Now it's just spin on your part. The discounts are unknown at this time. They may be better that you think or they may be worse. I don't know and neither do you. The price increase is the only thing we're all sure of. Nobody said that Cakewalk or anyone else is being deceptive, that's an inflammatory response. Pump the brakes buddy, you're moving too fast here.

ampfixer
Now it's just spin on your part. The discounts are unknown at this time.

 
What is "unknown" about "We expect to offer discounts and specials from time to time?"
 

They may be better that you think or they may be worse.

 
You are not saying what Coolbass said. Unless I misunderstand what you are saying, you are acknowledging that discounts will exist - your only question is whether they'll be good discounts or not very good discounts. Coolbass said, unequivocally, that the price would be 50%. That is what I dispute. 
 

I don't know and neither do you.

 
Actually I do. What Alex said about offering discounts and specials from time to time was discussed internally before the new pricing went into effect. Alex is simply stating publicly what was decided privately before this was put into place.
 

The price increase is the only thing we're all sure of.

 
You can also be sure that Cakewalk expects to offer specials and discounts from time to time. Read my explanation above of why this is done as a matter of course with renewal-based models.
 

Nobody said that Cakewalk or anyone else is being deceptive, that's an inflammatory response. Pump the brakes buddy, you're moving too fast here.

 
I never said anyone said Cakewalk was being deceptive. Read what I wrote: "The only way Coolbass's (and your) statement would be true is if Cakewalk is lying and has no intention to offer specials and discounts, and the use of 'at least 50%' and '50%+' are intended to be deceptive." I was the one who posited a scenario of what Cakewalk would have to do to validate the statement that the only way to update would be to pay 50% of the retail price.
 
If Cakewalk says "at least 50%" and "50%+" and "we expect to offer discounts and specials from time to time" and don't follow through, and the only way you can update is to pay 50% of the retail price, then that would be deceptive. I truly don't see how anyone can disagree with that.

Let's take the emotions out and distill the thread to its essence:
 
"Paying 50% of the full price for a 1-year renewal is too expensive."
 
"Then wait until there's a discount or special. Cakewalk plans to do them from time to time."
 
"Oh, OK. What if it's not a very good discount and is still too expensive?"
 
"Then skip an upgrade; you'll pay 50% or less of list price for two years of upgrades. Or wait four years and pay 12.5% of list price for each year of updates."
 
"Oh. OK." 

The Grim
it seems uncertainty may be creeping in, and 'lifetime' may not be as long as one might think, if i am reading correctly into what you said here
 
 

Anderton
 
The reality is that people can be "grandfathered in" for only so long. Even grandfathers die eventually.

 
like this is could be the beginning, the first trickle of the flood which brings the end date to lifetime, if you understand my meaning. of course lifetime can't be forever, and was never stated as such, it's only while sonar is sonar in it's current form . . . still . . . one wonders

 
Wow. Conflating that statement with a supposed end to lifetime updates is whole new level,  even on a forum altogether too familiar with pure speculation!

The Grim
well, it's in good company with the rest of the speculation put forth here

after all, i am 'the grim' and as such i like to see things from different sides, not just the 'rosy, everything is great side' but also the darker side, gives a bit more balance, and then i can decide where i stand as apposed to blindly following the 'everything is rosy, everything is great' side. as i said it doesn't really matter much to me, and i look at it as that i have already come out on top with the lifetime updates for $99, i got the 2 lp plugs for nothing (even though i don't use them . . . i have heaps of other plugs i don't use) so that covers my $99 expense . . . if lifetime ends tomorrow, i win , if lifetime continues and sonar gets it's act together and becomes my number one daw, i win , if not i have already won
 
anything is possible, and when dealing with companies, my opinion is a company is a company is a company, i don't subscribe to the thought that cakewalk is somehow some supernatural company which is different than any other company, i would find that type of thought foolish. a companies number one priority is to itself, full stop, now you can spin that and say 'but they must look after their user base first and foremost, keep them happy to stay in business etc etc' i say phooey to that, their number one priority is to themselves. anything is possible, they could end lifetime updates anytime after they feel that those who brought in got more than they would have on the old system and rationalize it, excuse it as having given value, after all they didn't say it would last forever, only until sonar became something else. would it worry me if at the end of the year sonar morphed into a new product rendering lifetime updates void? not in the least, i have already won as stated i like to believe anything is possible, anything can happen, after all we are dealing with a company, a company which is no different than any other, to believe otherwise is folly. and as we all know from dealing with various companies, it's not a matter of anything can happen, but anything will happen, it's just a matter of time (literally with lifetime updates)

I'm very happy I chose the Lifetime updates.  Thank you.

