same ones (instead buying if inclined). If you've been subscribing to the same fixed set of REs for months, then you've been losing money this whole time, not just with this announcement.

avasopht
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12 Jan 2023

Pepin wrote:
12 Jan 2023
IMO if you've been using the subscription optimally, then you already have plenty of projects you can't open. The subscription only made financial sense if you were regularly swapping out REs and rarely resubscribing to the same ones (instead buying if inclined). If you've been subscribing to the same fixed set of REs for months, then you've been losing money this whole time, not just with this announcement.
True, though for people who just can't put up the cash for a purchase it may make more sense for them to subscribe.

At the same time, that's a good hint as to why the subscription might not have had enough widespread appeal.

A subscription without ownership needs to offer disproportionate value (like EWQL) or cost less than they'd have spent on a perpetual license with regular upgrades (like Adobe, Jetbrains and Autodesk).

And I just don't think that would have been possible with third-party developers as a strong value offering for consumers would have spread profit too thin for the developers.

But who knows, maybe they can take it from a different angle.

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DaveyG
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13 Jan 2023

JiggeryPokery wrote:
12 Jan 2023
"and quite complex for us to maintain too!"
You've got to remember that this is the company who's shop can't even consistently show which REs you already own. Refresh the page and get a different result. So it's complex because they are not very good at ecommerce stuff.

JiggeryPokery wrote:
12 Jan 2023
2. ReWire (1998-2019)
I'm with you on that one. At least Rebirth had a reason to be killed off - a request/threat from Roland.
Rewire was killed off because they couldn't be bothered to keep it and it's a real loss to the wider DAW community. It found uses way beyond Reason.

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moneykube
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13 Jan 2023

DaveyG wrote:
13 Jan 2023
JiggeryPokery wrote:
12 Jan 2023
"and quite complex for us to maintain too!"
You've got to remember that this is the company who's shop can't even consistently show which REs you already own. Refresh the page and get a different result. So it's complex because they are not very good at ecommerce stuff.

JiggeryPokery wrote:
12 Jan 2023
2. ReWire (1998-2019)
I'm with you on that one. At least Rebirth had a reason to be killed off - a request/threat from Roland.
Rewire was killed off because they couldn't be bothered to keep it and it's a real loss to the wider DAW community. It found uses way beyond Reason.
I miss rebirth :exclamation: My entry level product, to this current alternate dimension ,the company now seem to now exist in.
You would think they would hire a 3rd party web site designer that would make the site somewhat more error free :question:
Removing support for there own products like balance and the ignition key is questionable without alternate solutions.
What happened to backwards compatibility, that was often the mantra they pushed as a feature :?:
Deleting rewire does not fit this paradigm at all.
Yes you can use the plugin in a daw, but it is much more limited than using the full version, which was possible with rewire.
Support that first blames the user over the product or service (one has used for decades)>is also a thing I have encountered.
Step up to the plate and get your s$%t together, is my current advice to reason studios. Fix sync all please.
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JiggeryPokery
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13 Jan 2023

avasopht wrote:
12 Jan 2023

I recall one RE developer complaining about the low profit margins (especially after the 50% and sales tax were subtracted). But this was barely a year into it.

I always thought it was JP ...
Well, yeah, hmmm. <coughs>. Hehe. Probably was. It does sound a bit like me :lol: ;)

Mind you, I don't think I was the only one, though.

You are right on timescales.

When it actually first appeared and the first months results were it was really truly odd getting the accounting reports back as it just listed £0.00 revenue but no-one at PH cared to explain it. I think I managed to work out they reported the actual values in the following month or something, so each Sub was effectively invoiced us twice: once at £0.00, and again later at our £0.0x per product share. Break out the champers, Jeeves! The first few months did feel like it was a waste of time and eventually I stopped even looking at the revenue on Subs. Of course, as you correctly note, it took a good year, maybe even more, for the subscriber numbers to build up enough to where losing that revenue was noticable to the extent it's going to be genuinely frustrating at this time.

When they sold us on the idea, they really went to town what an important revenue stream this was going be, but of course, stupid me: that's what marketing people do! Over-promise and under-deliver! Everything's rosy in PowerPoint!

