FREE Temporary Licenses And More to Help You Work From Home During Covid-19
In this article, we are signposting offers of temporary licenses and more. It will be updated, as we get more news, so you might want to bookmark this page for as long as the COVID-19 Pandemic lasts.
Note that some of these are offers of free licenses to people who already own products but because they are working from home are unable to access them. If you want to try any of these products then take advantage of the free trials, which a number of brands are extending.
Ableton Live 10 Suite 90-Day Free Trial
Ableton have followed Apple’s and Avid’s lead and are offering the Ableton Live 10 Suite free trial for 90-days.
Ableton Live 10 Suite includes: Ableton Live 13, Instruments to try (including Wavetable, Operator, Sampler, Analog and more) 56 Effects for processing audio and MIDI (including Echo, Pedal, Beat Repeat, Amp, Vocoder, Glue and lots more), Instant mappings so you can use Live with your keyboards or controller as well as Max for Live so you have access to a range of instruments, effects and customisations created by the Live community.
Adobe Offering A Range Of Options
There are mixed reports about what Abode are doing during the COVID-19 epidemic. One thing for sure is that they are offering their higher education and K-12 institutional customers globally (who currently make Creative Cloud apps available to students who log in through on-campus labs) the ability to request temporary “at-home” access for their students and educators. This will be granted through May 31, 2020 at no additional cost. To learn more and request access, go to the Adobe COVID-19 Response page.
Adobe has also begun to offer free 90-day access to Adobe Connect, their web conferencing solution, until July 1, 2020. This offer gives users the ability to join meetings, run training sessions, and virtual classrooms from the safety of their homes. To learn more, please check out the Adobe Connect blog.
In a letter from Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, they state the following…
For Creative Cloud and Document Cloud team and enterprise customers in our Value Incentive Plan (VIP), we’re extending the renewal grace period to 60 days.
For Creative Cloud and Document Cloud Enterprise Term License Agreement (ETLA) customers, we will eliminate additional license charges for 60 days.
It also appears that it is possible for existing subscribers to get 60 days free. To do this you have to start the process to cancel your subscription and then before you finish there is the option to get 2 free months. Success with this option seems to be mixed, so please take care if you chose to go down this route. Peta Pixel, has a detailed step by step set of instructions but they also have a poll running asking whether this worked for people or not, so check that before you proceed. There are also reports that this option has been there for a long time but that it has been ‘discovered’ because of the COVID -19 pandemic.
Finally, team member Alan Sallabank found a nice present from Adobe. He uses the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, and they’ve just paused his subscription for three months…
Apparently, if you already have an Adobe Creative Cloud Suite subscription, all you have to do is go into your account and initiate a customer service chat. Explain the situation and they can arrange it.
Apple Logic Pro X 90-Day Free Trial
Apple is now offering, for the first time, a free 90 day trial option for both Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X. For all the DAW users reading this who have never had an opportunity to try out Logic Pro X, this is your chance. The full download, with all the content, is now available to try and it requires no special accounts, passwords, or serial numbers. Just click and download.
Arturia Offering Free Trial Of Pigments Until July 3rd 2020
You can experience Pigments free of charge until July 3rd. To begin your trial, you’ll need to create an account with Arturia. They will also need some basic info, and the process only takes a few moments.
Pigments features a twin audio engine, letting you mix virtual analog and wavetable oscillators with a sample engine to create the perfect starting point for your patch. You can even morph wavetables, granularize samples, and import your own sounds to warp and contort. Experiment with 3 envelopes, 3 LFOs, and 3 function generators. Assign modulators to animate your sound, and breathe life into it. Add controlled, or totally wild random changes to any parameter with a Turing probability generator. Run it through 2 filters, with any combination of iconic analog filters or modern formant and surgeon filters you want. Process your patch with exciting contemporary effects like wavefolder and multifilter, or vintage studio reverbs, tape delays, and EQs.
Audio Ease Offering Free Temporary Licenses
If you need to use your Altiverb, Indoor or Speakerphone at home now, and you can't get the iLok from the studio then please contact Audio Ease support and they can provide free temporary licenses for your personal or spare iLoks, for existing licensed customers.
Avid Offer Temporary Licenses To Help Customers Impacted By COVID-19
To support users who find themselves caught at home without a Pro Tools, Media Composer or Sibelius license as a result of COVID-19, Avid is offering free 90-day licenses to help you keep going.
Please read our article in full including the recently added FAQ section as Avid are getting a lot of calls from people who are not eligible for the temporary licenses.
Avid Free 90 Day Trials Available
Avid is also offering free 90-day trials of their Ultimate products - Pro Tools, Media Composer and Sibelius. Use the links to sign up…
Avid also has more help on a new dedicated Working From Home website
Cockos Offer Free Reaper Temporary License For People Working From Home
Cockos has announced on their website that they are offering a free Reaper temporary license to anyone who wants to use Reaper at home during the Coronavirus epidemic.
