Lionel

Great to have perpetual licenses and WUP back. But in all honestly, I’ll be looking at UA native and other devs as my first option. 

Waves will have to earn my trust again.

To the Waves Execs: There are things called surveys, polls and questionnaires. Use those next time. 

Guess 3rd party vendors are back in business?

1 hour ago, Patrick Wichrowski said:

https://www.change.org/p/waves-goodbye

It really shouldn't have to come to this.  But so glad someone made this.  A "good" company that cares about its customers(esp the loyal ones) would definitely know if they made a mistake. *smh*

4 hours ago, abacab said:

Popcorn time. User reaction to the announcement over at the Waves forum...

https://forum.waves.com/t/introducing-waves-creative-access/6850

 

Holy crap!  Checked it out... Now that's what I call an uproar!

Would love to be a fly on the wall at those Waves Execs meetings, lol

They'd have to be complete idiots not to bring back perpetual licenses and WUP

Also, check out: https://www.facebook.com/waves

Lots of angry folks there as well

I’m not holding my breath for Waves to reverse course. Even if they do, I’m not sure I can trust them to give them any more of my money.  Fool me once.

I’m moving forward with UA, PA, IK and especially the smaller devs.

Speaking of smaller devs, who are your faves? And which plugins in particular are your go-to’s?  Very much would like to know.

For me;

Melda: Love their pitch shifter and MCompare

Valhalla: All of their plugs are amazing.  But I keep reaching for their delays

Audio Damage: Awesome developer.  Love Filterstation, EOS 2 and Kombinat Tri

D16: It’s like Pokémon... “Gotta catch ‘em all!” They’re that good!

What if this is just a really early April fools joke?

How to ruin an audio plugin business

1. Waves Execs see all the profits companies like Adobe are making with subscriptions.  They want a piece of that pie.  
2. Without any consumer surveys or feedback, they decide to do away with perpetual licenses(and WUP) and go all in on a subscription-only business
3. Inform 3rd party vendors know they won't be needed anymore
4. Send an email to current customers stating they need to register their plugins by a short deadline.  No need to give them a good amount of time to adjust.  
5. Keep the email vague as possible without much detail, but make sure it sounds really important.  Just say some BS like, "Due to an upcoming change in our authorization & registration systems. Sunday, March 26, 2023 will be the last day to register dealer-purchased product serial codes that have not yet been registered."  If they have any questions, just put our contact info
6. Inform the support staff that something BIG is going to happen soon, but keep them in the dark.  If customers inquire about what's going on... just have the support team reply with vague replies
7. Make sure the main website has "ZERO" information about the deadline to register and the new authorization system. Actually, make sure they can't find info anywhere on the website including: search, store and FAQ
8. It's business as usual... Keep selling plugins on Waves.com  (Try get as many people(aka "suckers") to purchase plugins before the deadline)
9. The day has come.  Announce new Waves Creative Access on main website and all social media.  No more WUP, no more perpetual licenses.  Basically, Waves gives customers the middle finger
10. Uproar ensues.  Consumer outrage falls on deaf ears.  Waves lose majority of customer base.  All the while, Waves competitors like Universal Audio, Plugin Alliance, Melda and IK Multimedia are enjoying the show with popcorn 🍿

Definitely Reaper users here.  The is the Deals section, btw.

2 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Let's use this thread to share the names of developers we love that have replaced Waves plugins for us. For me, Sonible. Izotope,  Softube, Eventide, Arturia, the various devs through Plugin Alliance....I have yet to buy SSL stuff, but I have a musician friend who really knows mixing who has urged me to get their stuff. Between cclarry,  Bapu and Fleer, those guys own everything and we can just ask their opinions! The recommendations I've received from many forum members here have been really high quality. I rarely spend time at other music forums because of all of that and the many friendly people here. In the end, I have 30+ Waves plugins and I'm going to try to use alternatives -- so that one year from now,  if an. open an old project I don't have a Waves plugin that stopped working.  

Totally agree!

For me, my main Waves alternatives are:

• Plugin Alliance
• IK Multimedia
• Softube
• Arturia
• D16
• Melda
• Universal Audio

As for someone that just recently purchased a bunch of Waves plugins, I'm actually not going to use them for the same reasons you just mentioned.  I'm just going to take that temporary hit and move on.

As one of my favorite TV Show characters, Barney Fife, would say... "Nip it in the bud."

What's scandalous is the fact that Waves.com kept on selling plugins(perpetual licenses) up until the deadline.  Seriously??? That's a messed up move on their part.  No notice or warning on their own website whatsoever.  I feel for the unsuspecting customers who may have made purchases right before the deadline.

They should have at least put a notice/warning on their website with something like:

"Please note: If you make a purchase on Waves.com before March 26th, your plugin will only be supported for the current version only.  Your plugin will not be supported in any future updates/versions, unless you purchase our new subscription service (Details to be announced on March 27, 2023)."

