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Waves Subscription Plan


GroverKen

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55 minutes ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

They have had a subscription option for a while now, not sure these new terms are much better.  I'd label this as "not a deal".

I would disagree, Matthew ;)

If I am not wrong their subscription offers before was completely unreasonable. Now on the contrary, they could be interesting for some people.

 

I mean people who wants them just to use few times for a project and don't care about having them. I am aware of course deals for gold much below $99 :)

Edited by Piotr
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Looking at the Wayback machine they seem to have evolved a few plans over the years.  I see some rent-to-own plans ($149/month for 24 months for Mercury, $49/month for Platinum) last year.  Before that they had some $9.99/month just rent Silver and $149 Mercury.

This current Silver/Gold/Platinum at $6.99/$9.99/$19.99 is still a bit off I think (especially the yearly cost which is pretty close to what you can buy the packages outright for if you wait for a sale)

I can't imagine any pro users seeing a Platinum subscription even with the additional 5 bonus plugins as being good enough for a one-off job.  Maybe Horizon+5.

The real problem of course is that unless you have the plugins day in and day out you'll never be good enough using them to warrant a spot subscription.  I'm not sure I believe there is a market for plugins on demand.  Certainly not among the non-pro users, but even professional users seem unlikely to swap in and out toolsets.  Mostly they stick with the same handful of plugins, day in and day out.  They may replace those pieces (for newer better plugins) but I'd bet they aren't often finding themselves needing some random Waves plugin out of the blue.  And if that was to happen I doubt it's in Silver/Gold/Platinum.

If Wave's wants to get into the subscription game they need to make a Mercury+Studio Classics+Inspire for $50/month.  And that'll never happen since they want to claim Mercury is $7500 full retail.

Edited by Matthew Sorrels
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31 minutes ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

Certainly not among the non-pro users, but even professional users seem unlikely to swap in and out toolsets.  Mostly they stick with the same handful of plugins, day in and day out. 

I'm not a pro by any standards :) - but even I tend to use the same plugins.  In fact I only buy new ones BECAUSE it's a hobby and I can play with them.  In most walks of life it's sensible to buy they best tools you can afford and stick to them.

The only reason I might ever hire is if a special job came up with a weird and expensive tool that I was only gonna use once......even then I'd prefer to buy.  That doesn't apply to the silver/gold/platinum bundles IMO 

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I'm currently paying $10.99 a month for the Slate All Access...and it is WELL worth the money...
it's the ONLY subscription I have, or ever WILL have...as there is no way I could afford all those plugins...
and the tutorials themselves are almost worth it...plus all the added stuff.  The only thing that SHOULD
be added is SSD....not that I would ever use it, but "all access" should mean ALL access!

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I have Horizon and a bunch of the other decent plugins that weren't part of Horizon. I can live with a  WUP every few years to keep them current.

I will probably never be a fan of subscriptions. I notice several other companies are offering buy or rent. If rent ever becomes mandatory, that's probably the day I start shopping for something else.

Not sure if you can see the info for plugin updates. I would like to know what I'm getting in my "update". Did they add features I don't know about. Was it simply an under the hood improvement? If so, did I really need it?  I still haven't updated my Windows Portal. I want to fly under the radar as long as I can. Everything is working. 

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Ive kinda felt like Waves already had a subscription I got in on without knowing it. Loads of cheap plugins and an update every so often that requires  WUP. If the new versions start coming more often than they have in the past then that might be what they have been doing all along.

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Just curious, why all the anxiety over the WUP? Is it really necessary that you purchase an update plan after your 'free' year of updates expires? Why not just take a pass?

In all the years I've been buying plugins, I don't recall even one that became incompatible with the DAWs I use (the obvious exception was the transition from 32 to 64 bits).

Has it been the case that Waves plugins in particular become incompatible over time? If not, I'll just continue using my current plugins without paying for the WUP.

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2 minutes ago, locrian said:

Waves plugins in particular become incompatible over time?

No. In fact they have versions available to install all the way back to v6. I started with them on v8 and have quite a few still at version 9. But I also have a lot at v11. And I love Waves stuff. Great sounding, easy to use, works as expected.

If I was to complain, (and I have let them know numerous times) is the install program WC. It's gotten better, but still leaves a lot to be desired. It installs stuff all over without any permission from you. They have their reasons, and I understand them, but I still don't like it. All I want is a 64bit vst3 version in my vst3 folder. Not all the other bs that comes along with it. [rant over!]

And I'll say again: I love Waves stuff. Great sounding, easy to use, works as expected.

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7 minutes ago, Grem said:

And I'll say again: I love Waves stuff. Great sounding, easy to use, works as expected.

Yes, I agree.

And that's why I don't understand all the grief about WUP. If your plugins continue to work after your support expires, who cares what they charge for WUP.

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28 minutes ago, locrian said:

Yes, I agree.

And that's why I don't understand all the grief about WUP. If your plugins continue to work after your support expires, who cares what they charge for WUP.

Because the very existence of wup makes some *feel* that it's necessary and I suspect many regard it as an insurance policy and they wup for peace of mind alone. I know there has to be *a lot* of those people. But sometimes w/ wup you get upgraded features and maybe even new plugins for bundles and blah blah. But I think the primary existence of wup is to make money specifically by playing on people's fears and insecurities and I doubt that's incidental. The consensus here is to only wup if something stops working and wuping is the only fix though I'd be exceptionally angry w/ Waves in that case and again I suspect a lot of people wup to *prevent* anything from happening. I like the plugins. 

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WUP if you're re-selling.
WUP if they add new things to a bundle (and it's cheaper than buying them).
WUP if your OS changes require it (Mac users get this more than PC)
WUP if you want/like to have all your plugins running the same version number.
WUP if you need direct support.


None of those reasons are the same as a subscription though.  Now that the sudden V11 release is out of the way (due to the Mac OS upgrade) I am hoping there will be many years before V12 ships.  You can still update plugins with the same major version number even without WUP (which I think a lot of people don't understand).  Which means it's not a subscription.

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