Ohm Force has announced pricing for Ohm Studio, a new DAW designed for real-time online music production, along with a timetable for moving out of the beta stage and into a full release.
Ohm Studio has been in beta testing since the end of May and now has 14K users who have created 21K projects – some solo, others collaborating with partners, and some others taking part in definitively fun public jam at weekly events.
Ohm Force is planning to move Ohm Studio out of beta testing:
- Beta is planned to end in October and fluently transit to the release.
- At that point, user-created content will not be deleted.
- Buyers of the discounted pre-orders will enjoy full access to Ohm Studio for 6 months or forever (see below).
- Non-buyers and newcomers will either go for the limited free account or the 9€/month standard subscription for full access.
Pre-orders
Ohm Studio users can now purchase one of the two pre-ordering options available here until the end of beta:
- A 6-month pack for €39.00 instead of €54.00, starting as of end of beta
- Or a pre-order a lifetime subscription for €149.00. Note that the price of the lifetime subscription will increase by €25 every month until the release, at which moment this offer will be removed.
Prices include VAT and will therefore be cheaper to non-EU residents.
See the Ohm Studio site for details.
If you’ve used Ohm Studio, let us know what you think of it.
A cloud based DAW sounds like a nice idea but its something I’d never get involved with. Because ask yourself this: what happens when there is a connection problem? Either on your end, your ISP’s end or worse: their end? Then you can forget about using your DAW.
My same concern applies to their subscription model; its quite cool that they offer a life-time subscription to all early adopters but you have to ask yourself: will they actually be around that long, especially considering that you’re not using stuff on your computer, you’re using stuff on theirs.
And that’s not even getting into obvious issues such as: “who owns the musical scores which have been stored in their cloud” ? Make no mistake about it: even Google states that even using their storage service they reserve the right to access and use your material.
Now, I’m not trying to be anal about this but its a simple issue triggered by reading the websites FAQ: https://www.ohmstudio.com/doc/faq
Q: Is it possible to download a copy of my project assets on my computer?
A: Currently it’s not possible, but such feature may be available in the future.
I did some extensive beta testing on ohm studio and it really is a tough call. The concept is excellent and for the most part it functions as it has been presented. However, its still has some bugs and there are simply to many missing features… I’m talking simple things that we have come to expect from most daw’s that are unavailable or in development.
So on the one hand, you take the risk of purchasing now at a discounted rate in hopes that these missing features will eventually make it to the application. Or you wait it out and see what they present in October as a completed product. Personally, I’ll wait. I’m willing to pay an extra €75 for a more stable and feature rich application.
@ Synthfan : you can’t either use your DAW or your VA without current. I am not playing words : each time someone come up with a new technique, some will point out that it comes with more dependency. There’s no doubt in that. But there’s no doubt that we are living in an environment mainly designed with the idea that there is a plus somewhere, and there actually generally is.
Nothing’s perfect, all’s a tradeoff. When it comes to collab, travelling physically with material is pretty strong motivation to get the on line alternative to work 😛
“will they actually be around that long”
Obviously you never know. That being said a lifelong is refunded in 16.6 month. Will we be there ? Well, we’re here for 12 years now. That’s a clue 😉
“And that’s not even getting into obvious issues such as: “who owns the musical scores which have been stored in their cloud” ?”
That’s an easy one. The parking owner don’t own the cars parked there, the hoast don’t own the website’s content, and Amazone certainly don’t own the song of the ohm user, neither does Ohm. Beside, look at the inspector : your name is on everything you create there…
“there are simply to many missing features”
As we explain, we want to use preorder money to hire and speed up things. That being said midi chan and midi export are already nearly here. We do our best, but we’re not backed by a bank, a financial institution or a larger group. And that probably why we can offer ohmstudio. Risk manager pretty clearly won’t finance such a project after the way Rocket Network ended…
“Nothing’s perfect, all’s a tradeoff. When it comes to collab, travelling physically with material is pretty strong motivation to get the on line alternative to work :P”
Sure, but it would have been an even better trade to leave that choice to the end user(s) instead of enforcing it upon them like as is happening now. People who utilize Ohm Studio have no choice /but/ to rely on your services because they can’t get their own material in a physical form.
“Will we be there ? Well, we’re here for 12 years now. That’s a clue ;-)”
With all due respect (seriously); but its not. Because up until now you’ve never seem to have done something this big, as such ‘being around’ doesn’t give us clues into what could be ahead for the future.
