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

[Stromkraft]

Also, you're focusing on the wrong part of the message. My point was simply that when brands (even category-creating brands like Ford, Apple and Ableton) get cocky and resist user feedback, their customers will jump ship.

No, I did not focus on the wrong aspect. Apple do have faults and soft spots as any company does but they don't "resist user feedback" nor have users "jumped ship". Apple is thriving and market share has nothing to do with it. In fact market share never had anything to do with the success of Apple. This is a side point, but you brought it into the discussion and I felt it didn't fit.

This "do this or users will abandon you" threat is a bit tiresome. They already know that for starters.

It's fine to clearly state you, or even people you know, can't continue to support a company or use its products as long as issue "x" stands. That's fine. But I don't buy into the idea that the people at team Ableton don't know what they're doing and that the company and their products risk to perish. Sometimes they might make mistakes and we should feel free to criticise them and express our concerns, both in public and directly to them.

For the moment at least, since the invigoration of Live 9.2, my belief in Ableton as a company with relevant and quality products has been renewed. That does not mean at all that Live and its contents or the Push 2 are even near perfect — they're not — or that Ableton relentlessly shouldn't continue to refine their products.

I do agree there are some holes in the Live and Push products that need to be addressed and sooner rather than later. I'd rather they focus on these glaring holes and irritation points than add new features, but I leave it up to them to decide what works.

Let the discussion flow.

[Stromkraft]

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

Well, good for you!

[brettonwoodsapocalypse]

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

Apparently you consider yourself so important that you took the time to paste your order. Oh well...
Live is a program, Push an instrument. It sounds quite logical they tune the software to the instrument. Live 10 will cater for new functionalities, I suppose once you reach 9.7 the new version is not years away.

[Angstrom]

I just bought a pint of milk.
Take that Ableton!

really... dude.

Let's all contemplate the lyrics for Tiny Girls, by Iggy Pop

Well the day begins
You don't want to live
'Cause you can't believe
In the one you're with
'Cause you know her tricks
And you know her past
When she makes a face
You just have to laugh
And you feel like such a know-it-all
When you only want just a tiny girl
And you hope she'll sing.

So you turn around
Toward the tiny girls
Who have got no tricks
Who have got no past
Yea that's what you think
And you hope she'll sing
But she sings of greed
Like a young banshee
And she wants for this
And she wants for that
Ah, what did you think.

tiny girls = Bitwig

[[jur]]

Again, to do this all Ableton needs to do is listen to their users. It's not hard. Every time Live is updated I read the new feature list and just facepalm. The company seems completely tone deaf. Like why - whyyyyy - are they redesigning Simpler, which already worked totally fine, when other way more important fixes are needed?

I can assure you that Ableton is seriously listening to its user base!
When Live 1 was presented back in early 2000', nobody really understood why they had designed this strange Session View... I think that, as musicians, we should simply trust instruments makers. They are the one who generally think forward for us, right?

Do you have direct contact with the people responsible for choosing what to upgrade next? Can you shed some light on how they make their decisions and how they are consulting with users on desired features?

For the longest time, users told Apple, "We want a bigger iPhone." Apple said, "No, you can only have one size," so a lot of users switched to Android phones to get larger "phablet" sized phones. Only after Apple lost market share did they listen to their users.

For the longest time, users told Henry Ford they wanted cars in colors besides black. Henry Ford said, "You can have a car in any color you want, as long as it's black." Ford lost market share when other car makers gave the consumers what they wanted.

We are here trying to communicate with you now: we want basic DAW functionality. I appreciate the cleverness of all these other features but y'all are polishing the brass on the Titanic. Fix the giant hole from the iceburg first, then tell us about the polished brass. 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.

I guess I just wish someone from Ableton would acknowledge that they have heard us about our "pain points" and tell us that they care to alleviate our pain, even if just letting us know it's coming in a future release. It's getting old being disappointed year after year with updates that benefit only a small portion of users while ignoring pain points that affect a great number of users.

I can't say anything, but as I already told you "I can assure you that Ableton is seriously listening to its user base".
Now, can everyone discuss respectfully?
Thx

[Jay_NJ]

These days I can't imagine it's easy to stay relevant in any type of business. You've got to give credit to Ableton for remaining at the top for a good number of years now in a very competitive industry. I think they're doing a great job.

