Ableton is loyal to its customers

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:31 am

Pricing is only one element of loyalty. It's also not the most significant and besides, Cubase 5 update will cost more from C4 and especially older versions than Live 7 to 8 upgrade, unless you are upgrading from regular Live 7 to Live 8 Suite.

Ableton shows it loyalty in the ways I described above. This has more depth than just pricing - Ableton is a smaller company than Steinberg or Apple and it's product is still quite a niche product, so the pricing is justified. I COULD use Logic or Cubase for Live performance but I wouldn't want to, as neither are really designed for on the fly changes and morphing.

The pricing is fair enough IMHO. Of course, we'd all like to see it little lower in the real world, but Apple only discounted Logic so that people would migrate to Mac - a mac being a bloody expensive dongle if you were running a PC previously

And again, you always have the choice not to upgrade and/or look to enrol on a college course or something and get the massive savings on an educational license.

udp · Post by **udp** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 1:38 pm

Obviously, the answer is to make money with Live to pay for the upgrades. Why buy the damn tool and not use it to pay for itself? That makes it affordable at any price.

leonle · Post by **leonle** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 2:21 pm

Yes they are loyal and get heavy amount for being so,I mean the price of updates and software is rising all the time.

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Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 3:13 pm

as a noob i wish i got a bunch of cool instruments when i bought Live. I didn't understand that you sort of "needed" the Live suite if you wanted to create from scratch. So i ended up with reason as well. Not so happy about that.

but i'm buying the suite when live 8 comes out and it will be a perfect compliment to all the free vst's and such i've found on the way. i can't wait for session drums.

LeifonMars · Post by **LeifonMars** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 3:25 pm

Jekblad wrote:as a noob i wish i got a bunch of cool instruments when i bought Live. I didn't understand that you sort of "needed" the Live suite if you wanted to create from scratch..

Eh? There are plenty of free quality VST synths (Automat, Triple Cheese to name a few). You can create a decent sampler with simplers and racks. And sampled instrument collections come with ever second issue of CM and Music Tech.

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 4:00 pm

Yeah i have all those. I'm not saying theren't aren't a lot of great free options out there.

I'm saying as a noob it would've been nice to have all that handed to you for "plug n play". Logic Studio is 500 bucks and comes with a ton of crap to use right out of the box, versus live coming with some simpler patches.

I still think Ableton is "loyal". I think they're great!

Tom Void · Post by **Tom Void** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:46 pm

Just as much a question of "Apples or Pears"!
It's somewhat irrelevant to compare upgrade pricing between two different companies. It's not the same software, as the first gives one result and the other a totally different.
I wouldn't look at purchasing ex. Cubase just because it was cheaper then Live, as it does not suit my taste or workflow.

To accumulate all you have spent towards upgrading Live, in the past years, is even worse! Compare it to hardware, where the natural result of time passing by, is that your investment degrades in value.
What you invest today you should be happy about "in the now" but tomorrow it will be worth just a scratch less... even if it's software we're talking about.
I can't imagine what mountain of cash I would have had, if I hadn't upgraded HW and SW till Today...(1993 and onwards) if that previous asumption was true. I might have had enough money to simply buy Ableton HQ!

Fire and forget! Move on! You could also be ever so patient, and wait for Ableton Live V. 10 and see if that sattisfies you.
I'm rolling with the band, and if it ain't my upgrade i'll stick with 7 *cough hint*

This is what they offer, and they are not forcing you to buy it... or are they!?

Abliens from Berlin!

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:14 pm

Acidfever wrote:I would really like to see some proof of loyalty with some customer discounts.

Ableton have outlined how they view their customer base in the announcement about who got the coupons this time round. If you are a owner of the Full version of Live you should have got a $30 discount. If you didn't, and feel that you slipped through the cracks they have said that you can contact them about it. I myself will not get that coupon because I only have the LE version.

Being an LE user, they have marketed an upgrading path to the full version. This makes sense from a 1 time offer for them as that would position me for future major version upgrades, and therefore my money. Its in their interest to have as many full version paying customers as possible. They have a tricky task of marketing to a range of users in a way that seems fair.

There is proof of loyalty within their scheme of things. Full vs LE & Lite.