“That’s an easy one. The parking owner don’t own the cars parked there, the hoast don’t own the website’s content, and Amazone certainly don’t own the song of the ohm user, neither does Ohm. Beside, look at the inspector : your name is on everything you create there…”
The parking owner doesn’t own the cars, but also waves any responsibility of something happening to said cars and places it with their owners. A hosting provider doesn’t “own” a websites contents (actually he does to a degree) yet makes sure that he cannot be fully held responsible for any possible damages to said contents (depending on hosting contract).
BUT… he will always preserve the right to take action when said contents violates his policies.
And that’s where I was getting at: this isn’t as easy as you claim.
When checking the current Terms of Use I see quite a few lines which aren’t as straightforward as they could be. For example, when it comes to using the service people are forbidden to advertise, I quote from https://www.ohmstudio.com/doc/terms :
“You are not allowed to post links promoting music unless it serves the original purposes of the Service.”
This rule can easily apply to music created by the author(s) themselves. And although I don’t think you intended it as such, in its current form it can easily be used to prevent people from advertising their own material. Which automatically arouses the question I mentioned above: “Who exactly owns the material?”.
Right now my guess is that you intended this rule to apply on people who advertise music which isn’t theirs; but that’s not what it says; only vaguely implies. But vague implications are /not/ how terms of usage work.
Further more, when it comes to “copyright on music created using the Service” I see only “You agree that Ohm Force does not claim any right on the music you and your partners create.” and “You agree that Ohm Force has no responsibility in managing any form of license on artistic works created by you and your partners.”.
But what is Ohm Force’s stance on this matter? While I may agree that Ohm Force does not claim copyright that does /not/ legally prevent Ohm Force from doing so. I don’t see any statements clearly stating that “/Ohm Force/ does not claim any right on the material you created and stored using their services” or “Ohm Force will not use your intellectual property for any promotional activities”.
This is a very serious issue in my opinion.
Lets pick up what you said above about a hosting provider not owning the contents of a website. This isn’t implied. A hosting provider such as Microsoft (think SkyDrive) still puts the following into its terms of use:
“Except for material that we license to you, we don’t claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don’t control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service.”
(see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/microsoft-service-agreement – Item 5)
You see the big difference between their service agreement and yours? “WE (aka Microsoft) do not claim ownership…”. That’s something /completely/ different from “I agree that MS won’t claim ownership” because quite frankly: I can’t agree to that because I’m not representing Microsoft.
Sorry but this is hardly as easy as you claim it to be.
I agree with what you are getting at, but after reading Red’s post above I don’t think you should put too much into your reading of the verbiage- there is obviously a difference in native languages at play.
Oh, I agree with you on that one.
I don’t think there are any bad intentions; that’s also the reason why I spelled it all out, I hope it can give them ideas or maybe they can use some of the stuff I wrote up there literally.
The problem is that when it comes to hosting and ownership of online material you can never be too careful. Both as end-user as well as hoster alike.
@ synthfan
I don’t get it : first you say you’ll never go into on-line collab because it makes you depend on online connection, then you say we should let people choose. Choose what ? If you wanted an off line mode, I could have answered on this very topic. We’d like to do it, but there are some cons to it – and I mean cons for the user. If people start to use offline mode in projects involving collab, it will involve version conflicts (you’ve done one edit, someone did another, now you have to reglue everything by hand, assuming it’s possible). Pretty quick a fair deal of the project you’ll do will end up being broken somehow. So for the hypothetic good of having an off line option, you damage so badly the typical collab experience that it seems proven not to work. By forcing this, we’ve been able to demonstrates collab to work and be easy. That’s already something.
That being said hopefully one day we’ll be able to offer something allowing for local edit. But let us time to do it properly. It’s nothing simple.
We’ve never made something that big but think about it : how many host companies do you know that disappeared, then how many plugin company ? To be honnest we feel after 12 years in the deadly market we’ve reach the safe zone at least.
About hosting, OF COURSE that the host takes some responsibility in maintaining the data. Why do you think we go with amazone ? Because they offer redundancy & encryption. Did google lost user’s email ? No, there is such a thing as securing data on line. We wouldn’t have gone with OS without that level of guarantees…
“This rule can easily apply to music created by the author(s) themselves.”
We do that, we pretty obviously shot ourselves in the feet. The term is made to prevent spam.