It was never anywhere near what we were led to believe, but despite that, turns out it's still a revenue stream of not insignicant value to us devs. They're saying me getting a few hundred pounds a month, which is what it's been, is, somehow, not important or valuable. It's not like, you know, we've not been paying them to maintain the infrastructure to sell our products on their service! </s>. This kind of demonstrates it's been very much been a zero sum game they've been winning. And if I alone am earning that, again, they're earning several times that across all devs. So some users aren't put off by the complexity PHintroduced to make it harder to find and use their system, that we pay for because they told us we do so to support their management of the ecosystem. Well, that ecosystem includes the website. So if it's too "complex" (read: broken) , why wasn't it "simplified" (read: fixed)?

Now, on the flip side, cos I like to consider opposing views, it might be the case they've seen some genuine signs of attrition MoM in the past year and feel it's not worth it long term.

But there'd be a strong case to make that any such falloff is simply a short term issue due tot he CoL crisis, or could equally be they've just given up on third party REs generally where promotion of the RE shop to new users seems to remain sidelined. At worst, one has to wonder if they basically consider it a legacy plugin format at this point and something they reluctantly and begrudginly are forced to have to waste server bandwidth on. It was announced on the ReDev forum last summer even that forum was going to be closed "at some point". I don't know if it has yet, it was getting so hard to actually log in to read the blasted thing it I stopped bothering six months ago. And as I've noted previously, the main R+ sub itself takes most of monthly free "hobby" spending cash younger users, in particular, will have, and provides so much filler material and overwhelming users with content there's not necessarily much incentive or need to delve into the shop's third-party gems to find the things they might actually want.

It seems to me all RS want now is that recurring R+ fee. Everything else is just a damn hassle.

I can't explain the number of people who add free products to fill up their Subscription packages though.

And again, still no actual official notice from Reason Studios to this dev at least. None. Nada. It think it's been about four or five years since MHG posted on ReDev "we aim to improve our communication with devs". When's that aim due to be kicking in then, my man? :D


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xylyx
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13 Jan 2023

avasopht wrote:
12 Jan 2023

I recall one RE developer complaining about the low profit margins (especially after the 50% and sales tax were subtracted). But this was barely a year into it.

I always thought it was JP ...
Wasn't that Ochen K and part of the reason he stopped developing rack extensions?

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jam-s
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13 Jan 2023

xylyx wrote:
13 Jan 2023
avasopht wrote:
12 Jan 2023

I recall one RE developer complaining about the low profit margins (especially after the 50% and sales tax were subtracted). But this was barely a year into it.

I always thought it was JP ...
Wasn't that Ochen K and part of the reason he stopped developing rack extensions?
No, iirc Ochen K stopped working on REs as soon as VST support came to Reason as then he no longer had to implement the things he wanted to use in Reason himself and could simply use the corresponding 3rd party VST plugins. (Of course people demanding bugfixes in rather rude ways played into this as well, I suppose.)

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joeyluck
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13 Jan 2023

JiggeryPokery wrote:
13 Jan 2023
avasopht wrote:
12 Jan 2023

I recall one RE developer complaining about the low profit margins (especially after the 50% and sales tax were subtracted). But this was barely a year into it.

I always thought it was JP ...
Well, yeah, hmmm. <coughs>. Hehe. Probably was. It does sound a bit like me :lol: ;)

Mind you, I don't think I was the only one, though.
This is what I referencing :P I was just saying that I saw more complaints from devs than from customers.

A while back, I actually thought it had been phased out already. I wasn't seeing subscriptions available for the first bunch of REs I clicked on. Eventually I found one offering the subscription option. I guess that is because so many devs have been opting out?

So I could see that as being a problem. That does seem like it could be complicated for the user if they easily overlook what options they may actually have in the long-run, when deciding to go the subscription route. And then later they discover that not many REs are offering the option for subscription.

IMO there is simply too much inconsistency now. Some REs have the subscription option, some have rent-to-own, some have both and some don't have either.

It could be good for RE devs to form a collective, to discuss these types of things, to vote as a group, and then decide to do things as a group to have consistency, because consistency helps everybody.

We've had the rent-to-own option for a while and I think all devs should take advantage of that. It would be good to have a rent-to-own bundle option that devs could create, which would offer more to the customer and might fill the void of when subscriptions are gone.

It would also be cool if devs would be allowed to partner together on these bundles. That is for rent-to-own and anything else. So if a few devs want to partner to create a bundle, they should be able to do that and the shop could divide up the earnings appropriately.

I think there's still lots they can do. I'm curious if the removal of the RE subscription model might be in prep for something better?

