Flux:: / subscription licensing

[Piet De Ridder]

Flux:: adds subscription licensing to its existing 'perpetual licensing' sales:

"We are now offering subscription licensing of our most popular plug-in bundles with a monthly or yearly subscription plan. All Flux:: customers who own at least one full license of Flux::, Ircam Tools by Flux:: or Jünger by Flux:: are eligible for our special loyalty price on the Yearly subscription plans, AND up to six months of FREE subscription to one of the subscription plans.
All our products will still be available as perpetual licenses.

To benefit from the Yearly special loyalty price, signup for your FREE subscription period first by subscribing to the Monthly plan, and then you can, at any time, upgrade to the Yearly plan with the special loyalty price.

Check our subscription plans at: http://www.fluxhome.com/shop/subscriptions "

_

[ZeeCount]

If only this included Spat! I would have been on this in an instant, oh well.

[Lawrence]

I might have been interested as well, as Piet has been seducing us with the wonders of SPAT for years. However, in my case it's probably just as well, since my aging system might choke to death on SPAT.

[Mystic]

If only this included Spat! I would have been on this in an instant, oh well.

Same. Different company though.
One of their guys said it might happen in the future so there is some hope yet

[synergy543]

I can't understand how you guys are excited about the concept of subscription plans for plugins. Its bad enough for main programs (particularly if you use a lot of them). However, if you started adding the need to write monthly or annual checks for all the plugins you use for every different application, this could get totally out of control. Particularly if you use both music and graphic programs.

In my apps folder (I know these are not all main apps) I have 363 applications accumulated over the past decade or so. Of these, a fairly substantial number do use/require plugins. Of course many are graphic apps such as Photoshop, After-Effects, Modo, Lightwave, etc. However, just in my music AU components folder I have 505 plugins. Many are from the same library groups (VSL, PSP, etc), but still if I had to license only 10% that would be 50 different licenses. I cannot imagine managing this only monthly nor yearly basis.

Maybe I'm just a hoarder? However, I could easily see total expense multiplying many times what it used to cost. It makes me wonder how this will all work out in the end. Will our cost of operation go up dramatically? Or will we be greatly limited in the resources we can afford to have access to?

While I can see the benefit in occasional situations where you might want to just try something out, I can't see how it makes cost-effective sense for a longer term operation. Instead of subscriptions, I really like the way companies such as PSP offer loyalty discounts as you invest in their work. This type of scheme seems more sustainable and mutually beneficial.

[Piet De Ridder]

I have a dislike for subscription plans as well — and I hate having been forced into it only to remain up-to-date with Adobe's software — but in this case, it does offer one a chance to test, for at least one month, some of the finest plugins available.
Yes, it's a pity that the Ircam-series isn't included. And it's also strange that Alchemist — Flux's crowning achievement — isn't part of the Mastering Bundle and only comes with the Full Pack ...
Still, $30 buys you a whole month of great discoveries — there is no such thing as a bad Flux plugin — after which you can still decide whether to make some things permanent or not.

_

[kpc]

I really like the idea of subscriptions, as long as they still offer buying out right. And Slate takes it one step further by offering you credit for your rent.

The thing that attracts me is being able to try out the plug and see how it works on my system, as Piet mentioned.

Or maybe I only need a certain plug for a particular project. Rather than spend $100s I can rent it for a month or two. And I'm supporting the dev ( even with just $20 or so) as opposed to downloading a demo and working with that.

I don't see a problem as long as they keep the paid versions around (I'm looking at you Abode and MS)

[Ashermusic]

I have a dislike for subscription plans as well — and I hate having been forced into it only to remain up-to-date with Adobe's software — but in this case, it does offer one a chance to test, for at least one month, some of the finest plugins available.
Yes, it's a pity that the Ircam-series isn't included. And it's also strange that Alchemist — Flux's crowning achievement — isn't part of the Mastering Bundle and only comes with the Full Pack ...
Still, $30 buys you a whole month of great discoveries — there is no such thing as a bad Flux plugin — after which you can still decide whether to make some things permanent or not.

_

I was given most of the Flux plug-ins as an NFR, just couldn't make friends with them, including SPAT. Says more about me than their quality I know.

[wst3]

we are headed towards subscriptions for everything from OS to apps to plugins and libraries... not sure how long it will take, but absent some bizarre occurrence that's where the industry is headed. These companies need to better manage their cash flow, and subscriptions make that happen.

So far I've only tried one - Cakewalk Sonar - and with only minor quibbles it's been a really good experience. Bugs are getting fixed faster, new features are rolling in every month, and there seems to be significantly improved communications between users and developers.

The quibbles:

First, and this is probably part and parcel of such a program, but there seem to be a few more bugs sneaking through. However, the beta testers are probably getting only a couple of weeks for each release, and that is a recipe for problems. As the program matures I'd expect that releases will be tested for longer periods, and that should take care of that.

Second, and maybe this is me being greedy, but if you drop out of the subscription early you roll back to the last full version you licensed. I guess they needed something to encourage folks to stick it out, but I think it would be more equitable if you were able to keep the last release you received while your subscription was active. I can see it both ways, but I'm gonna stick with my greedy reasoning<G>!

As long as there remains an opportunity for a full license, in the sense to which we've grown accustomed, well, I'm ok with subscriptions.

[Mystic]

I see a subscription as nothing more than a gateway for my decision to purchase a product. I much prefer demos of course but many companies don't provide them or provide a crippled version of said product. At the very least, I can get a month or two in of using a full product and decide if I want to buy it outright or not.

I think what companies find in the future is that the subscription format is really going to backfire on them as more and more companies use it. No one wants to have to pay out $300 in subscriptions every month for plugins and how many plugins are bought as an impulse buy? What's going to happen is people will become much more cautious about what they buy because it gives them time to think (and inevitably regret) getting it and they will cancel the subscription not long after signing on to it. This will lead to one or two things happening: the company will either start losing a ton of money from lack of impulse sales they use to get when a product was released or they will add a clause that says you're required to stay on the plan for X amount of months or be hit with a fee... and we all know how well something like that works out.

It will boil down to whether a product is a want or a need. There are very few needs in this business as there are good alternatives for pretty much everything on the market.