What About Subscription Models for Software?

I abhor the idea.  

 
I'm going to explore every option to the subscription model.
 
I have several Creative Suite licenses and I was always dismayed with the very short time they were open for upgrade before they were simply timed out. I still use some of that software.
 
I am dismayed to see that companies such as Adobe insist on spending resources merging all their technologies. For example; Photoshop doesn't really need 3d animation video output... especially if your subscription fee is already paying for After Effects. Why would I want to be forced to pay for that?
 
I have a box copy of Photoshop CS 6 that I bought just before I could not.
 
I still use my CS4 install because there's nothing in CS6 I need.
 
I went to install Audtion 3 on my new DAW 2 weeks ago. I couldn't authorize it because it was circa CS2. So I ended up speaking with an Adobe rep who told me how old and out dated Audition 3 was. I didn't bother explaining it was old because it didn't need anything I just insisted on my activation so they gave me a fresh .exe and a reg key.
 
I think some of these companies should start thinking about down sizing and remaining vital instead of insisting that we have to pay for them to continue to invent stuff beyond our needs.
 
I think the fact that Adobe was willing to see if we would tolerate the initial subscribe-or-die model before considering a change of policy is an indication of how short sighted and fool hardy the few that benefit from these sorts of policies can be.
 
The fee they ask is very reasonable for some end users and exorbitant for others.
 
As soon as they institute the policy you describe above, a person such as myself will be wondering how quickly I can opt out and get max use out of the software. My mentality will immediately shift back to the purchase or long term lease paradigm.
 
Square one.
 
They should make something people want to buy instead of hoping we'll be stupid enough to buy a subscription to more than we need.
 
Thanks for asking.
 
 
best regards,
mike

Subscription for software SUCK - well to me personally.
 
I refuse to upgrade any of my Adobe products in protest.
 
Autodesk uses a subscription model for their software and I refuse to use their products too.  No 3d Studio Max or Maya for me.

I have mixed feelings on the topic. 
 
The bad...
I think software companies do it for two reasons:
 
1) To force customers who would otherwise pass on an upgrade to continuously pay.
i have always loathed Adobe's upgrade policies.  Those of us who owned Macromedia before the acquisition got blindsided by Adobe because we were used to being able to skip[ an upgrade without penalty.  You skip an upgrade with Adobe and you are screwed and may as well be a new customer.  Even that was not good enough for them because there were those who would simply rather sit with current version instead of paying high upgrade prices for what were often just more bloat.  The cloud ensures continual compliance with the Adobe Borg collective.
2) Another misguided attempt to combat piracy that affects paying customers more than it does pirates. Needless to say Photoshopped was cracked within a few days and was quickly followed by others.  In the meantime,i have had glitches cause my cloud subscription to go down twice while I was in the middle of a project. Not pretty
 
The good...
 
If you are a person who regularly upgrades and earn a living using this software, it works out to be cheaper.  mind you, i find this to be true of suites only.  A program like photoshop is a total ripoff because one could easdily earn a living doing the exact same work with photoshop that was several versions back.  I like the new features but there is nothing added in the last few versions that would significantly alter my workflow. Since I regularly use Premiere, After Effects, Audition, Photoshop and occasionally Dreamweaver and Illustrator for commercial use and will likely contoinue to do so for the foreseeable future, it is somewhat of a bargain.
 
The Meh...
 
I'm not that impressed with the regular updates.  They should be doing that anyway considering the high cost of their product.  Mocha  has released several upgrades with new amazing features they could easily charge for.  Allowing clients to continually beta test and giving them fixes for bugs is not particularly generous.  I'm grateful, but let's not pretend like Adobe is giving out anything that we will nto be continually paying for.
 
Conclusion...
 
I think Adobe will get away with this in the short term.  Having a large market share with certain products (Audition is very popular in the radio world and Premiere is solid in the indie video world) and damn near monopolies with other projects ( there is no real competitor for Photohop and After Effects is the only low cost compositing software available on Mac and PC).  Whether others follow them is debatable. Competitors could use this as a moment to strike by offering an alternative model.  Premiere was lagging greatly behind Final Cut with Mac users until Apple made a few missteps.  I have already calculated that aside from photoshop, much of what I do could be done with third party software.  Many of my plugins work with Adobe Licenses I own free and clear.  There are even free alternatives one could argue are superior.  Resolve lite is a better color correction option than anything Adobe offers (Speedgrade may get there but has shortcomings).  Lightworks is as a good of an editor as Premiere but has a much steeper learning curve.  I will continue to use my cloud service but I can't quite get myself to like the idea.  Maybe it comes down to just not trusting Adobe to do the right thing.
 
