Ableton Forum

It is NOT a subscription,
and definitely NOT 169 per MONTH:

Bitwig wrote: This is not a subscription; you own a perpetual license.
Does Bitwig Studio now come at an annual cost of the upgrade price?
No, you can wait to renew your license, until you discover a new feature you like in the latest version of Bitwig Studio - and then get back on board again.

So you buy your first licence and keep on using it as long as you like.

If at some point in the future, possibly three, four full versions later you think:
"These new features and the chance of liking what (if anything) they put out in the next 12 months
is worth 159EUR/169USD to me"
You get that update & keep using it as long as you like, until at some point... lather, rinse, repeat.

Sounds fair to me?

Well fair is a big word. But i'd say it'd be acceptable if all bug fixes for the bought features were a separate free update.

So paying more for new features = acceptable
Paying again to get the features I already bought to actually work flawlessly = not acceptable, no matter how many new features (I may or may not care for) they throw in.

Though I have to say those would have to be some very compelling features for 169 a piece.

And what happens if I skip one update?
Does the next one after that then include all the previous new features? Or do I have to pay for each update in between that I skipped?
Or is Bitwig so modular, that they can be sold separately? Mix and match so to speak.
That would fragment the user base a lot though.
Either way, I see this becoming very uncompelling very quickly.
I'd definitely pass.

And if Live would go this way, I'd stay on 9.7 for eternity.
It's a great program as is anyways. I don't really need anything else to make music and have a blast doing it

I don't know if it is fair but it is less that what is currently offered by Live, Cuabase, Reason, FL studio, Reaper, Studio One and other DAW: pay for the upgrade and get all.X releases until next mayor version or .5 at least (FL studio offers lifetime upgrades).

So they have set a new lower standard for value.

malutkodon wrote:It is NOT a subscription,
and definitely NOT 169 per MONTH:

Bitwig wrote: This is not a subscription; you own a perpetual license.
Does Bitwig Studio now come at an annual cost of the upgrade price?
No, you can wait to renew your license, until you discover a new feature you like in the latest version of Bitwig Studio - and then get back on board again.

So you buy your first licence and keep on using it as long as you like.

If at some point in the future, possibly three, four full versions later you think:
"These new features and the chance of liking what (if anything) they put out in the next 12 months
is worth 159EUR/169USD to me"
You get that update & keep using it as long as you like, until at some point... lather, rinse, repeat.

Sounds fair to me?

You miss the crucial detail: If an expired support license leaves a user with buggy software. If Bitwig is buggy on delivery, and remains buggy at month 12 the onus is on the user to keep paying 12 monthly support fees until it is fixed! Sadly Bitwig is known for things not quite working as expected. Does anyone really have faith that they will fix bugs within 12 months?

But .... all software has bugs, especially new software at version 1 - so that's understandable and not to point the finger directly at Bitwig - a parallel :
For me Ableton Live versions 9.0 to 9.5 did not function correctly, there were bugs (for me). These bugs were slowly fixed so that by 9.6 it runs very well. During that whole period I was able to submit bug reports, get support and slowly access updates and upgrades which eventually resolved my issues.

With Ableton resolving these issues From October 2013 to Feb 2016 I received full support to get my system working.
TOTAL COST OF SUPPORT €249 (cost of Suite upgrade from L8 to L9)

With Bitwig that would have cost the price of the upgrade PLUS the support subscription
EQUIVALENT TOTAL COST OF SUPPORT €477

this is just to get the software working. it will cost nearly double for Bitwig, which is more known for bugs.
Does that sound fair to you?

malutkodon wrote:It is NOT a subscription,

Well, it's more of a subscription than what Live has for its licensing. But you don't lose the access when the current support license runs out if I understand what you just wrote.

With Ableton resolving these issues From October 2013 to Feb 2016 I received full support to get my system working.
TOTAL COST OF SUPPORT €249 (cost of Suite upgrade from L8 to L9)

With Bitwig that would have cost the price of the upgrade PLUS the support subscription
EQUIVALENT TOTAL COST OF SUPPORT €477

I payed 169 Euro for an 8 Suite to 9 Suite update in 2013. Maybe it was an early bird price, can't remember.

Cheers, Bastian

Aha I was misremembering the price. It was a long time ago!

Angstrom wrote: You miss the crucial detail: If an expired support license leaves a user with buggy software. If Bitwig is buggy on delivery, and remains buggy at month 12 the onus is on the user to keep paying 12 monthly support fees until it is fixed!

Way I see it you wouldn't keep paying until it is fixed, but only pay again once it is fixed.
And you're buying a one year support/upgrade/warranty-period with it like you might for hardware.

While I could see your scenario of a stream of 13th-month-bugfixes happening (and yes, that would be frustrating as fuck)
I hope it might also make users less prone to GAS, look more to demos/forum-opinions of what is stable.
Therefore buying upgrades not because of full version numbers, marketing or discounts but because of stable features you deem worth it.

So this actually might force Bitwig to keep churning out stability & new features,
because with a licensing system like that the majority of users updatecycles might not align like they might with most other DAWs system.

Who knows... I'm a libra. And I might also be wrong about all this

Wow, it is quite impressive what BW marketing just achieved.

Limiting support to 12 months is, compared to their previous model and other DAW, without a doubt removing value. After 12 months your license devalues because it runs out and you have to renew support for bugfixes and updates.

This is a new low standard in the music software, Protools and sonar has something similar but at least they named what it is: subscription. AFAIK with PT and Sonar you also keep your "perpetual" license and you just are locked out of updates. WIth sonar you can jump back at the same cost, with protools you have to pay full again if you didn't renew.

Live, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, Logic, all of them include support for as long as the version is current which is normally more than 12 months, if not much more. So limiting the support time is without a doubt detrimental to consumers. Cubase has a more regular release schedule but the updates are cheaper, and you can skip .5 without hacing to pay much more when .0 versions come.

And then it gets even worse,

Why is this upgrade plan better than our previous model?
We will be able to release key features as they are ready - instead of holding them back for major releases. This enables us to offer you new feature and content updates more regularly.

They are promising regular updates with new features, so people get in to the new model on the hope of added value instead of offering finished features with each update.

An important* side question: Say this entices Live users to also get a Bitwig license. Is it viable to use both DAWs also for the same projects, though in different phases? Say like if you compose and make arrangements in one and mixdown and do pseudomasters in the other. How easy or hard is it to move stuff between these two? Native devices can't be moved of course, but I'm thinking MIDI data, plug-in automation and audio. I haven't been following Bitwig since the first year.


*to me.

i was hoping for bitwig, so sad they now look a bit poorly. intrudicing this pricing model with a year of support, which relies on trust, and not delivering what they promised for v.2 update (i mean modular environment)

There's more to come in v2, allegedly, based on the end of the promo clip and what Peter Kirn said. So, all they have to do is include the much-touted modular environment and it's a different proposition entirely.

The price of everything just makes Reaper look better.

beats me wrote:

Angstrom wrote:Cant say I'm impressed with their new updates license.
https://www.bitwig.com/en/17/new-license-model.html

You buy the app and get 12 months of updates.
Then additional years of updates cost you $169 every year.

That’s preposterous, and I don’t think they are relevant or “gold standard” enough to pull that off successfully. Sounds more like a win for Ableton (until they announce something similar)

It doesn't look like their user base is happy. Few can do the Cakewalk model and even the Image Line model.

My personal experience with Bigwig v1 is really bad...so Ableton....bring it on !!!

PHY6 wrote:My personal experience with Bigwig v1 is really bad...

Care to elaborate?