I noticed a place at the bottom of the article where we could leave a comment. Why not just leave a few comments that cakewalks policy is not a rental program but a buy and keep your license program?

Marcus Curtis
I noticed a place at the bottom of the article where we could leave a comment. Why not just leave a few comments that cakewalks policy is not a rental program but a buy and keep your license program?

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Posted a comment on the article.

Paul P
 
If Cakewalk hadn't said a word about the whole thing there wouldn't be any problem.
 
The option to pay in 12 installments could have just showed up in the shopping cart.
 
Would have saved a few thousand posts, bad press and confusion.
 
All this membership business is just a smokescreen. 

The reason for saying "membership" is because as soon as you say "subscription," people think "Adobe, software dies if I don't pay, can't own it outright, I'm outta here" and don't go any further.
 
Which people did anyway as soon as they saw "monthly." 
 
But the payment thing is only one element of membership, and arguably the less important one because you can still pay the existing way if you prefer. The main point is the monthly updates of features and content, and getting changes to the program as soon as they're available rather than waiting for a yearly update. The content is intended to give you tools to make more effective use of the program and also arrives monthly.
 
This is what makes the membership program truly different. 

I read through this article and I must admit I was intrigued by the offer of Pro tools for free. I went to their website to check it out. Upon further investigation I discovered that they give you 16 tracks to record your projects with. A lot of bells and whistles are included in this free version.
 
However when I began to dig further I discovered some things that to me were just wrong. The biggest deal breaker for me was that anything you record using the free version of Pro Tools can only be stored to their cloud service. You can't store projects on your computer. Second you can only store 3 projects.
 
So if you have any more recording to do other then those 3 projects you got to buy cloud space. How is that free? What good is a software app that I can only use three times then I got to delete my work in order to use it again? To me this is nothing more than a glorified demo version with the purpose of selling storage space on the internet. By the time you are done paying for all your cloud space you could probably own Sonar platinum outright!
 
I say thanks but no thanks. I will stick with Sonar! 

In fact I just looked at the Membership page again. 
 
The whole first section is about exactly what I described as the most important, and starts by saying:
 
Our innovative new Membership program means you'll receive all the latest features as soon as they're ready! There's no more waiting a year or more for the next paid SONAR upgrade; you'll be notified the instant new updates and customized content downloads are available in Cakewalk Command Center. 
 
The next section is about payment plans and explains very clearly that you can pay upfront as before, or pay monthly. They're separate blocks of text, the monthly one has a "new" banner, and it says if you pay for 12 months you get permanent activation.
 

 
IMHO the only way to make it clearer would be to inject the info directly into the brains of people who clicked on the "Membership" tab so they wouldn't have to read anything.
 

Or, just don't use the word "membership". Really, I don't mind, I'm at peace with the new model and think we older users are getting a good deal out of it at least for this upgrade. But it's clearly demonstrable that people mistake this easily. It's all fine to say they should read better but that doesn't solve the fact that it's causing Sonar undeserved bad press.

Sanderxpander
Or, just don't use the word "membership". Really, I don't mind, I'm at peace with the new model and think we older users are getting a good deal out of it at least for this upgrade. But it's clearly demonstrable that people mistake this easily. It's all fine to say they should read better but that doesn't solve the fact that it's causing Sonar undeserved bad press.

I still think it would have been a lot worse if we'd used "subscription" because that word alone had a negative connotation in peoples' minds. And really, what Cakewalk is doing is not following the traditional "subscription" model anyway, so I'm sure some people would have said it was misleading to call it such..."hey, my software doesn't die after a year, what is wrong with you people?!?" 
 
If you have any suggestions for a better term, nothing prevents us from using that going forward (it's not like Cakewalk printed up 30,000 "Cakewalk Membership" T-shirts), but "subscription" is not one of them.

One thing to keep in mind is that people who write internet reviews are not necessarily knowledgeable about the thing they are reviewing. There are professional reviewers. I know this because I do some online reviews and articles. I was shocked when I saw my articles posted with those of other tube professionals that didn't have a clue. This lady writes a big article about the history of Marshall amps and when reading it I noticed it was pure bunk. Then I see links to other articles she wrote, including a review of The Real Housewives of Atlanta and a guide to Inns in Boston. 
 
I had to go to the guys that hired me and tell them that I wasn't going to develop content for their web site if they posted it along side of garbage. I thought I'd lose the job, but to my surprise they agreed. I'm sure C.A. has noticed this during his years of online publication.

ampfixer
I'm sure C.A. has noticed this during his years of online publication.

One of the arguments I always used in favor of print was that the articles were vetted..but now I'm starting to even wonder about that.