If Live 9 doesn't deliver...

[agent314]

I'd be pretty worried if my company could only count on making 30% of the income of the year before

I'd be pretty worried if my company based its business strategy around an informal 120-person opt-in poll on their internet forum.

[Angstrom]

good job
now tell me i'm wrong. tell me you've had your own business.

In short : I started my first business 20 years ago, it was an online music sales company ludicrously before its time and way before it was profitable, however it led to us providing digital support and strategy advice for EMI & VMG and working with Warner and BMG, we also branched into providing digital media support to a number of Premier League clubs, including phone games, etc. up to 2001 when we sold it to a large chinese conglomerate. Since then I've run a separate company which provides corporate strategic guidance to NGOs and SMEs, specifically in relation to company management through integrated communication systems. Which we both build and provide guidance on.

So yes, I have run a company before now.

tell me how a business can be successful when each year the revenues dropped 40% from the previous year.tell me that truthfully is possible and i'll shut the fuck up.
let's start with a modest $1M
next year it'll be $600K
etc.

the simple fact is, your figures are all worst-case scenarios. Sequential years of worst-cases. So far Ableton have suffered one release cycle of "worst-case" and publicly stated steps to rectify the issues that caused i, so consequently we should expect the next cycle to benefit from those steps taken. A bit like Win7 after Vista, Microsoft didn't just plow on into oblivion. Graph

However, we can't assume that revenues of Ableton have ever dropped into negative growth. In fact, we would be more sensible assuming that revenues grew, although possibly at a lower rate than previously. This is very common. Even when some users are vocal about issues, the product continues to gain market share and new adopters.
As much as fervent moany posters here might think that the company is shrinking by 40% year-on-year (!) More likely the last 2 years have seen slow growth, with minor vocal outspoken criticism from relatively few internet users. Consider how shit Windows Vista was, how terrible a company Microsoft are. Even they only experience a minor blip of -17% growth in 2008, and then straight back to +10%. We already know that Ableton are addressing any issues which arose previously.

Oddly this can often benefit a company who have previously sustained year-on-year growth of over %20 without any chance to implement management and process strategies to cope with this growth. A fallow year generally benefits the company as a whole because it allows re-assessment of structure and methodology, and as such following years deliver better user-satisfaction. In fact, we know that Ableton have done exactly this.

However, lets go along with your outlandish "consecutive years of failure" assumption, rather than the more standard, problem->resolution model Ableton and every other business ever created seem to be favouring.

What happens when a company is not able to address issues ,is not yearly steady decline, it is simply a sale of the company IP. You see, Live is a valuable IP with lots and lots of ties to hardware and software manufacturers. But that is a very unlikely circumstance, especially in this sector. If your app has high brand loyalty, unique USP, and high visibility it is near impossible to kill off.

Do you remember in 2000 when NI was a byword for lack of customer support, abandonware and user-dissatisfaction, how this carried on for years?
Exactly how "out of business" do you estimate NI to be right now?

you see, the figures you are estimating are simply not realistic. Business just doesn't work so simply.

[agent314]

owned.

[Machinesworking]

Do you remember in 2000 when NI was a byword for lack of customer support, abandonware and user-dissatisfaction, how this carried on for years?
Exactly how "out of business" do you estimate NI to be right now?.

Exactly.
Plus, again, not everyone uses Live as their only DAW. There's no way to really get any figures on this but I would bet money that Live is a lot like Reason in that a huge amount of people use it in conjunction with the more traditional Cubase, Logic, DP, Sonar, Pro Tools etc. I'm on 7 still, but that's a $$ issue more than product dissatisfaction issue.

I've messed around with DAWs for over 15 years, and they all are unstable pieces of shit at some point. It's not that the coders are all lazy etc., it's the constant need for improvement, and the ridiculous amount of ways things can go wrong that make a version upgrade unstable. Reason is stable because it severely limits the amount of things that can go wrong with no VST/AU support and a separate app for audio, it's self contained which limits it. You're going to see a much larger amount of customer dissatisfaction on Ableton's official forums when things get unstable simply because 90% or more of the people here are using it as their only DAW, which means heavy VST/AU integration and heavier use in general. I doubt many people using Live for clips and as an instrument rewired into a traditional DAW are unhappy with it, and that's again I bet a substantial amount of people.

[savyurrecords]

owned.

Could not say it better.

mcq714. We get your point. We just don't agree with your research, logic, reason. If we have not convinced you by now. We ne'er will.

OTOH This thread has been my main source of entertainment for a bit so let's keep it going.

mcq714. How about sharing some tunes that you made in something other than Live 8? How about sharing anything?