“The temporary license is valid until July 1st 2020. You can download the license from the Reaper website. These are the instructions…
This is a temporary license key valid through the end of June 2020, offered to those working remotely and/or social distancing who want to use REAPER from home. REAPER can import your license key automatically if you copy the following text to your clipboard:
Then there is the License Text…
Select the above text, and then choose "Copy" from your browser's Edit menu, then run REAPER. REAPER should then prompt you to import the license. Alternatively, you can save this file to disk and import it into REAPER via REAPER's About Window, purchase tab.”
EastWest Offers 10,000 Free ComposerCloud Subscriptions For Students At Home Due To School Closures
EastWest emailed their users with a great offer for students…
“The entire world is currently faced with unprecedented difficulties, and never before have so many students had to stay home because of school closures.
EastWest would like to help and is offering 10,000 ComposerCloud X EDU subscriptions for free for 90 days to high school and college students across the world. These students will get access to the same 40,000+ award-winning instruments used by the top professionals in the industry.
EastWest Producer Doug Rogers says: “Together, we'll get through this, and the world will need the music produced by these 10,000 students more than ever before."
Hurry and enrol, EastWest expects these ComposerCloud X EDU subscriptions to go quickly! “
Students can sign up on the special page on the EastWest website.
FabFilter Offer 30-Day Free Trial Extensions
Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, many producers, composers, musicians and students are forced to work from home. Hoping to make the self-quarantine just a little bit easier, FabFilter offers a free 30-day evaluation extension for all plug-ins.
Go to the special COVID-19 Response page on the FabFilter website to apply for your 30-day free trial extension.
Melda Production Offering Free 3 Month Subscriptions
They say…
We hope You and Your loved ones are safe and sound. Many of You are facing lockdowns and self-isolation, so perhaps this is an opportunity to make music! We have at least some encouragement for You in the form of a 3 month free subscription worth £129.
With the 3 month subscription, you get their MCompleteBundle which they describe as “the ultimate collection of effects and instruments, and it currently contains 111 of them, including MDrummer, MPowerSynth, dynamics processors, equalizers, modulation effects including chorus and phasers, reverbs, stereo tools and analyzers”.
Nugen Audio Offering Free Temporary Licenses
They understand that many of their customers are also unexpectedly having to work remotely, so they are offering additional temporary licenses for plug-ins which you already own but can’t currently access.
Owners of iLok licenses can access temporary 2-month licenses for a number of their products (currently available for Halo Downmix, Halo Upmix, ISL, LM-Correct and VisLM.) from your My Licenses page. Additionally, their Challenge Response license codes will now allow one additional authorisation.
Perfect Surround Offer Penteo 16 Pro And Penteo 7 Pro Duplicate Free 90-Day Licenses
In an email to all their users, they explained…
Penteo recognises that our customers rely on us to keep their businesses running and now with many studios encouraging work-from-home scenarios we are here to help by offering Free 90-day duplicate licenses.
For qualified customers impacted by studio closures or remote work, get a free temporary Penteo 16 Pro or Penteo 7 pro duplicate license to continue your mix unabated.
Plugin Alliance Offering 30-Day Free Trials On Everything
Plugin Alliance has announced they want to enable people to use ALL of their 110+ plugins for free, for a whole month! To make this possible they have reset old and expired demos and have temporarily extended our demo period to 30 days from the usual 14 days. They say…
“If you are interested in locking yourself in (pun intended) and rocking out with all our tools and toys for 30 days, please just follow these easy steps.
This month is on us, and we do hope it will help at least a bit!
1. Download our PA Installation Manager
2. "Select All" and download / install all 124 plugins in one go!
3. Open your preferred DAW (Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, whatever...)
4. Activate any of the plugins from the GUI (User Interface) and enjoy them for 30 days - FREE!
5. More details in the PA Activation Manual
Even if you have already tested some of our plugins in the past, you can now just re-activate them and continue using them for another 30 days! BTW: the activation screen may state "14 days" (because this is how our system usually works...), but you will receive 30 days as you can verify in your plugin toolbar later.
Obviously, if you already own or rent licenses for certain or all plugins, you will not be able to start new trials for those plugins.”
Pro Sound Effects Offer 60-Days Free EDU Access
Pro Sound Effects have emailed their customers to announce that they are offering free 60-Days access to sound effects to support schools and students affected by COVID-19. They say…
“The COVID-19 outbreak has impacted people all over the world in many different ways. As part of our efforts to support the continued thriving of our customers and industry, we are offering 60 days of free web-based access to Pro Sound Effects for schools and educators who have been forced to move classes into a virtual environment. Access will be provided via their library portal, where students can search, browse, preview, create playlists, and download from over 22,000 of our finest sounds.
