Why does Ableton keep adding new features that no one wants?

[sana48]

I just put my money where my mouth is and bought BitWig. Shame. I wish Ableton would just get with the program.



¯\_(?)_/¯

Whatever.

I have a goat named Lolly.

Sorry, just trying to be relevant.

[jestermgee]

Aug 9:

The alternative is jumping ship to BitWig or whatever. I'd really rather not do that. I want to want to stay. I am on team Ableton.

Aug 10:

I just put my money where my mouth is and bought BitWig. Shame. I wish Ableton would just get with the program.

¯\_(?)_/¯

Whatever.

What a team player.

[mekanism1200]

He's going to really love trying to to fade audio clips in Bitwig, it cant be done unless you automate the volume.

[Jay_NJ]

Ever thought about how hard it must be to have to constantly innovate? I suppose there's more room in the DAW business than say, in the golf ball or toothbrush industry, but still. Ableton has a rock solid, popular and proven product. Somehow, thank God, they've managed to keep the core of the program intact since v1. But I've got to wonder, how much more realistically can be added until they decide to reinvent it completely? I don't know. I think there are some legit concerns and ideas out there, but overall, we're a spoiled society (thanks Apple). Even if Ableton never did another update, would we not be able to produce great music with it?

[Angstrom]

Ever thought about how hard it must be to have to constantly innovate? I suppose there's more room in the DAW business than say, in the golf ball or toothbrush industry, but still. Ableton has a rock solid, popular and proven product. Somehow, thank God, they've managed to keep the core of the program intact since v1. But I've got to wonder, how much more realistically can be added until they decide to reinvent it completely? I don't know. I think there are some legit concerns and ideas out there, but overall, we're a spoiled society (thanks Apple). Even if Ableton never did another update, would we not be able to produce great music with it?

I read an interesting article about the actual Gold Rush, specifically the old maxim "in a Gold Rush sell shovels". a part which stood out to me was that by 1850 the citizens of SF were demanding the removal of all the hundreds of varied abandoned "innovative mining machines" which failed to catch on. There were so many failures they were blocking the waterways.

Meanwhile, the people who sold stoves and blankets , and those who transported them by rail - became billionaires.

There's a great demand for the mundane, the innovation comes in opening a new market in which to sell in. But after that ... It's potato time.

[Emanresu0891]

The shovels in this gold rush are midi controllers hence push.

[studiojohnny]

Remember when there was a mass transition from Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere? FCP was the industry standard but then they lost touch with their user's needs and lost huge market share to Premiere.

Live seems on target to become the new FCP. :/

[fishmonkey]

Remember when there was a mass transition from Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere? FCP was the industry standard but then they lost touch with their user's needs and lost huge market share to Premiere.

Live seems on target to become the new FCP. :/

not really the same scenario though, is it? FCPX was a radical departure from FCP.

[Angstrom]

I guess the parallel could possibly be drawn between FCPXs focus on the consumer market where the older FCP was always aimed at creative professionals. But it's not a great analogy really because Ableton Live has always had a big strand of "bedroom producer" in its DNA. It has become more accepted now through sheer install numbers but I think we can see the origins of Live were never "lets make the next ProTools". It's always been a solid consumer focus "I'm makin mad beatz yo!" / "Do you want to hear my first techno track?!" . That's always been a big portion of their market.
I'm not saying that's bad. It's sensible business. But that's why we have a lot of quite odd "consumer" features in the app. It's always been this way.

If Live has a problem I'd say it's more likely an Identity Crisis: Is it a live performance instrument, or is it a DAW, is it an MPC replacement with required hardware dongle, or is it a DJ tool, is it for composing to Video, is it a simple WYSIWYG app, or is it a complex IDE? Is it all of them equally?
That's not something which helps forward momentum.

[Tarekith]

At the same time, it's hard to deny that Live has had a LOT of forward momentum over the years. The number of people using it has only grown, exponentially even. I think a lot of people just get wrapped up in wanting THEIR features to make THEIR lives easier, and when that doesn't happen suddenly they feel abandoned and start to decry the direction Ableton has taken.