[kitekrazy]

These days I can't imagine it's easy to stay relevant in any type of business. You've got to give credit to Ableton for remaining at the top for a good number of years now in a very competitive industry. I think they're doing a great job.

I'm glad they have made a lot of updates to 9 instead of pushing us to 10. I can't afford all of these DAW upgrades.

[Stefan Jantschek]

These days I can't imagine it's easy to stay relevant in any type of business. You've got to give credit to Ableton for remaining at the top for a good number of years now in a very competitive industry. I think they're doing a great job.

This is the only one I agree 100%

Thanks!
*S.

-

[studiojohnny]

Apple is thriving and market share has nothing to do with it. In fact market share never had anything to do with the success of Apple.

So, to be clear, you think market share [read: having customers] has nothing to do with thriving as a company? And you think the most profitable company in the whole world doesn't worry about market share?? That is a very... interesting perspective.



But all that is way off topic so I'll bring it back around. What Apple did do, you must admit, is listen to users about pain points. Remember old cell phones? It was a pain to check your voicemail. It was pain to surf the web. It was a pain to text with T9. It was a pain to play music. It was a pain to add a contact.

What Steve Jobs asked as CEO was: how can the experience of using your phone be made less painful? How can it be improved?

I am a user and I am telling the staff and CEO of Ableton, God, Jesus, the forum, and whoever will listen: there are things that I have to do in Ableton that are painful and I wish they would make the pain end. I love Ableton. I am a fan. I give them my money. I want to help. I want them to be better. I am on the team. But there is room for innovation.

Each time one of these stuuuuupid, frivolous updates comes out I know the pain will persist. Why? Just why? Fix the annoying stuff already.

I apologize if I sound entitled or rude or mean or whatever. I don't mean to. It is simply the manifestation of my frustration. I readily admit: there is so much good to say about Ableton and people are right to point that out. But it is also okay to point out that there are things that are not okay too. I just wish they would start there before adding more silly features like "Send a MIDI signal out of Ableton to link to your coffee machine and make a cup of coffee!" "Support added to link together more than 700 PUSH units simultaneously in up to 4 continents!" I mean, come on already. Enough.

I wish someone that actually worked at Ableton, not just a forum moderator, would acknowledge that they hear us.

[Grill Pheiss]

Apple is thriving and market share has nothing to do with it. In fact market share never had anything to do with the success of Apple.

So, to be clear, you think market share [read: having customers] has nothing to do with thriving as a company? And you think the most profitable company in the whole world doesn't worry about market share?? That is a very... interesting perspective.



But all that is way off topic so I'll bring it back around. What Apple did do, you must admit, is listen to users about pain points. Remember old cell phones? It was a pain to check your voicemail. It was pain to surf the web. It was a pain to text with T9. It was a pain to play music. It was a pain to add a contact.

What Steve Jobs asked as CEO was: how can the experience of using your phone be made less painful? How can it be improved?

I am a user and I am telling the staff and CEO of Ableton, God, Jesus, the forum, and whoever will listen: there are things that I have to do in Ableton that are painful and I wish they would make the pain end. I love Ableton. I am a fan. I give them my money. I want to help. I want them to be better. I am on the team. But there is room for innovation.

Each time one of these stuuuuupid, frivolous updates comes out I know the pain will persist. Why? Just why? Fix the annoying stuff already.

I apologize if I sound entitled or rude or mean or whatever. I don't mean to. It is simply the manifestation of my frustration. I readily admit: there is so much good to say about Ableton and people are right to point that out. But it is also okay to point out that there are things that are not okay too. I just wish they would start there before adding more silly features like "Send a MIDI signal out of Ableton to link to your coffee machine and make a cup of coffee!" "Support added to link together more than 700 PUSH units simultaneously in up to 4 continents!" I mean, come on already. Enough.

I wish someone that actually worked at Ableton, not just a forum moderator, would acknowledge that they hear us.

+ 1

Just knowing for a fact that some of the basics that are *still* a pain to deal with will actually be covered soon would really help stick with the money and time
investement a lot of us put into ableton's products -

[Stromkraft]

[I love Ableton. I am a fan. I give them my money. I want to help. I want them to be better. I am on the team. But there is room for innovation.

Each time one of these stuuuuupid, frivolous updates comes out I know the pain will persist. Why? Just why? Fix the annoying stuff already.
…
it is also okay to point out that there are things that are not okay too.
…
I wish someone that actually worked at Ableton, not just a forum moderator, would acknowledge that they hear us.