57 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Well, many threads and posts later, we have our answers. My guess is that Waves move to subscription only will be short lived, and hopefully,  before our plugins stop working,  they'll switch back to subscription and perpetual licenses.  Until then, there are plenty of great alternatives to Waves and those are the developers I'll continue to support and even if Waves goes back to perpetual licenses before the end of the year, after this, I won't be buying from Waves again. 

Yes, I hope they reverse track on this decision and bring back the perpetual license option.

A good example of the subscription model not working is Reason+.  Reason Studios tries to get users to jump on the Reason+ subscriptions, but customers adamantly refuse.  They only want perpetual licenses.  And that's why you see Reason Studios heavily discounting R+ every few months to $1 for a month.  And that's why RS continues to have perpetual licenses.

So, stay the course and DON'T SUBSCRIBE to WCA, folks.  

They'll start to feel the pinch in their wallets and hopefully bring back perpetual licenses.

Now that’s what you call a deal-breaker.

Luckily for us, there are TONS of plugin alternatives.

It really sucks that I heavily invested in Waves during the last BF/CM sale

Adios, Waves! You put your own nail in your coffin.

From the FAQ:

Is Waves Creative Access the only way to get Waves plugins now?

“Yes, as of March 26, 2023, Waves Creative Access subscriptions are the only way to get Waves plugins. Of course, if you purchased Waves plugins previously, you continue to own them (at the latest version you had prior to the launch of Waves Creative Access).“

Come on, Waves…

We’re ready for that WUP+ XXL

What country time zone is Waves based in?  For those that have yet to register their plugins, you may want to know that bit of information before you miss the deadline.

1 hour ago, kitekrazy said:

Who knows maybe the rent to own is the nest frontier.

I actually like rent-to-own models. Only thing with that model, is that you’re paying full price most of the time.  Companies don’t usually give you the sale price on top of a rent-to-own product.

With that said, I much prefer RTO over subscription.  At least you get to keep a product that allows us to open our previous sessions.

Software/App subscriptions are at the very bottom of the totem pole… yes, below WUP.

25 minutes ago, Technostica said:

People here are anti music production software subscriptions which is very different.

Yes, this exactly. 

We can all thank Adobe for the surge in software and app subscriptions being offered by other companies.  The amount of profit Adobe makes quarter after quarter is just ridiculous.  They are the subscription standard and they're just riding this billion dollar cash cow.  Not until they all start losing money will those companies stop offering subscriptions.

So yeah, we need to hit 'em where it hurts... their wallets.

Please don't subscribe, folks.

When you subscribe, you're just validating the whole software subscription business model.

So, cancel those subscriptions from Adobe, Avid, Capture One, PA, Reason+, Roland, Slate, Mobile Apps, etc.

There are alternatives.  

If you go to Waves.com main page.  Zero info about "any" of this.  No links, no FAQ... nada. 

Only way to have gotten any notice or information is from forums like this or an email from Waves/3rd party vendors.  What kind of company does this???  You would think the information that was in their newsletter could at least be found somewhere on their website, but NOPE!  

Lastly, I really don't like the timeframe that Waves gave us.  Out of nowhere came a March 26th deadline.  And we're literally all left wondering, "what tf is going on?!"  You'd at least think we'd have a year's notice (at least that what would seem like the right thing to do).

I'm eagerly waiting to see what all the hubbub is about after March 26th.  I sincerely hope it's good news for customers.

I have plugins that need to be WUP'd as well.  I just hope we're not missing out on a great opportunity to get cheaper WUP updates while we still can from places like EveryPlugin.com.

Whatever comes after March 26th, I just hope it's good news all around.

8 minutes ago, Last Call said:

Is this the end of freebies?

I was hoping they gave away eventually the SSL console, or any console 😇

Can't imagine it being the end of freebies.  What better way to hook us into getting WUP'd.

4 hours ago, cclarry said:

The reason that they are doing that is that they are changing their authorization system from what I understand

Going forward, I wonder what happens after March 26th.  I sincerely hope Waves do not force registration deadlines(again) when we make purchases at online shops like EveryPlugin or BestService.  I’d like to dictate when I register my own purchases(or give as a gift for someone else to register).  If they ever force another registration deadline, that’s the last straw.  I’ll forever think of Waves Audio as Shady Audio and they’ll lose me as a customer for good.
 

Btw, I contacted Waves about this whole debacle wanting more clarification(especially for an instance of making a purchase extremely close to March 26th, like March 25th, for example. Or another scenario where a customer wanted to give their registration code as a gift to someone else to register at their own preferred date.  I asked in both scenarios, is there a grace period to register?  
 

Customer support said,

“If you have another license that you have never registered, this will need to be registered by March 26th. Once our registration system has been updated, older licenses will no longer be able to be registered.”

So yeah, Waves is basically saying you’re SOL if you don’t register by March 26th. Seems like this is a hard deadline with no sort of willingness on Waves’ part to help or remedy in any capacity once the clock strikes midnight.