You DO NOT have to be Pro Sound Effects customer already to take advantage of this offer!”
You'll receive web-based access to 20,000+ sound effects, for all of your students and faculty via Pro Sound Effects Library Access Portal. Search, browse, preview, and instantly download sounds from your library.
Fully-integrate the library into your curriculum with complete non-commercial educational license rights.
NO commitment necessary
When the trial is over you can license your library for continued use, or opt-out with no strings attached.
Pro Sound Effects Offering 90-Day Free Trial Of Their Search Software
In a recent email, they say…
“In support of our community during COVID-19, we have extended the free trial for our Search software to 90 days until further notice to accommodate remote setups and uncertain deadlines. Organize your library, find sounds faster, and create your best with library workflow software. Visit the Search page to get started with your free 90-day trial.”
Sonido Software Offering Studio Management System Free For 30 Days Until May 31st 2020
As they talked with recording studios and audio professional globally, they realised the significant impacts that COVID-19 has placed on studios and wanted to help.
Sonido Software is offering the Professional Package of their end-to-end recording studio management system at no cost to you for 30-days.
Their system has been designed so help you better organise your leads, manage all your studio contacts, and begin detailing all your projects, current remote work, on-hold, future, or otherwise.
Sonnox Offer Free 90-day Licenses To Owners Working From Home
Sonnox sent this email out to all owners….
“The unprecedented times in which we live have affected every aspect of our lives. Most of us, by now, will be working from home; away from the familiar surroundings of studio, or EDU facility.
This may present real difficulties if you’ve no direct access to your business or school iLok account; the result being loss of access to your Sonnox Plug-Ins.
If you’re in this situation and you need to continue your professional work or studies, we’d like to help by supplying you a free 90 day, fully functional and iLok Cloud-enabled replacement set of the products you’ve been using.
You will need a free iLok account, if you don’t have one already, to use these Plug-Ins. The offer will open next week on Monday 30th March.
In order to take up this offer please contact us at support@sonnox.com using the subject ’Sonnox90’ and supplying the iLok account name for your business/EDU facility, your personal iLok account name and a list of the Sonnox Plug-Ins that you’d normally have access to.'“
Sonoris Offer Free 90-day Trial Software
They sent this email to all their users….
“We would like to support those who are forced to work remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We now offer fully functional 90 day free trials of all Sonoris software to help you stay productive in this difficult time.
We also want to let you know that Sonoris software support is still available and we can be reached by email or phone as usual.”
Soundation Premium Free Until June 30th For Teacher And Students (via teacher application)
Adam Hasslert, CEO of Soundation told us “We’ve received many requests from schools around the world who would like to use Soundation for remote music education due to COVID-19. We realized that there is a huge need for online music education solutions right now, so we’ve decided to offer it for free in order to support and encourage young music makers to stay creative during this challenging time.”
Teachers and educators can sign up for a free Soundation Premium subscription and set up accounts for their students. These accounts will go live from March 31st 2020. Teachers will also be able to create group pages in Soundation’s online community to facilitate their teaching.
Soundtoys Offer Their Effect Rack FREE through June 30th 2020
Whilst the Soundtoys team are staying home to protect their community and their team, to help you make your home studio a happier one, they are letting you use Soundtoys Effect Rack FREE through June 30th 2020. It’s usually only available in the Soundtoys 5 bundle—but for this lockdown, they are letting Effect Rack out.
Effect Rack is a single, self-contained plug-in that comes preloaded with 14 full-featured Soundtoys effects that you can use within the Rack including EchoBoy and PrimalTap for delay, Decapitator and Radiator for rich analog saturation, and powerful rhythmic modulation and filtering from Tremolator and FilterFreak. Fill out this form to get free access to Effect Rack thru June 30. Have fun, stay safe, and MIX ON. Note: THEIR Effect Rack does not include individual plug-ins, and not all Soundtoys effects are in the Rack. For example - Little AlterBoy, Little Plate, and the other “Little” plug-ins aren’t included.
Source Elements Offering Flexible Licensing
Source Elements would like to do its part in assisting people staying safe and not travelling during the COVID-19 restrictions. If you need to work remotely, for example, voiceover sessions or remote mixing, they are offering flexible licensing. They are asking that you use their Contact Us page and if one of the following scenarios doesn't match, you can still reach out to them and ask how they can help.
However we aware that they are experiencing extremely high support request volumes, and are having to prioritise support to existing license holders. They have this notice on their website…
“Every single request is very important to us, and we appreciate your understanding that we may be delayed up to 24 hours in responding. If your request is urgent please add the words "URGENT" to your email subject so we can see this. We cannot guarantee a fast reply however it will help get our attention — We are very grateful for your patience while we get back to you. We're here to help.”
