Ableton Forum

Why bother to pay for upgrades?
The reason I'm asking is that it appears to me that Ableton Live is in permanent BETA and therefore accessible to everyone...
Why would anyone buy, instead of just downloading the latest beta instead, knowing that the next BETA is just around the corner?!

Well, I question what you are asking. For example, I "bought" live 8 suite and got live 9 suite for "free"

I get to try all the betas of 9. Yeah, 9 isn't quite mature yet but it's getting there. Having a hard time with what you mean.

Software is not perfect in nature and hardware now has firmware which is based on software... A conundrum that cannot be solved. You are right you want 'perfect' software out of the box. However this is not possible.
Albeit Software nature often disappoints owners, it is worth a lot of work from developers and the company behind them, hence they need to be paid. For me Live works as intended but I am not a pro user so take my comments with a grain of salt. Live 9 has a good new structure that sure will improve over time. When I updated earlier this year from L8 suite to L9 suite I got Max4Live included. I am no programmer but the amount of devices and the new convolution reverb deserve the money spent alone. Add Glue, and other stuff to the game and I think it's not that bad, actually is great. I am no fan boy so I can say that some of the implementation could have been done better like the L8 vs L9 library stuff.. the browser could be faster... but I guess they are doing something about that, at least Ableton has always been a company that listens.

Best Regards
Pasha

I've been under the impression that you need a Live 9 license in order to be able to use the Live 9 betas. Am I missing something?

I wasn't going to buy Live 9, but then they offered to give it to me for free, and after a bit of back and forth, I finally accepted. Now everybody is happy.

Listening to some Steven Seagal blues right now, ftw, ffs.

L9 beta is only available for L9 users...(afaik)