Waves Platinum $74.99 USD

[Fleer]

 

[MusicMan]

On 6/23/2024 at 8:53 PM, Carl Ewing said:

Any evidence that their business is doing poorly? Or just yammering on because you don't like their update scheme? Unless someone can post actual numbers this is a meaningless conversation.

On the flip side - you're free to use Fab Filter where they charge $75 for a single plugin update lol. Or pay for the endless updates to iZotope plugins. I have no problem paying $240 to update 100 plugins every 5 years or so...if needed. And neither does any studio I visit, all of whom use Waves plugins. Although most are on subscriptions like the majority of the industry. 

 

Just yammering on

But it really doesn't take Einstein to see their market share has taken a massive hit from where it was say 20 years ago. Waves used to be the big dog and could charge what they want. Plugin Alliance who have fallen out of popularity now a touch, significantly displaced them and pros and hobbyist alike flocked to them in droves. UA dropping to Waves like prices has further cast them aside. Even Softube has shown signs of competing on price with some of their recent sales and bundles. These are all considered to be a tier above Waves. Even if at worst, you consider them on par, they're in the same market segment for customers now. Let alone the plethora of brilliant new developers that have products that are modern, innovative and better quality. 

I dare say if it wasn't for Waves other licensing and income streams apart from plugins, they would be feeling the pinch even more. To make a play to drop sales altogether and cease WUP and try and go subscription only, could very well be a reflection of feeling that pinch. 

In terms of meaningless, even if it helps one person avoid the Waves / WUP trap then it has all the meaning I need

On your flipside, I see where you're going with that, but not really great examples at all unfortunately. Updates to iZotope you're referring to are major version updates. Even they will keep providing compatibly updates and enhancements for many years later, for free, no update plan required. You're also referring to major version updates with Fabfilter. They  also keep providing updates many years later from what I've seen. I don't know how far back, because mine are current. That would require buying the same Waves plugin to get updates multiple years and work out the same, or paying WUP if someone really wanted to get every update.

But there are so many great alternatives that provide free updates forever and some even major versions for free:

• Acustica Audio, Arturia, Eventide, Kazrog, Kilohearts, Melda, Overloud, PSP, Softube, SSL, TDR, u-he, UA, etc, etc

Everyone has this mindset they can just keep paying WUP, or rebuying the plugins. Let's not forget it was only about a year ago, they went subscription only, no more WUP, no more buying. Banking on a company to hold course and also to keep the cap at $240 a year for WUP when they've already shown their hand sounds pretty shaky to me.

Unless like you said, you love subscription only and then it won't matter, but that's not the case for a lot of people.

[MusicMan]

On 6/24/2024 at 2:17 AM, GoncaloL said:

Following this conversation…

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MCompleteBundle/features 

“Everything you need

MCompleteBundle contains all of our effects covering all the tasks involved in music production: composing, mixing and mastering. It also contains all of our instruments. With our included free for life updates, any new plugin we release moving forward will be free for you! And it takes just a few clicks using our update system.”

Not all business models have to be the same thankfully

Well said. Melda is definitely up there with the best of them when it comes to free updates. To give you free updates for life and free instruments / plugins when they release them with some of their bundles, or instruments destroys Waves on long term value.

[MusicMan]

On 6/24/2024 at 4:54 AM, PavlovsCat said:

I've consulted to around three dozen music software and hardware companies. I've had one of the larger ones recently contact me for advice. There's not a ton of secondary research comparing the pro audio market to the hobbyist market, but I can tell you from advising three dozen music software companies over 15 years, and what I've found from them, the hobbyist market is a very significant portion of their income. I suppose the surprise to many hobbyists is that this industry is still growing (a lot of hobbyists post in this forum from their gut feeling that the industry is declining; it's actually growing). It was projected that the DAW market grew by nearly 9% last year.  The education market is also significant.  Garrittan, long ago, made the education market a significant part of its market strategy and that set the way for many others in the business. 

This should be obvious too really just from watching the recent years. The hobbyist market is huge and growing and a lot of players are trying to get a bigger slice of it, or trying to get into it and capitalize.

That's not to say they don't make a packet from pro studios etc, but any business that chooses to neglect such a huge market sector like hobbyist, would be leaving a lot of money on the table and it certainly doesn't make for the best business sense.

[PavlovsCat]

I realize that Waves is a small company (around $16 million a year) but they engage in a number of unethical marketing/promotional practices that violate US FTC regulations for marketing. That has always been front and center what bothered me about them beyond WUP. To be more specific, it violates FTC regulations to keep an item on sale more than XX many weeks per year. I forget the exact number, but I believe the threshold is something like a third of the year or more. The FTC deems that deceptive pricing practices. To the average person, they would say that it's illegal, but technically, that's not the way advertising/pricing/marketing legislation works in the US, it's handled by the FTC which issues the penalities. If companies refuse to accept the penalities, then the cases shift to the courts. But the reality is, the FTC is understaffed and lots of sleazy marketers engage in practices without paying the penalities.

Now add to this that Waves hasn't historically been great about doing clear disclosures about WUP (though they have improved in recent years).  Because it's a non-standard practice in the industry, you can be sure that many customers will make a purchase without understanding what they're getting into. I can tell you from decades working in tech with hardware and software companies that MANY customers make purchases without realizing things much more apparent than Waves Update Plan. Ask Kontakt developers that sell non-Player libraries how often they've had a new customer tell them that they didn't realize that they needed the full paid version of Kontakt to use the sample library they just purchased (it's even a long time ploy used by unscrupulous folks). 