I would follow your reasoning too, azslow3. I'm Dutch, if that matters. I still think it's the correct interpretation and also what Anderton has been saying.

ampfixer
The price increase is documented and has a set value. You get 1 year, and after that it's half of retail to get another year of fixes and upgrades. That is documented and can't be argued. Whether or not Cake does specials is still an unknown.
Coolbass is absolutely correct and not making any false statements. There's nothing to dispute, facts are facts. Once the discounts happen then we can talk about how great they are, not until.

Most reasonable people would bet that his statement turns out to be false in the sense that every year, Cake will offer (at some point) a greater than 50% off full retail price for a year of membership/subscription/upgrades.  Betting against that would be a suckers bet based on historical and the statements made by Cakewalk as well as what the market seems to accept.  

The perspective that gets lost in the shuffle sometimes is that "year-to-year" implies a delta. For a non-Cakewalk customer, $500 for SONAR Platinum is an awesome deal... it includes over a decade of material and content. Quite a bit of stuff. The "problem" is that the year-to-year delta is not even close to 10% over a new buy (how many of us racked up extra DP licenses during the X-series?), but there are other issues associated with this model.
 
A portion of the people most likely to renew regularly (and most likely to be "professional" users, meaning that they generate revenue from SONAR to support the cost of the program) bought into the lifetime updates, so that revenue stream is diminished.
 
For hobbyists, especially those with limited time to learn new things or deal with beta testing, having a program which drastically changes on a frequent basis is not appealing in the slightest, let alone paying for those bug fixes.
 
The "Your DAW is not a game" sticky title is SO applicable to SONAR (not just Windows 10). People do not buy software to record music for the "thrill" of mouse clicking and "dealing" with the computer, but to make music. People do not want to spend 90 minutes of a 2-hour window "figuring things out." Time is the most precious commodity in life, and respecting another's time is impressive. Requiring people to invests hours just to stay "up-to-date" is disrespecting their time, and implying they have "nothing better to do." The upgrade cycle is like an ever-churning "game" in many ways for me. I know, I know, no one is "required" to update, but human nature will lead someone to install what they paid for (a big impetus behind this marketing strategy).
 
Interestingly, on a customer service call recently (potential fraud flag from buying Geist 2, no less), the rep began asking questions that led to the fact that he had gone to school for music production. I ended up talking to him for 40 minutes on various things (he was new but gnashing at the bit to get started). From the DAW side of things, I highly recommended that he join this forum because there is an awesome group of folks here, but I was unable to recommend SONAR specifically.

rabeach
The minute Adobe's cloud subscription model was successful all was lost. Adobe's stock price has almost doubled. Nothing will ever be the same again.

saas is really the first "new" way to sell/manage software, after just selling it on a disk like a "static" physical product and shareware, and it needed a big player like adobe to see if it works...
i'm not sure if it will last, but then i don't have any other bright ideas on how to do it...
with cake moving to a 12 month thing, it's almost back to the major/minor version pattern, but with the "version" being a timeframe rather than the major/minor thing, in cake's favour as the rollover point is now 12 months as opposed to ~18 months for the m/m way, and "agile" development (cake appear to be doing monthly sprints) is just a variation of "time-boxing" development so it makes sense for cake as it's easier to fit the various business pieces together...
/fwiw, ymmv, interesting thread, etc

rabeach
The minute Adobe's cloud subscription model was successful all was lost. Adobe's stock price has almost doubled. Nothing will ever be the same again. 

Another point of interest though would be to know the increase in downloading pirated/cracked copies of Adobe products once they introduced the subscription only model. It is certainly much easier for people to engage in questionable practices against companies that could be reasonably perceived as treating customers unfairly. No one likes to have choice taken away.

Yeah, the renewal price is kinda nuts, just skip a year or two unless they release the mother of all killer-apps.   The current iteration of SONAR's great right now, I'm completely happy with what it does.  Adding more features I don't need won't easily separate me from my cash.

What's a renewal cost?
 
Oh, I forgot, I'm a lifetime member with free Platinum updates. Happy camper here.