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13 Jan 2023

jam-s wrote:
13 Jan 2023
xylyx wrote:
13 Jan 2023


Wasn't that Ochen K and part of the reason he stopped developing rack extensions?
No, iirc Ochen K stopped working on REs as soon as VST support came to Reason as then he no longer had to implement the things he wanted to use in Reason himself and could simply use the corresponding 3rd party VST plugins. (Of course people demanding bugfixes in rather rude ways played into this as well, I suppose.)
VST was the main reason it seemed. Ochen had this to say: viewtopic.php?p=364152#p364152
And then there’s the money part. Yes, overall sales for me are down since VST. But the big loss comes from subscriptions and rigs. If you buy Chip64 at full price, I see about $25 of that $40. (The other $15 is Prop’s cut.) But if you “rent” Chip64 as part of a subscription, I get 50 cents a month. That’s it. A $40 product, and I see 50 cents. Now sure, I get that 50 cents every month, but who’s going to keep that subscription going, month after month, for the 4 years it’ll take for me to break even? No one, that’s who.

I think the hope is that people who may not have purchased Chip64 outright will add it as part of a subscription. I don’t particularly believe that, but even if that’s true, 50 cents a month means nothing to me. We are many many orders of magnitude below any volume that makes 50 cents add up to anything meaningful.

But I want to be really clear. None of this is a criticism of Reason. Reason is still the best thing around. VST support is great for users. And subscriptions are a steal for users. If you’re not using subscriptions, you should. It’s a great way to get a lot of product for very little money. This is just an explanation of how the RE developer landscape has changed, at least for me.
I might be misremembering what happened and when, but perhaps this was before the subscription option was something devs could opt out of? Or was that always an option?

The Ochen K. REs don't have the subscription option, so... And they don't even have the rent-to-own option. I'm curious if Ochen might've seen more revenue had he not had these views five years ago and allowed the option to subscribe and rent-to-own.

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kuhliloach
Posts: 880
Joined: 09 Dec 2015

13 Jan 2023

It's just another I Told You So. And at this moment neither RE's nor the PA stuff works in macOS Ventura without constantly crashing Logic. So buying subscriptions isn't the only risk here but rather buying anything. There is no substitute for plug-ins that just work without a protection/authorization layer and that's why Analog Obsession is the new norm for me.

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moneykube
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14 Jan 2023

kuhliloach wrote:
13 Jan 2023
It's just another I Told You So. And at this moment neither RE's nor the PA stuff works in macOS Ventura without constantly crashing Logic. So buying subscriptions isn't the only risk here but rather buying anything. There is no substitute for plug-ins that just work without a protection/authorization layer and that's why Analog Obsession is the new norm for me.
Apple has fallen in my opinion... I feel your pain as I was forced to upgrade because they only support an OS for 3 years.
I was happy with the functioning system , until they dropped support > followed by other companies I have invested money in for their VST plugins, > and to use the internet, without the nag screen "you may have to upgrade your browser" :exclamation: Thankfully , I did not go down the macOS Ventura route ( I thought perhaps it was too soon for that, as I have been down that road before). My apprehension of the new OS appears to have been correct. Using their Monterey OS ,seems ok so far after a 3 day ordeal of upgrading plugins and applications...hmmm... seems to be a theme with many companies these days sadly :? :exclamation:
I hope you have a recent Time Machine backup you can revert back to !
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kuhliloach
Posts: 880
Joined: 09 Dec 2015

15 Jan 2023

I see no need to go back to an old macOS as the Analog Obsession stuff plus Logic's built-in tools are more than enough for most all my needs. For now I've just removed the premium non-working stuff from my workflow.

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moneykube
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15 Jan 2023

kuhliloach wrote:
15 Jan 2023
I see no need to go back to an old macOS as the Analog Obsession stuff plus Logic's built-in tools are more than enough for most all my needs. For now I've just removed the premium non-working stuff from my workflow.
What ever works for you :thumbs_up: ... I was just suggesting an alternate plan, if you had lost too many devices.
It is very sad you lost your racks with this OS though... especially if you purchased a number of them.
Do the racks work in stand alone mode? Or is it they do they not work in the application , and also do not work in the Reason plugin within logic :?: (out of curiosity)
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kuhliloach
Posts: 880
Joined: 09 Dec 2015

16 Jan 2023

The Reason DAW seems ok! (I rarely launch it). My problem is the RRP not working in Logic -- it constantly crashes.

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