Think of a product you own, perhaps your TV, or washing machine. Or something in your studio, the mixing console, control surface, a microphone, or something else physical in the room. Now without searching for the receipt, take a guess when you purchased it. If you’re anything like me, and I guess a lot of people, unless it’s a recent purchase, then your guess of when you acquired it is probably going to be some way off. It’s also likely the the guess will be too short, in some cases you’ll guess you’ve owned something for three years but you’ve actually owned it for five years. A lot of us have bad memories.

My wife always chooses to buy electical and technology products from a UK retailer called John Lewis, for one reason, they offer an additional one year to extend the warranty to two years. It costs nothing extra, but for the reason mentioned above, can come in handy when you find your product has a fault 15 months in.

Have you ever had a product break just out of warranty? It’s annoying, but most reasonable people know that to get it fixed is going to cost money. Things don’t last forever, we know that at some point we either fix it or get a new one.

I Want To Live Forever

However, when it comes to software we don’t seem to have the same thinking. For some reason many people think that software should last forever. On one hand software does last forever, well it should, but there are certain things that mean it doesn’t.

The first reason is that software like DAWs get updated, and in some cases, for example RTAS to AAX, makes the original version incompatible. Secondly, a more common scenario, your computer OS gets updated, or the chip gets changed, take Apple going from Intel to Silicon.

You may think this is the only world where this happens. However, walk down any street in the UK and you’ll see almost every roof has some redundant metalwork on the chimney - it’s an old analogue antenna. A few years ago, so that we could get more channels and better features the decision was made to switch off the old network in favour of digital services. The option was to buy a new set top box or a new TV. At this point did the company who sold us our TV owe us a free TV? Of course not that would be absurd, so why do we apply the same thinking to software?

Who should pay to make sure you can keep using the software? It’s not the fault of the developer that these changes have happened, they are not psychic. However, many of us think the developer should take the hit, irrespective of when we purchased the software, be that last week, or a decade ago.

It costs a lot of money to develop software, it also cost money to maintain it and to stay on top of bugs, or in some cases to add addtional features. If that software is purchased using a perpetual licence, then the developer gets no more money for this work. You may think that they need to price that into the cost of the software, in some cases they can try, but at the same time it’s an extremely competive market.

I Want It All!

It seems we want to pay almost nothing for our software these days and at the same time we want it to last forever, or at least get free updates when there’s an OS change or DAW update. It’s like wanting to buy a $0.99 hamburger and expecting service from a top restaurant. That doesn’t feel very reasonable does it? I’ve not even mentioned the other challenges affecting the margin of developers such as the cost of licence systems or the cost of piracy. Let’s be clear, designing and building software costs a lot of money, it’s not free. They certainly don’t create compatibilty when there’s an OS change by waving a magic wand over the codebase.

It seems to me that there are a number of ways that developers can deal with trying to future proof their products;

The Subscription Model

Love or hate it, part of the reason some brands are moving to a subscription model is so they can offer continued support for their products. In most cases a subscription plan can include bug fixes, features updates, compatibilty updates, or additional content.

Of course, if a brand is going to offer a subscription model it has to offer more than perpetual, otherwise it’s seen as nothing more than a cynical cash grab. Note to brands, if you don’t offer more with a subscription then expect to see customers leave.

The WUP Offer

Waves offer a hybrid to the subscription model. You buy plugins on a perpertual plan and after a period of time you pay a sum of money to keep them up to date. This means you can buy their plugins at bargain basement prices, and at the same time keep them up to date.

I found that in order to get my Waves plugins to work with Apple Silicon AAX I needed to go to v14. However that required me to upgrade them at a cost of $99 to get my Platinum pack up to date. I purchased it in 2016, so that’s 6 years ago! I don’t think $99 is a lot to pay. When I first saw that I’d needed to pay $100 to get my 6 year old plugins up to date I thought “how annoying.” Then when I considered my attitude I decided I was being an unreasonable dick.

A Fair Price

Some brands, charge a fair price for their plugins, deciding not to discount at every opportunity. Some buyers complain that there are brands still charging hundreds of pounds for their plugins. However, these developers want to be able to offer updates and fixes in the future, they can’t do this if they are selling their plugins for low prices. Some of the most successful plugin brands take this approach, especially those selling primarily to professionals.

Summary

You may be looking at the three options above and think you hate subscriptions, you hate WUP, and you hate buying plugins for hundreds of dollars.

I’d like to suggest that we all need to start thinking sensibly about this; if all three options are not for you, then you may need to rethink the cost of software; not to you, but to the people who make it.

If we want software that’s going to last us for many years we need to start thinking of it like the physical products we buy, that don’t have endless shelf life or support. We have to face the fact that someone has to pay for that… it can’t all be the problem of the developers, that’s simply unrealistic and unfair.

Discuss.

Photo by luis gomes