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Say NO to subscription plans


El Diablo

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If you buy into subscription plans, you are telling those businesses it's okay to have subscription plans and you don't want to own anything.  You'll just rent from them.  It's slavery!  If you stop paying, you loose everything!

If you buy into subscription plans, your hurting others in that process!

Don't buy into subscription plan no matter how much shiny they put in front of you!

Subscription plans = legalized slavery!

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If someone finds a subscription plan valuable then they should consider getting it. If not then they should pass. Pretty simple.

It's not an inherently evil system, and you are hurting no one by choosing to do business in this manner. I choose to subscribe to Pro Tools Studio, I refuse to subscribe to plugins.

My choice.

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1 hour ago, El Diablo said:

If you buy into subscription plans, you are telling those businesses it's okay to have subscription plans and you don't want to own anything.  You'll just rent from them.  It's slavery!  If you stop paying, you loose everything!

If you buy into subscription plans, your hurting others in that process!

Don't buy into subscription plan no matter how much shiny they put in front of you!

Subscription plans = legalized slavery!

Oh, dear Jesus....

Edited by Byron Dickens
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I avoid subscription plans unless (A) I truly need the service and (B) there isn't an alternative that I can buy and own.

I make my living as a pro musician. When COVID came around, I was unemployed for 2 years. Thanks to me owning and not renting my gear and apps, I survived the drought, continued to make music, and didn't have to dip into my savings.

My subscriptions: Web host, shopping cart, telephone, ISP, and one-disc-at-a-time Netflix.

I own my synths, saxophones, guitars, software, house, and car.

There is more than one right way, this is my way.

 

Notes ♫

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I will not use anything that I use to create my music with that requires a subscription. 

I think it's a sleezy scummy way to scam people out of more money coupled with the threat of locking them out of their own work if they don't continue to pay forever.

My brother owns a business machine company. I started running calls for him again once in a while when he gets really busy. Some of those fancy touchscreen point of sales systems you see in stores and restaurants require a "software" license to be purchased yearly. You know, just to keep everything up to date. You get a warning message on the screen saying you have 30 days left to renew your license. If you don't do it the system shuts down and will not work. You can't renew the license remotely. A tech has to go out and do it.

 

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Personality I don't believe any software tool to be so important that you should waive away your right of owning a copy of it. While there are some advantages of subscription plans for things like film, the many disadvantages are starting to bleed into the real world. Things like BMW requiring you too pay subscription to have heated seats and steering wheel or Mercedes locking performance from their electric cars behind a subscription. These two examples are worse because the functionality is already in the product you paid money for, but the manufacturer won't let you use it unless you pay more.

Edited by Bruno de Souza Lino
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39 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Personality I don't believe any software tool to be so important that you should waive away your right of owning a copy of it.

Exactly.

I know they need cash flow to keep on making a living, but IMO that's not the way to do it.

I usually get the updates on the software I use, but they have a challenge to make the update worth the price. With a subscription, there is less incentive to improve the product.

Also, I do a lot of MIDI work, creating styles for Band-in-a-Box, and creating backing tracks for my duo, The Sophisticats. I have an old copy of Master Tracks Pro. It's orphaned as it is no longer being produced. Microsoft bought the company for some video software they created to use in an early version of PowerPoint, and abandoned MTPro.

I love MTPro because (1) it has great editing tools and (2) without audio bundled with the MIDI, it's very fast. There are menus but no sub-menus and no sub-sub-menues. Every edit is available with 2 mouse clicks or less, and with no hesitation. That way, I spend less time with the mouse in my hands, and more time with a musical instrument in my hands.

The latest version I OWN is from the early 2000s.

I do not lease or subscribe to any software at all. That's just me,  YMMV.

My saxophones, guitars, wind synths, flute, bass, keyboard, drum MIDI controllers, microphones, PA system, and all the software that allows me to make a living doing music and nothing but music is paid for. I have a saxophone that will be 100 years old in 2 years. I paid $50 for it from a widow, spent a few hundred getting it in playing condition, and other than normal maintenance (pads, corks, springs, etc., that eventually need replacement) and it's mine. It has the voice of an angel, and is worth much more than I paid for it decades ago. Owned, not leased, the monthly payments would have been astronomical by now.

I do have some unavoidable subscriptions though, ISP, web host, telephone, and a one-at-a-time DVD subscription from Netflix.

In the early days of leasing an automobile, by father-in-law, who was a traveling salesman, leased instead of buying. It ended up costing him much more money than buying a car, and when the lease was over, he had nothing to show for it, and nothing to trade in for a new vehicle. At the end, the leasing company charged him for every scratch on the car, every mile more than the allotment, and a bunch of picky charges, all designed to make sure he pays more. He said he would never lease another.

That might be why leasing a car is no longer as hot as it once was.

 

 

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they want subs to keep the revenue flow, people will just use their last paid/owned versions otherwise... they had to make up a new name for this "SAS, or software as a service" where before it was software as a product... business does as business will

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If you pay rent you would be on an apartment subscription plan. Some rent for convenience so all of the upkeep is on the landlord, others can't afford a house and it sure beats living in a tent.

Most only rent because they have to rent. Only exceptions are maybe power equipment we will only use for a day or two.

Most of us own our computers, so it might seem odd to rent the software, especially for a software music tool we use all the time, and I'll admit the subscription model isn't the most appealing to me. 

A couple of exceptions may be-

Only need to use a program for a week because client's files use it and they want me to mix it. In that case I might rent it for month so I have access to it. Maybe I want to try an expensive program without buying it.

The attributes of software require that it needs updates periodically to keep up with OS and hardware updates. The computer world has never been static. Probably doesn't need monthly updates though, more realistically  every 3-5 years.

I see this as more of a "feed the software engineers" move. In some cases I believe it's necessary if we want to continue to see our favorite software products. Subscription ends up being company support and the price of admission.

Was a little frustrating picking up my Tesla the other week. 9.99 a month to have live app streaming, but I was willing to pay it because it let me use many of my apps . Google maps is live. Spotify is another 9.99 a month if I want it. Free version doesn't work in the Tesla. Plenty of other free radio apps with that monthly streaming fee.

I get it,  if they charged a one time fee, with inflation, how could they be sure that fee would cover them for the life of the car? Same with software. If They charged me a one time fee, will it cover development on it until I no longer use the software? What if I live to 90 and use it until then? 

Either way we pay. Cakewalk once had yearly updates that were payed updates.Updating was optional, but a some point not updating would be compromising stability.

If only 50% payed for updates that year, this was the revenue they made. I think around Christmas pretty much everyone updated though. 

 

 

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One of the things I for certain would never pay subscription money for nor use as music streaming services like Spotify. If you take a look around, it's not difficult to see how little Spotify cares about the people producing what makes them money to the point there are several cases of people having to go to court because they only found out Spotify put their music there without their permission once, being paid a pitiful sum of money for millions of reproductions (Peter Frampton at one point tweeted a royalty statement from Spotify where he received 1000 pounds for 55.5 million plays of one song of Frampton Comes Alive, which is perhaps one of the best selling live albums in history) and having all the stuff you gave no permission to be in Spotify back there after 18 months, on top of more popular artists getting most of the money you paid for rather than the stuff you're actually listening to. And this is one of the reasons Spotify is heavily invested in AI, as that would solve one of their primary problems as a service, which is having to pay artists.

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