Waves Audio has introduced Waves Music Maker Access, a new audio plugin subscription plan.
The plans offer a wide range of plugins, making it possible to access a large collection of pro audio software for a monthly subscription vs a large up-front fee.
Waves Music Maker Access offers monthly or annual subscriptions for Silver, Gold and Platinum bundles:
- Silver – 16 plugins: $6.99/Month
- Gold – 42 plugins: $9.99/Month
- Platinum – 57 plugins: $19.99/Month
Details are available at the Waves Audio site.
aaaaaand count me out, no subs in this studio.
Any news on how/if this affects current owners of their VSTs?
Also, a few times a year, Waves has really generous sales on all their stuff, hopefully this subscription model doesn’t change that.
As far as I can see nothing will change for bought plugins, and it seems you can still buy them individually like you always could. This subscription plan only applies to the Silver, Gold and Platinum bundles anyway.
I would have loved to see a custom only plan, pay 10 for 10 and you can choose and switch monthly. but like this.. mnope.
Boo. Can’t wait for all these annoying subscription models to pass from this world.
How are any of them make our users life better? Beats me. I am happy to pay a fair price for any product, software or hardware. Why be forced to rent it instead? For months and years? I truly don’t understand how this is any good for any of us.
Totally agree. When your business models sucks, introduce a subscription.
Because fundamentally, businesses care about their own goals more than the consumers needs. Subscription models have proven to be better for businesses so they don’t really care whether it’s better for the users or not.
Roland also practices the same policy with his synth plugins. For my information this policy is not successful. First because who pays for an instrument / effect wants to have unlimited what he paid for, second because the monthly cost is decidedly extreme. If I use a tool / effect every month (as I do with all the plugins I buy for unlimited use) for 5 years, the cost becomes excessive. And if a plugin is of good quality I never abandon it, there are plugins that I have been using for 15 years because they are state of the art. With this pay per use mechanism, they would cost too much.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying but I will add the subscription usually includes updates and upgrades.
We have the Adobe suite at work. It was a bugger getting the accounts people to understand the switch especially as most people experience work taking care of their computer or having one at home that gets left alone.
This one was a long time coming, no? They’ve been experimenting with different models for a while. Even if their subscription system ends up generating enough revenues for a while, they’re not winning “hearts and minds” in the process.
I would have expected the $20/month plan to be everything, and it would have been a pretty good deal. I guess some of their celebrity tie-in packs aren’t licensed for something like that.
Subscription services do poorly during recessions. Everyone’s the same, it’s the same for individuals, companies, government agencies, the easiest thing in the world is to cut is recurring unnecessary costs. Basically, they’re luxuries (or most of them are). It will be funny to watch, for example, Adobe, enter receivership, if the recession gets bad enough. They moved to a subscription model, which is the hottest ticket in town, when times are good. Yin and Yang, the bull is followed by the bear. Always.
No subs for me… looking elsewhere now…
I’m fine with subscriptions when it is offered alongside the standard permanent license. Not my choice.
I bought a temporary license for a product once– as a way of demoing some software. I never ended up renewing.
I could imagine some project studios that might want to subscribe when a project is underway and then discontinue in the “off season”. But I don’t know how those subscriptions work if you wanted to be on-again-off-again.
On-and-off is an interesting feature of the Splice rent-to-own program. It can work really well, in this case, because you don’t lose what you’ve accumulated. What didn’t work so well for me with Splice was their sample library. You get monthly points that you lose if you cancel your subscription. You can out your subscription on hold for two months, which becomes hard to track.
Then, there’s the issue of subscription fatigue. It may work for a couple of subscription services. It becomes untenable when you have too many.
Ha! Arturia is testing the waters with subscription models. Just received a painfully obvious survey about “payment methods” which is about trying to get a buy-in from users to check that box with management.
Sure hope they’ll learn the lesson. I like the company’s products enough that I hope they don’t incur that major cost to the brand.
