vintagevibe
Interesting points, Craig.  The other things that bother me are the fact that I must continue to pay forever to access my own files or programs and also the small print in all the cloud contracts that say they have the right to access your data.  Correct me if I'm wrong but that's what I have read.

This thread has tought me about features of subscription system I never thought about. Many things depend on the price of the subscription, of course. I have no idea of how the price-setting goes.
 
Looks like it might sometimes be a reasonable option for someone who works for money and is sure to use the same software 'till the end.
But for anyone who'd like to try different apps and has no need nor interest to update all the time it would be a catastrophe, most likely. Anyway, IMO, it would propably become a chain and ball in the customers leg, and would lead to such arm twisting by the software companies that open code freeware would experience a new renaissance.
 
There's quite many on the CW forums, too, who have had long breaks in music making. Subscription system, as described in this thread, would be a royal pain to such people as well.

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.

The actual cloud part of the Adobe model is an afterthought for most users. You are not obligated to use it and thus the storing of intellectual property is a non-issue for now.

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

Cakewalk does not have the market leverage to simply dictate to its customers and know they will collapse, fold and do as they are told, whereas Adobe (who is the vast majority leader in its segment) can pull off such a stunt, because they can.
 
Regardless, I really don't see the net value to any Sonar user of such a (subscription) model.
 
There are many issues here, from being required to be on internet for subscription validation (my studio computer is not, and won't ever be), price models for occasional part-time hobbyists (my music work is winters only and then only part-time), lack of control over software versioning (people like to stick with what is known to work), actual pricing (given a major upgrade is only $99 every two years), residual ownership of software etc etc.
 
I cannot agree that such a model would allow bug fixes to roll out incrementally.. there is no correlation between a subscription model (revenue smoothing) and the development effort (engineering), and in fact, to do so (roll out bug fixes incrementally) would delay new products getting to market and or reduce testing of both bug fixes and new products... CW simply does not have the staff to do full scale regression testing on a "release of the week" basis.
 
I believe there is no correlation between subscription models of revenue generation and the quality of the core product or its features. The revenue from any product is self generating provided that the software is stable, reliable, is feature rich and is going in the right direction strategically... with all of the latter issues in hand, revenue is ably generated, and success is all but assured.
 
Note that migrating to a subscription service (for Sonar) would not be a trivial exercise..it would take time effort and money, and not one cent or one man hour of that effort would fix a single bug.
 
Such a move (migration to subscription service) would be a clear indication that the focus of Cakewalk is money first, not product first... and that is the end of the road.
 
 
 

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

Hi, Craig (and everyone else). I hope all has been well and you are enjoying your new gig.
 
As to subscription based software I cannot get behind that idea at all. Mainly because I am rather poor and I can't swing an extra $20+ dollars per month. I need to budget and squirrel away bits of cash and once my goal is reached then take the dive. Then I have the thing I need and if my financial situation changes for the worse I am not shut out in the cold. I also don't like the idea of constant transactions taking place on line. I do buy some things that way but I try to avoid it. For example I bought my initial version of Sonar from a brick and mortar store but upgraded through the site. I figure why give extra opportunities for my info to get intercepted unnecessarily. It's why I would never buy one of those new game consoles that is constantly phoning home. It skeeves me out.
 
Now the idea you mentioned about "locking in" to a version is something that would be acceptable but the idea of paying for software then all of a sudden not being able to use it is offensive to me. I need what I have and worked hard to get it. To have it taken away because my finances went down the crapper (which happens regularly... I'm currently in a severe downcycle due to unforeseen circumstances)... well I just couldn't have that.
 
Just my thoughts. Take care.

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 for one believe the Cakewalk staff when they say they are limited in staff and limited with resources.
That being said, to go on a venture such as this would then tell me that their resources were not all that tight, and they have the extra staff that something like this would require. This would then verify to me that I have been misled and cause me to loose my trust in Cake for good. They still have my trust. I am reasonably happy with the current methods and would not be in favor of a cloud based subscription.

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.