Of course there is room for innovation and of course Ableton should address "pain" issues with using Live for making music. We should point these out too. Of course! No-ons said we shouldn't. It's the naive "or I'll use something else" that I find very very tiring and irrelevant. I view statements like that as emotional and believe they lead nowhere. No-one really cares what DAW others use. I think most would agree that everyone should use the DAW they're most comfortable with.

I don't understand why you're not talking directly to Ableton about these things? I do and so do many others. Quite a few of the issues I've had — and I think quite a few raised the same thing — have been fixed. In the end of the day it is Ableton that decides what is possible to fix and when. There are priorities and while we can have an opinion on these, we don't get to decide them.

Voting at centercode is a good way to get some input.

[Stromkraft]

OFFTOPIC

you think market share [read: having customers] has nothing to do with thriving as a company? And you think the most profitable company in the whole world doesn't worry about market share?? That is a very... interesting perspective.

What makes you think a lower market share means you have no customers? Profits is about making money out of your market share. Something Apple succeeds at no matter if they have 80% market share or 20%. Obviously a larger market share is better, but at 15% percent or so of the current phone market Apple isn't about to tank any time soon.

What is dreadful is Apple's current offerings of desktop computers. I believe they should have the strategy cater to the Pros there as that would benefit them in the end overall, but truth is that many people are typically updating their Macs at best every three years or so and for some, like myself, that means getting a later model on the second hand market and/or building your own (which Apple seems to accept for now).


/OFFTOPIC

Little of this translates to Ableton, who are not Apple and operates under its own market requirements. I think they're willing to listen but I can tell you it helps to be structured and avoid hyperbolic statements and irrelevant details. We're all humans, however.

[studiojohnny]

What makes you think a lower market share means you have no customers? Profits is about making money out of your market share.

What? I did not say that. You are literally making stuff up. Please go back and re-read what I said. I was merely quoting your words back to you. All I have contended is that, for a time, Apple did not listen to its users regarding bigger screens and they did indeed lose market share to android phones as a result of this. I don't know why you have such a problem with this.

And to respond to your incoherent comments, a lower market share would only mean you have less customers, not no customers because lower is a relative term. If you had no market share, then yes, you would have no customers. And yes, market share matters. Yes, Apple pays attention to market share. I promise. I am a filmmaker and have done commercial work for Apple where I had to work with their marketing team and ad agency. They care. Watch any Apple keynote address and pay attention to the part where the Steve Jobs or Tim Cook brag about market share. They care. I also have friends that work at Apple and can assure you: they care. Their shareholders care very much. Now let's let this silly side topic end.

[Stromkraft]

What makes you think a lower market share means you have no customers? Profits is about making money out of your market share.

What? I did not say that.

You made silly assumptions about what I meant. I just interpret what you wrote as you interpreted what I wrote before.

I assume you started this irrelevant side track about Apple as you believed it would say something about Ableton's situation. I really think it does not.

This is what you said:

you think market share [read: having customers] has nothing to do with thriving as a company.

From this can at least be deduced you believe that if you don't "have market share" as a company you're not making any money as you have virtually no customers (or less than you need to make a profit). The reality is of course different which should be obvious. Any company needs a market share in order to make money. That, again, is so obvious it must be assumed participants of a discussion acknowledges this.

That doesn't mean the focus for a company must be on "market share". You can have 5% market share and still make money. If you do depends on your business model, your operation costs and many other factors and not only on actual sales bound to some market share. A big market share is not end all is the message.

In Ableton's case they need to have enough sales to be able to sustain their current and planned operations and then some profits on top of that. No or close to no market share won't work of course , but a small(ish) market share might.

At any rate enough sales may not entail they must cater to your wishes or mine. Ableton are a competent company and I think they know what they're doing and that they have a plan or multiple plans.

This, again, is not to say we shouldn't criticize them. We should. That can be done with different methods, however. Hyperbole is not what I'd choose.

[mekanism1200]

Lets just hope Ableton isnt following in Apple's footsteps, their innovation stagnation is really depressing. I cant believe they are still charging what they are for basically 4 year old hardware!

I find it interesting that you have to be a part of the centercode system for Abes to listen to you. 99% of users wont take those extra steps, and I have never had to be a beta tester to be heard from devs. I have brought it up several times in the past that Ableton needs to have more of a presence here, an ambassador of sorts would be nice.