 

The way some companies are doing it (and this is the way it should be done, if you're going to offer a subscription) is to offer a yearly subscription fee. For that entire year you get any new versions/updates. If you stop paying, your software still works, forever. Plain and simple. Some also offer 6-months, etc.
 
Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com - SONAR X2 Power! - http://garrigus.com/?SonarX2Power
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

I don't think it's a good idea at all. My personal computer is no longer personal. If I move to an area that doesn't have high speed internet it's all over.
 
The biggest problem I see is that continuous, ongoing, updates will mean companies will NEVER be forced to sell finished products. I can hear it now, "don't worry it will be fixed on the next maintenance release". That's sort of what we get today but under a subscription, these companies won't even pretend to feel guilty about releasing half baked cakes.
 
I worked with a specialized software app that was only available via subscription. 15 years ago the annual fee was 20K and it kept climbing. They became the world standard and just milked every customer. They really had the hook because all the processing had to be done on their servers. I see no reason why this trend could not extend into more common applications. That would be bad news.

Its rather cool to see how really thoughtful this forum members are. 

In this model do you have to be online for the software to work?

One more thing...my understanding is that Microsoft offers both boxed and subscription version of some of their software. Boxed outsells subscriptions, but there is definitely an enterprise clientele that thinks the software model is absolutely wonderful.
 

I like the idea if it is cheap enough and you get to keep whatever version was the last paid one.  Losing software won't work - I mean, really.  I guess you could transfer the audio/midi to another, less delicate DAW, but you should buy it and then buy a plan that keeps you current. 
 
I don't think much would change - pricing or complaints about functions not working, but I like Craig's idea of incremental changes.
 
@

There really isn't a corellation between the payment model and the development model.  It may look as if there is, but it's not.

Anderton
One of the comments about Adobe that I thought was brilliant was if Adobe offered a true cloud service where you actually worked in the cloud for projects that required huge amounts of video rendering. Then, you could take advantage of distributed rendering with Adobe's armada of servers to render stuff really fast. Several people said they would gladly pay for that; to me, that's a really creative use of the cloud.

Off site 3d rendering services are quite common. Adobe could try to compete... but the companies that are embedded as current service providers are lean and doing it for profit rather than to subsidize a mammoth that is hungry for side line revenue.
 
The reason the service works for 3D is that the assets one uploads are very small. If the final render is a very large file it is then shipped back on a hard drive.
 
There is nothing brilliant about the idea of uploading all your bulky, well lets just say huge, video data so that it can be rendered off site. That is, with the current band wdith market, a bad idea.
 
When we work in the field gathering video we either send the video to the mother ship by courier or FED EX.
 
Sometimes we down convert to mpeg2 or mpeg4 and use a very expensive Satellite uplink.
 
Every time we get stuck uplinking on someones big bad dedicated for video fiber pipe we either see an ugly down conversion to a practical bandwidth or we see glitches and drop outs in the hi res attempts.
 
FTP upload of data files seems like an option. It will leave you wanting to shoot yourself when you figure out you just started a 3 day upload. 
 
The practical way to manage a video work flow that retains the highest picture quality is to work locally on the biggest baddest system you can afford.
 
You can certainly do it off site... but it's not practical, convenient, or cheap.
 
Back in the day we use to cut proxies on motion jpeg projects and then send an EDL and film stock off to a cutting lab where the actual film was cut to the EDL and then digitized as final master.
 
It wasn't practical, convenient, or cheap but it was a solution for mixing the latest technology with practitioners of an existing tech and it provided good results.
 
I guess you can do that sort of work flow with the Epic, the Alexa etc. but it's not going to be fast or cheap. I wouldn't call it fun either.
 
 
all the best,
mike

Am I the only one that feels that is exactly the business "model" we are in with Cake?
I pay my $99 or whatever every year, and as Scott said; "For that entire year you get any new versions/updates. If you stop paying, your software still works, forever"
What's the problem???
 
Tom

Oh and another thing is I can use my software even if I don't have an internet connection. If for some reason I couldn't afford my ridiculous internet connection fees (which would be AWFUL enough as it is) but could still afford the subscription I'd have no way of accessing it. So then I'd have no internet AND no DAW. I would go absolutely stir crazy... well more so. ;-)
 

I must admit to being tempted by the Adobe subscription services. I use Lightroom but it would be nice to have access to Photoshop as well without a big up front payment, The other side of me says I wnat to own not rent. My jury is still very much out.