It’s not really complicated. It’s a monthly fee. The second people aren’t happy with our service, they don’t pay us anymore. I honestly think it doesn’t get any better in term of customer satisfaction – and certainly not thanks to a line or another in a term of use.
I also find your claim on Ohm Force possibly asking for copyright pretty esoteric. Does Adobe claim copyright for something created with photoshop ? No, they would loose, look like idiots and get awful press. I don’t see how it would be different from us. People seems to think this online collab has legal implication but it doesn’t change any legal basics. It just makes easier to steal music, and easier to track thieves.
It’s right that the wording comes from a french dude thus and I agree it sounds a bit odd. We could easily change this if this kind of nuance really appears to be a serious concern. But ultimately the possible implication you’re seeing seems just impossible to me. We sell a service for musician. All our mind is dedicated to please them so they give us money. We’re not here to start to piss them off !
Another DAW… It will not be long before online collaboration finds its way into all DAW’s… That said… This DAW seems to have nothing further to add then collberation… No reason to switch just for online stuff… Sorry guys… Ableton keeps my dollar for now… Hint… Make a grade “A” DAW then get onto the online collaborative stuff. Really do not have time to keep learning the work flows of every novel program that shows up… Sounds grim I know… But just being honest… Online collberation is a cool trick, but still just a trick… One day it will be a needed feature… But that time is not now… Nor is this the iteration of that idea that will catch… When the “big boys” step up to this one it will be time to listen… No offense to a smaller company… But you need a big installed user base to get this as used as it would need to be to become truly game changing… So I’ll wait…
I have tested Ohm Studio and it’s great for what it is – online collaboration on a song. I would not use it to replace my existing DAW (Live) as it is indeed missing a lot of features. But I can bounce the stems of my songs, import them into Ohm Studio and invite the people I want to make modifications or to add stuff. That works great and would make my life a lot easier. BUT I would not use this everyday hence I wouldn’t want to pay a lot of money or even a bit money but on a monthly basis. And I agree, it can’t be long until Live, Logic and Cubase include the same feature and it would actually make a lot more sense then switching to a completely new DAW.
I’d love to use Ohm Studio and I would pay for it but it will never replace the DAW people already have installed. And considering this, Ohm Studio is more of a service than a product to me and the price should be set accordingly.
Well the price is above, what do you think of it ?
Also while I admit that like any 1.0 host some important stuff is missing, I also feel it’s already at its core an obviously very powerful sequence. It may look simple but believe me, we gave a huge amount of thought to the whole thing so it’s accessible and ultimately very powerful. Two illustration : the edit in context, where you just zoom in&out of your project to see your clips always exactly where they are, select stuff from several clips at once, etc. For now the most advanced thing to deal with that sort of thing out there is layered edit. That’s a lot of button to click (it sure looks “pro”, all those buttons…) to get something slower, clumsier and far less intuitive.
Another thing is the modular view. Nearly every host let you do your routing with bus. It’s not visual, it requires a lot of menus everywhere, and ultimately it’s not ready for every imaginative multi input fx that may be released. In Ohm Studio, you have a modular routing. It’s simple, you see what happens, you edit it fast, and you can take advantage of the Mutli input quad frohmage included to go for a new world of sick filtering. And that’s just a start : there’s a heap of cool thing to do with multiple input fx, that no one ever tried because very few host can use those.
Those two points illustrate how simple looking doesn’t imply lack of feature (or, if you prefer, how complex looking with a heap of options often means “lazy thinking” rather than “professionnal”). OS lacks on the Midi front (although imminent patch will fix some of it really soon), it miss a sampler and a reverb, and it could demo more of its power with more dedicated plugin. But ultimately it has what it takes to shine as a sequencer. Our plugins always have been competing for the top rank in their fields and we haven’t lessen our expectation with Ohm Studio. But we need time to make this obvious.
Ohm studio lacks too many features. Im sorry but most musicians produce alone in 99% of the cases. The daw is not intuitive, feels small and is ugly (kinda reminds me of my own penis). So I guess I will pass on this one.
This is the future. The day will come on which you are not be able anymore to buy software. It starts with download only delivery, goes thrue online only apps, and it ends the same day with online activation only, every time you start the app. Ohm Studio is now inaccaptable, but in 5 years …
Cloud software and content relies on always having good internet access. Until high-quality, high-speed, free (or very cheap) and reliable access is available everywhere, including in remote locations and while travelling, then people will continue to need software which sits on their machine and can be used independently of an internet connection. And that’s why I won’t be using Ohmstudio.