There are those that make art. There are those that talk about art

[agent314]

Then there are those who talk about making art.

/raises hand

[McQ714]

i claim to do none of the above.

just a hobbyist and not very good at it but i'll keep trying.

and Angstrom.. that is exactly the kind of background i like to hear about people here.
it proves to me that people don't just say "you're wrong" and have no basis on that conclusion.

in my experience, however, business really is that simple and i've owned a trucking company since 2008. i've also been a construction/general manager for the last 7 years.

i'm not talking completely out of my ass. i do know what it takes to succeed and it sure as hell doesn't come easy.

and because you're an ass Hoffman... how much did the Bridge cost you? and 60% of 1% is 0.60% or 0.006. guess you failed 5th grade mathematics?!?!

[Tone Deft]

McQ - dude, chill. Angstrom and Hoff are both a cut above the average Live user. great guys that we should both be happy still have the patience to deal with the crap on this forum.

from time to time we all get called out on some shit, get over it. nobody's really giving you that hard of a time, show some respect to people you've kinda known for a few years.

[The Leveller]

When I think about this thread, I touch myself.

[hoffman2k]

and because you're an ass Hoffman... how much did the Bridge cost you? and 60% of 1% is 0.60% or 0.006. guess you failed 5th grade mathematics?!?!

Ah well. Name calling it is then. Thanks for answering a rhetorical math question.
The Bridge didn't cost me anything, but Live doesn't exactly come free with Serato Live.

I'm hurt, but I suppose I can cope with this day knowing that somebody is doing all that they can to make Ableton fix Live 8.
I'll go retreat to Live 8.2.2 now. Coincidentally a version that contains the fixes of every bug I reported in the last year. I got one MFL bug left outstanding and only reported it a few weeks ago.
I can't really argue about being an ass. But at least my asshattery towards Ableton comes with some documented results.
What is going to make me look even more like an ass is the fact that Ableton/Cycling managed to deliver about 90% of every feature request I ever made in this upcoming update.

- Scumbag Bjorn

[Jarvisimon]

now, if you view my post as trolling, i'm sorry... it was not intended to be so. it's just the kind of info a company really should know about it's customers and i highly doubt Ableton would run this kind of poll themselves.

Whilst I agree that Ableton would never run this poll themselves (infact, no company would ever run such a poll about themselves because it's so unbelievably negative), neither is your attempt going to gain any useful figures.

To my knowledge, a pole is only ever good when everybody who uses the software gets to hear of the poll and the majority take part.

How many people have you got to answer the poll? I certainly shan't be bothering, despite being very vocal about the early release of Live 8.

Anyway, if you count the number of people who have voted in your poll and you divide that into the number of Ableton licenses sold, then multiply the figure by 100, you will get a percentage figure of users who bothered.

Let's say 10 people join in your poll and there are 100 000 users....10 divided by 100 000 = 0.0001....multiplied by 100 = 0.01% have bothered joining in your poll.

How useful do you think your poll really is?

[The Leveller]

The knowledge of the ten times table in this thread is astounding!

I'm touching now.

[Forge.]

owned.

ha hahah yes.

[Forge.]

Angstrom has given you the business perspective, now let me give you the certified trainer perspective!

I basically teach it to people for a living, and all the enquiries I get are from people who heard Ableton was wicked, so they either bought it if they have money or downloaded a crack and end up buying it after extensive pressure and realisations that they are fucked if they don't, possibly due to effective use of psychology on my part. But also, things sometimes just don't work in the cracks.

In any case, none of them have the faintest fucking idea which version of Ableton they have on their hard drives until I ask them, and they never come to me saying "that graphic bug where the volume is displayed on Operator has an anti-aliasing problem and is slightly less legible than other displays" [ ] - they don't even seem to really notice if it crashes, or at least none of them ever bother to tell me that it did.

make of that what you will.

[McQ714]

ok, so i guess i take things a little personal.. especially when people don't see things my way.
it'll be my un-doing and probably one of my biggest problems. but it leads to great debates with friends of mine that love to play the devil's advocate on a regular basis.

will you guys admit one thing? it's a pretty big slap in the face that despite Ableton's best efforts and all of the hard work they have put in to fixing the problems, people are still considering moving away from Live if they aren't given what they want in version 9. that was the only point i was ever trying to get across.

the poll is flawed and up to a lot of interpretation and i know there's a huge part of the user base that could care less what goes on in the forum. but there are a lot of users on the forum that are die hard supporters of all things Ableton and I suspect they are the ones that make up for the 60% of the poll.

and although it's a sign of weakness according to Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, I apologize for calling you an ass, Hoff.