Software subscriptions are a thorny issue in the world of music and post-production. Start talking about them, and for some, the hairs on the back of the neck rise, and they start getting angry.

For some, the idea of software subscriptions is wrong; it's simply a matter of principle for them. For others, the mounting cost of several software subscription plans is too much.

Some, however, seem to have an emotional ring-fence on the subject of subscriptions. On the one hand, they are happy to pay £40 per month for their phone and even more for their TV services, but on the other hand, they complain when they are asked to do the same for their DAW or plugins. You can subscribe to almost anything these days; meal deliveries, socks (yes, really), and pet plans.

One thing is certain, software subscriptions are here to stay, and more and more vendors will inevitably take this route. Let me be clear, not all of them, but many will and some will not offer a perpetual alternative.

Why Subscriptions?

Let's try and have a moment of rational thinking in this debate. If you are a business owner and you can to either have ad hoc income each month or a set of regular payments coming in, which would you choose? Of course, you are going to choose a steady stream of income. Even if you don't run a business, would you prefer a regular monthly wage or ad hoc cash payments now and then? Again, for most, the answer is obvious.

This is the choice that many software vendors are making. Regular monthly income can help with planning and cash flow, rather than the stop-start of large sums of money every 18 months or so when a product is released.

You may not like the idea, but it's a smart business idea. It's started with the larger businesses, especially those who are either reporting to stockholders or those with venture capital money behind their growth. Investors want to see growth; SaaS (Software as a Service) is a proven model to get that growth.

We can talk about it ad infinitum, but to try and stop this change in how software is licensed is as futile as Canute shouting at the sea.

You might be thinking, where's the choice? The choice is your wallet. If you don't like subscriptions, then choose brands that don't demand them. For years I was a huge fan of Adobe Cloud; it made sense to me; rather than shelling out several hundred pounds for the latest version of Photoshop, I paid £9 per month. It made perfect sense for cash flow. Then during the pandemic, I was switched on to Affinity who make PhotoShop, Illustrator and InDesign alternatives, and I could buy them all for £70. That made sense to me now. I didn't need all the bells and whistles of all the Adobe updates, I just needed the nuts and bolts, and Affinity products offered them. I've paid, and now I get to use it without ongoing payments. The maths was simple; I got all this software for less than 8 months of Adobe payments.

One area where subscriptions haven't been adopted is the smaller developers. For one thing, if you only have two or three products, the model doesn't really work. If you have hundreds of plugins and can offer them for £30 a month, then it looks like a great deal, and three or four for £30 a month doesn't look as attractive. Many small developers will continue to offer perpetual licences; if that's the way you want to use your software (I use the term use because you never own it), then it's the path to take.

However, if we are smart, we can start to use the subscription conversation to our advantage.

Make Some Decisions

When you step back in the cold light of day and consider software subscriptions, you start to see the cost of them can mount up. If you subscribe to a DAW and a couple of subscription plans for plugins, you can soon be spending £80 or more a month… or £1000 a year.

The idea of lots of plugins for a small monthly payment can appear attractive. However, it's what I call the Chinese Buffet sell. Many of us have been enticed by the 'all you can eat for £10' offer from some Chinese restaurants. You walk in, and there's steaming trays of food for as far as the eye can see. Wow, you think this is a bargain.

It's a bargain for those who haven't eaten for a week. Still, for the average person, you'll find you end up eating what you would have normally ordered and, in doing so, probably spent more. The huge bundle of software in a subscription plan is only a good deal if you end up using most of them. Otherwise, you are better off buying the ones you need, that is if you can.

Subscription bundles play to the FOMO (Fear of missing out) in each one of us. If I don't subscribe, I might not get the next free plugin or the next cool update. That's true, but on the other hand, you might end up paying for stuff you don't use.

I want to be clear, subscriptions are a bargain for some, but it's worth sitting down and assessing how much of each package you really use. I did this a few years ago after buying the latest version of Native Instruments Komplete. I never used the Mongolian Nasal Harp or the Russian Cossack Drums; I used a piano, a bass and few drum kits. The rest of it was just taking up hard drive space, and I was paying hundreds of pounds for several instruments. What's the point of owning stuff just in case I might need it?

I have hundreds of plugins on my hard drive - I use fewer than ten.

Where subscriptions have helped is to realise how much money we've wasted buying plugins we use twice then never use again. I would hate to think how much wasted cash is sitting on my hard drive as unused plugins. This is where subscriptions are brilliant; we can use them for a couple of months, blow around £60, then realise we don't need and use the offer, so we cancel. If we've purchased those plugins, we could have spent several hundred pounds. If you are worried about recalls on mixes, then print the tracks. In reality, I rarely recall a project once it's over; if you do it a lot, then you need to factor that into any subscription plan. You need to ask yourself if you want to be beholden to the plan for as long as you need to recall. One option, of course, is to rent for a single month if you ever need to recall a session. 

This brings me to my next point, subscriptions help to spread the cost. Some of the better offers on the market offer access to thousands of pounds worth of plugins for a fraction of their cost each month. That's a good offer; it means you don't waste money on plugins you stop using, and you can cancel when you like, as I've already mentioned.

One of the things the subscription model is going to do is to force us to choose. It's simply beyond the means of any sensible person to have plans for multiple software offerings. Therefore we need to decide which plan suits us. On the whole, there's not a lot of difference in the core offer. Most of them have models of the usual suspects like vintage EQ, comps etc. I'd defy anyone to spot the difference between each one in a mix and a blind test. So a lot of the decisions about which plan you choose comes down to personal preference.

Are Software Subscriptions Bad?

My own opinion is that subscriptions are not a bad idea, they are certainly not the evil some forum keyboard warriors would have you believe. For some, they offer choice and access to software they could not use any other way. As with many things in life, it's not subscriptions as a concept that rub people the wrong way; it's how they are implemented. 

Whenever a brand approaches me to ask my advice on introducing a subscription service, I give them one piece of advice. Give your users a choice. Holding a gun to their head and saying it's subscriptions or nothing isn't a good message. In some cases, the brand has investors holding a gun to their head telling them it's SaaS or nothing. This highlights a growing concern I have where venture capital firms are moving into this industry and trying to maximise growth fast. I'll leave that for another day, but suffice to say, I hope some of them lose a lot of money trying to industrialise the creative sector. They don't give a damn about creativity; it's just another number on a balance sheet. It could be beds or bolts to them.

Thankfully some of the largest players in the software subscription market are private companies. So they are not beholden to investors trying to make a fast buck at the expense of customer choice. This can be seen by the flexibility of their offer; they understand that their customers got them to where they are and want to honour that commitment.

It’s Your Choice!

Subscriptions are here to stay, and we need to stop shaking our fists at the sky and get used to that fact. If you don't like them, then take the perpetual option or use another software developer.

In the end, it really is still the case of 'you pays your money, you takes your choice.'

Despite what some may say, there's still plenty of choice. In fact, there's never been more choice when it comes to studio gear, let's celebrate that!