[PavlovsCat]

55 minutes ago, MusicMan said:

This should be obvious too really just from watching the recent years. The hobbyist market is huge and growing and a lot of players are trying to get a bigger slice of it, or trying to get into it and capitalize.

That's not to say they don't make a packet from pro studios etc, but any business that chooses to neglect such a huge market sector like hobbyist, would be leaving a lot of money on the table and it certainly doesn't make for the best business sense.

I see people writing here that the hobbyist market is a niche market. That's simply dead wrong. There's not a lot of quality secondary research studies in this industry, because it's not a huge industry. But I can tell you from working with a lot of developers that the hobbyist market is a significant portion of the total market, especially for sample library developers. Most often, the majority of their customers are hobbyists, and semi professionals. It doesn't take a lot for someone, even without research experience, to discern that the vast majority of people discussing these products in forums and social media are hobbyists and those aspiring to be professionals. Go to VI Control (okay, even better, don't) and easily 90+% of its users are hobbyists or people who earn less than 20% of their income from music. 

Every developer in this industry that I know either makes a very sizeable portion of their revenue from the hobbyist / education / aspiring pro / semi pro market or the majority of their revenue from those segments. The growth that's occurred in this market in the past decade is largely driven by the non-pro market, such as the home studio hobbyists, independent musicians, aspiring pros (which, of course, is not classified as professionals) and the educational market. Another clue for people who think hobbyists are a niche, larger brands in this industry aren't shelling out 6 figures to influencers on Youtbe to reach the hobbyist market for fun because it's a niche market. They're spending on influencers because hobbyists are spending a lot of money and they turn to influencers on purchase decisions (sadly, IMO).  When we say it's a small industry, keep in mind that it's estimated at over $7 billion USD globally, and the DAW market, by one researcher's findings is growing at a CAGR of more than 6%. Granted, the prevalence of multimedia use by corporations is a factor, but I don't expect that, for most audio software companies like Waves, that the amateur market is considered a niche -- not by a long shot. Waves has long spent A LOT of money on influencers to reach hobbyists and given a heck of a lot of NFRs to pros in order to influence hobbyists and independent musicians with a dream of making it. 

Edited Thursday at 02:32 PM by PavlovsCat

[Grem]

15 hours ago, Reubend said:

Hey all. I'm completely new to the Waves ecosystem.

Welcome! There are some really good plugins in that bundle.

Husker laid out the different bundles, as he did about the upgrade plan instead of buying the same bundle again. More bang for buck that way. I did the same thing. When you see a higher bundle than you have go on sale, check with Koby at everyplugin.com and see what he will charge you for the up grade. 

 

 

[MusicMan]

15 hours ago, Reubend said:

Hey all. I'm completely new to the Waves ecosystem. Can someone help me understand where this bundle stands within their offerings? I can easily guess that their Platinum bundle is better than Gold or Silver, but what on earth are Mercury and Horizon? What's the equivalent of the "everything bundle"?

And is $75 a rare sale for this? Or is it pretty common to go down to that price? I ask that because I see someone commenting that they got it for $60, although it seems to me like they added some new plugins to it this time around.

For the update plan, I don't anticipate needing that very badly. But if I do, can I just buy the platinum bundle again next time it goes to $75 to get the WUP for another year?

There are as least as many sales at Waves as the sun rises, so there's never any hurry.

While the Waves bundle has more plugins, the UA bundle for $99 or less with voucher, or at resellers, outclasses the Waves equivalents in their bundle in every case.

In 2 or 3 years time, you're much more likely to still be using these UA ones and will likely end up buying them anyway if you buy Waves first so getting UA first would make more sense.

https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/plug-in-bundles/uad-producer-edition.html

The Signature Bundle from UA is even better, but Producer is closer in price to what you were looking at.

[kitekrazy]

On 6/23/2024 at 1:15 PM, Lionel said:

One-time purchases, updates for life, amazing sales, great upgrade paths, etc.  Tbh, this is THE model all big companies should attain to.

Melda FTW.

 

They can't because they have for more overhead.  

[kitekrazy]

On 6/23/2024 at 1:03 PM, mibby said:

^^^ This ^^^

I'd bet that Waves is in a lot of pro studios and that their primary income is from pro studios through annual WUP/subscription.  Regardless of our beef with them, they make quality plugins.

I think the "hobbyist" is a secondary niche market. They are glad to make money off us, but it's not necessary. Their business model is geared towards pros and they are just fine without us...

The pro market is getting smaller.  There are far less pro studios than a decade ago.  They close up. 

Waves reputation is based on quality.  Rarely do they have a dud plugin.

Their beginner packages are great.

Their business model sucks for the multi machine user.  You either do the "improvadongle" or buy extra licenses.  I don't know if they have done something like the iLok cloud.   I don't buy their stuff anymore to know.  I unsubscribed to their emails. Sure I get their race down to zero stuff but I don't install it.

[kitekrazy]

1 hour ago, MusicMan said:

There are as least as many sales at Waves as the sun rises, so there's never any hurry.

While the Waves bundle has more plugins, the UA bundle for $99 or less with voucher, or at resellers, outclasses the Waves equivalents in their bundle in every case.

In 2 or 3 years time, you're much more likely to still be using these UA ones and will likely end up buying them anyway if you buy Waves first so getting UA first would make more sense.

https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/plug-in-bundles/uad-producer-edition.html

The Signature Bundle from UA is even better, but Producer is closer in price to what you were looking at.

That doesn't presuade the anti iLok users.