When a company introduces a subscription only model, like Adobe did with their creative suite, that’s the day I start looking at alternatives and never spend another dime with said company. Adobe clearly felt like there wasn’t a direct replacement for their top tier versions of Photoshop and Illustrator so they squeezed what they could out of the people who needed it for freelance work and made the larger design houses pay an eternal fee to use their products. Thankfully, Serif’s Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are at the point now where they have relieved the sting that many customers felt of feeling forced into a payment cycle they didn’t want but there’s still a lot of lost productivity due to having to relearn two programs from the ground up.
Anyway, as long as Waves offers both purchasable software and the subscription model they’ll simply earn suspicion rather than outright disdain from customers like me who fear that they will one day go to a subscription only service.
Not to be “that guy”, but your Affinity example isn’t spot on. As the owner of an ad agency who uses the Adobe CC suite (for global corporate clients like Exxon & JnJ), I’ve looked seriously at Affinity… but it’s not ready for prime time yet when it comes to print shops around the world.
I’d love it if it were, since I was pissed when Adobe started their SAS scheme, and I bought Photo & Designer to check them out.
But until they get more accepted by mainstream US & foreign print shops, they make no sense to use in our workflow, so I pay $55/month for the CC suite (about the same as the bill for my cell phone), and hey, it’s a biz expense!
Back on topic… SAS drives me nuts, & Waves has always chapped my hide; but like others have said, it’s money in the bank for the companies that use it, and it’s only going to get worse.
Print won’t matter in 10 years. ie you’ll either be doing something else, or be doing print as a niche product.
Just wait until your OS becomes subscription based.
I think these subscription models are very short sighted.
I mean if I pick up a 5 year old project I want it to work right out of the box. Sure my DAW and OS is maybe updated and I would need to check some comparability, but I could always install an older DAW version and be up and running.
But to also hunt down what subscription and what versions of plugins where available then and then see if it is even possible to download an older version?
Seems like too much work for most people.
Seems ironic how you see new releases of old recordings from the 60:s found on tapes but but most stuff that was not released sitting on 10-20 year old computers is basically lost for ever and these short sighted subscription services only pushing out the latest bundle only elevates that problem.
But on the other hand most contemporary music only seems to follow the latest trend so maybe not a great loss for future generations anyway…
You nailed it perfectly.
In the spirit of transparency, shouldn’t companies announce these business models with phrases like ‘Blatant Cash Grab’, ‘Proudly Stiffing Customers’, ‘Tirelessly Exploiting Brand Loyalty’?
OK boomers.
The rest of us are never going to spend $200 on a single plugin when you can get apps for your iPad for $10 and a complete virtual studio for $20’month.
I’m with Phion. Unless it’s on sale I’d rather rent it for a month at $7 and call it good when my project was finished.
I mistrust the system too much to tolerate subscriptions. Its easy to buy numerous great instruments that you “own” until the computer dies. You take your chances in order to get the goodies. If there was nothing left but subscriptions, I’d go back to hardware. I can manage 95% of what I want to do without tolerating anything clunky. I buy from companies who just sell you the tool and then support it, in part because I want that practice to stick around. Vote with your bucks.
I guess it’s about perception. My hardware…you’ll have to pry it from my dead hands, it’s mine, I’ll never part with it God willing.
My VST’s….I could care less about. I only own Shimmer because I can’t afford a BigSky:-)
MKaa makes a super good point though about needing that plugin (in that version) later on an old project. Subs would suck for that reason alone.
I dunno, I can’t say anything. I rent songs from Pandora, pay yearly for Photoshop and I’ve rented Studio One and other plugins from Splice. I’ve also bought plenty of all those. I also still buy vinyl. No regrets either way for me. I just wanna make tunes.
If you really think you’re going to use these regularly, you can get Platinum for $400 right now.
If not, and you can turn the subscription off and on, I’d actually prefer to pay 20 bucks here and there for 30 days access. I don’t need 400 bucks worth of Waves software at all but I can easily imagine wrapping up a project where I’d like to spend 20-40 to rent them while mixing.