Craig,
If you bullet list user's pain points like...
- I use primary functionality plus staff view and want those two things... not Pro Channel or new plugins (which I buy elsewhere)
- I use primary functionality plus soft-synths heavily... I do TV Composition. I don't care too much about translating midi guitar parts into notation. I need very high reliability because I'm professional
- I mix recordings of my friends and mostly want it to be fast and easy. I don't buy software outside of Sonar. I buy guitars.
- I'm a student and want to learn music through use of the DAW. I'm interested in learning many DAWs and the differences between them.
- I run a small studio and I use most of the functionality some of the time. I don't always work in Sonar, but when I do, I want to be the best in the room using it.
- I run a large studio and have Sonar specialists whose job it is to know how to do everything in Sonar. We maintain multiple Sonar DAWs for different studios. We are a Sonar only studio.
- I run a large studio and use whatever DAW the client prefers.
I'm sure Sonar knows their use-cases much better than I can guess at. My point is that a model that could suite lots of the different users would be well positioned to succeed.
Interestingly, there are a fair number of people who want a particular version (say 8.5) to developed further, and don't care to be on the main development path. Keeping up with the pace of change in Sonar can be exhausting. What about those people?
When I break it down like this, it looks like a-la-carte model of buy what you want and not what you don't might please some users. The problem with this model is that there is virtually no cost to the company to giving the software it has developed to users who might use it... In other words, there is value for Cakewalk to take a customer interested in Soft Synths and give them Staff View anyway... just in case... or Pro Channel or ... you name it.
Let's say there is relatively inelastic demand for what we want (we'll pay a lot for what we really want) and extremely elastic demand for what we don't. We'll only buy what we'll use and our appetites won't grow. So for the same reason it's profitable for McDonald's to hand out extra soda and fries (in the long term by making consumers stomachs bigger), Cakewalk helps grow demand for Soft Synths among traditional musicians by giving the soft synths out with Pro Channel. :-)
So, the a-la-carte model would help Cakewalk know where consumers want development time focused based on demand.
The subscription model is really a step away from the a-la-carte model. In the subscription model, the company gives subscribers everything... Beta Versions ... the works. You can have customer feedback earlier in the development cycle because you will have more users consuming the products with caveats prior to 'shipping'. For Microsoft, they are able to see what customers are interested in and what they are happy with by the rate of adoption of new software. You know Office 97 was good if you have trouble selling 2000. In the subscription model, if users don't adopt the new version, you know it isn't because of the cost. The users have already paid for it. You know it is because the pain of upgrading isn't overwhelmed by the desire for a better product.
Recurring revenue is a huge benefit to the software industry. Really, DAW software has proved to be about as sticky as cars. Daw consumers are experts in the software and reasonably brand loyal (for a big group of least-techy techies). To justify recurring costs to the user base, the industry will have to come up with a way to guarantee recurring revenue.
Currently, Cakewalk cycles through interesting add-ons in different versions. I didn't realize until my latest install that Dim Pro isn't part of X2 install. You have to have X1 or some other older version. Anyway, what if several vendors went in together for a subscription model... each taking a share. It would be a significant risk to the software companies. Imagine being able to download Pro Tools, Cubase, Sonar and others. You could only use one at a time with your subscription, but you could use any of them. Now there is an attractive offer!
Now, you really get to check out the different software without commitment and without throwing the fits you see around this forum. It's a very similar licensing model to the one we already have.
I can totally see people paying a subscription fee for this privilege. And they might do it for a year until they choose a favorite and they might do it forever. I think that's a risky idea worth talking about.