Sounds In Sync Offering Free Temporary Licenses
If you're working from home and you usually have access to EdiCue, EdiPrompt, EdiLoad or EdiChart at your studio but don't have access to the iLok(s), you can contact Sounds In Sync. They can provide free temporary licenses that can be loaded onto your personal or spare iLoks. Just provide details of the license(s) and the iLok account ID you require the license(s) deposited to.
They are also offering extended trial licenses and support to anyone who doesn't have access to their usual sound post apps and wants to use EdiCue, EdiPrompt, EdiLoad or EdiChart during this period of isolation.
Soundminer Extend Free Trials To 90 Days
Coronavirus is affecting us all and we recognize many have to now work from home. To support of the audio community, Soundminer is extending their trial requests to last for 90 days to enable editors to work at home during this period of social distancing.
Soundminer Trial versions are available for…
Soundminer HD($199 Win8+ and macOS 10.9-10.14)
HD plus($399US Win8+ and macOS 10.9-10.14)
Soundminer v5 Standard ($599 macOS 10.9-10.15)
Soundminer v5Pro ($899 macOS 10.9-10.15)
Trial requires iLok authorization. You must have an iLok USB key.
There are also alpha versions of HD and HDPlus that run on Catalina - macOS 10.15 are available by emailing Soundminer.
Steinberg Offer StayHome Elements Collection Free for 60-Days
To encourage musicians to stay creative during these unprecedented times, Steinberg has designed the #StayHome Elements Collection so music makers can create in the comfort of their own home. From now until May 15, the collection is completely free to use for 60 days.
The #StayHome Elements Collection is a special package of Steinberg software, including:
Cubase Elements, a music creation software package with a wide range of virtual instruments, effects and thousands of sounds.
Dorico Elements, Steinberg's entry-level software that helps music makers write music notation, automatically producing printed results of exceptional quality.
WaveLab Elements, an audio editing and mastering software, perfectly tailored to hobby musicians, radio freelancers and home studio owners.
Absolute Collection allows users to explore over 6,800 presets, next-generation synthesizers, one of the best drum plug-ins available and even to build their own sample instruments.
Users can sign in to Steinberg.net or create a Steinberg ID to receive a personal activation code.
Synchro Arts Revoice Pro And VocALign
Synchro Arts are offering free 90-Day licenses for customers who can't use their software due to COVID-19.
To ensure customers can continue working remotely with both VocALign and Revoice Pro despite many workplaces being closed due to COVID-19, Synchro Arts are offering all owners of their products free duplicate 90-day licenses until further notice.
If you're an individual Synchro Arts customer who needs to request a free duplicate 90-day product license just complete the form on this page. Alternatively, companies or institutions that need to request multiple licenses should contact Synchro Arts directly.
Waves Audio Offers 90-Day Demos Of The Abbey Road Studio 3 Aand Nx Virtual Mix Room Over Headphones Plugins
Waves Audio is offering an extended 90-day demo for the Abbey Road Studio 3 and Nx Virtual Mix Room over Headphones plugins.
With most of us currently working at home and without access to a proper studio or accurate acoustics, we are forced to rely on a less-than-ideal environment. Lacking a suitable monitoring environment in order to produce and mix properly, we often turn to working with headphones. As a result, we do not know what our sessions and mixes will sound like on other monitors and playback systems. By offering extended 90-day demos on Abbey Road Studio 3 and Nx Virtual Mix Room over Headphones plugins, Waves is providing a test-drive for two products that can resolve these issues.
The Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin is a solution for producing and mixing on headphones, wherever you are. It models the three-dimensional acoustics of Abbey Road Studios’ flagship Studio 3 control room. With Abbey Road Studio 3’s diverse set of near-field, mid-field and far-field virtual monitors, you get a professional reference environment on headphones, increasing your confidence that your sessions will translate to sound systems everywhere.
The Waves Nx Virtual Mix Room over Headphones plugin recreates the acoustics of a high-end studio inside your headphones, so you can make great mixing decisions anytime, anywhere. Powered by Waves’ groundbreaking Nx technology, Nx Virtual Mix Room is a virtual monitoring plugin that delivers, on headphones, the same three-dimensional depth and panoramic stereo image you would be hearing from speakers in an acoustically treated room, letting you mix and monitor with greater confidence, giving you a better representation of how your headphone mixes will translate to speakers. Nx also includes the Nx Ambisonics component, which lets you monitor Ambisonics B-format audio for 360° and VR projects.
Do You Know Of Any More?
if you have heard of any other brands in the pro audio sector offering extended licenses etc to cover people having to work from home then to let us know in the comments below.