It was the same with Live-based DJs around version 5 or 6. When I used to mod the Abletonlivedj.com forums, we had over 12,000 users at one point. Once it became clear they were not going to add DJ specific features (Henke even flat out said it), everyone was foretelling the end of Ableton and bemoaning how they didn't listen to their users. 3 versions on, I'd say they're still going strong though, so clearly that hasn't happened.

I say this as a long time user, not as the Ableton rep here. I have a seperate account for that sort of thing

[Jay_NJ]

If Live has a problem I'd say it's more likely an Identity Crisis: Is it a live performance instrument, or is it a DAW, is it an MPC replacement with required hardware dongle, or is it a DJ tool, is it for composing to Video, is it a simple WYSIWYG app, or is it a complex IDE? Is it all of them equally?
That's not something which helps forward momentum.

I wouldn't say this is necessarily a problem. What they're doing is appealing to as many types of users as possible - successfully I might add. Now, yeah, some people who specialize in a specific area, and require certain tools may feel like they're not being listened to as much as they'd like, but overall I feel like they're doing a good job of keeping Live relevant and highly usable.

I really hope they don't ever decide to alter what Live is at it's core (full redesign). What I could see happening, is them eventually breaking out some of the ideas into separate applications. i.e. One for scoring video, one more geared towards DJ performances, and one as the full featured DAW. That way they'd be able to expand on each individually without making Live too big.

[Tarekith]

Talk about timing! Check out the last video posted on today's Ableton blog post:

https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/visiona ... struments/

[Angstrom]

At the same time, it's hard to deny that Live has had a LOT of forward momentum over the years. The number of people using it has only grown, exponentially even. I think a lot of people just get wrapped up in wanting THEIR features to make THEIR lives easier, and when that doesn't happen suddenly they feel abandoned and start to decry the direction Ableton has taken.

It was the same with Live-based DJs around version 5 or 6. When I used to mod the Abletonlivedj.com forums, we had over 12,000 users at one point. Once it became clear they were not going to add DJ specific features (Henke even flat out said it), everyone was foretelling the end of Ableton and bemoaning how they didn't listen to their users. 3 versions on, I'd say they're still going strong though, so clearly that hasn't happened.

I say this as a long time user, not as the Ableton rep here. I have a seperate account for that sort of thing

Well, that was pretty much my point. That the app started with a narrow-ish focus and grew tentacles in every direction, DJing, beatmaking, Arranging, scoring to picture, etc. And it began to compete with not just Acid and FruityLoops, but Reason, Logic, Cubase, and for a few people ProTools.

Now, where I'd disagree with you is the word "Momentum". I'd say it's grown in circumference.
Momentum implies a single direction forward, and that's an issue I think the abandoned DJs and the Live performers might raise - it's not so much forward as "like a fly" . Zigzagging over an increasingly wide terrain with nobody able to predict the next angle of departure. Or perhaps it's like a community bus whose route and stops are ever changing over an ever increasing area. The passengers all want different destinations and so the bus driver tries to accommodate their varied requests.

Is that good? Well it is impressive effort, but does it have a coherent direction?
When you talk about disgruntled users expecting "their feature" it's not unreasonable given what they assume about their bus route. The DJs were really led on to believe Live would cater to them, and then ... it didn't. Similarly video appeared and was abandoned, Live performance features languished.

Does a coral reef have "momentum"?

(Ok, that's enough metaphors )

[beats me]

Ever thought about how hard it must be to have to constantly innovate? I suppose there's more room in the DAW business than say, in the golf ball or toothbrush industry, but still. Ableton has a rock solid, popular and proven product. Somehow, thank God, they've managed to keep the core of the program intact since v1. But I've got to wonder, how much more realistically can be added until they decide to reinvent it completely? I don't know. I think there are some legit concerns and ideas out there, but overall, we're a spoiled society (thanks Apple). Even if Ableton never did another update, would we not be able to produce great music with it?

New iPhone season is upon us and there are actually people pissed off that Apple isn’t inspiring them enough to spend money on something they don’t actually need.

I just want a browser in Live with tagging functionality and related to that how about when you right click on a clip or section in arrangement view under the many color options it also shows tagging options. Oh, and related to that if files are tagged and appear in a tag attribute browser list when the tag type is selected it would solo every track that has those attributes. I could go on.

[Tarekith]

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