Waves have announced on their website new subscription plans:

https://www.waves.com/subscriptions

You can own Platinum after 24 months of paying $49 for a total of $1176. Platinum is on sale right now at EP for $507.94. This is how people that have the least end up paying the most.
 
Rocky

They call "subscription" what Cakewalk was calling "membership"
For Platinum I remember "super deal" last year - $136...

I remember forum moderators calling people out for them using the word 'subscription' when describing the new 'membership'. Water under the bridge now. 
 
But we can definitely see a trend that was started by Cakewalk in the audio industry: Rent-to-Own!
 
$149 per month for Mercury!! Yikes! Just for reference, that's $3576. In case anybody wanted to know!

This marketing angle seems to be aimed at the "math challenged". It will only cost you $25.50 or so a month to go on the "One Plugin A Month Until I have All The Plugins I want/Need" plan. I was on that sucker for over a year and didn't even know it. 

Grem
 But we can definitely see a trend that was started by Cakewalk in the audio industry: Rent-to-Own!

In no way did Cakewalk start that trend - lots of DAWs have been doing it for some time - Lots internet based CAT tools have been doing it for years - lots of virtual instruments have been doing it for as long.
I don't think it's a business model that has legs - I know of at least one CAT translation tool that went from Free to Rent, and then lost all its subscribers. The maths-heads may think it makes sense, but not everyone likes being tied into a monthly payment plan....makes creativity feel like car insurance.

I never saw any other DAW offer a subscription/membership/rent-to-own plan before CW did it. I may be wrong. I don't get out much. ; )
 
Also, I pointed out that I was talking about in the AUDIO Industry, not all of computing software.
 
 

Waves started their subscription plans back in 2016
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-page/2016/9/20/waves-introduce-subscription-plans
 
 

They've had a subscription plan for some time.

If they waited for each plugin to go on sale for $29 and then got them from everyplugin.com, they would make out better,   LOL