Plugin Alliance insanity

[Southsidemusic]

The PIA FB site has been breaking from complaints and whatnot! Dirk even turned OFF the comments after 350+ negative posts for quite a few hours today .....

https://m.facebook.com/groups/148659...94578327514695

Not a homerun IMNSHO

[amagras]

Only subscription I have is my house, and it's rent to own. Period.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

The PIA FB site has been breaking from complaints and whatnot! Dirk even turned OFF the comments after 350+ negative posts for quite a few hours today .....

https://m.facebook.com/groups/148659...94578327514695

Not a homerun IMNSHO

You're not kidding my friend> As you may know I also take part in a thread over on Gearslutz that asks the question: who uses Plugin Alliance. The last few pages Dirk has really taking a slagging over this debacle. For those that don't do Fakebook here's something that user Volt9 on GS posted that Dirk posted on FB:

Dirks message on FB:

Hi everybody, and I wanted to get back to you all after reading through a lot of your comments here.

I always knew that you guys are passionate about your plugins and your “deals”, so I understand there is some hefty emotional posts here right now. I’ll get to that in a second.

First of all, let me say again that I am sincerely sorry we ran into our email-gate this morning. After preparing everything so thoroughly for several weeks it’s frustrating for us as well to see these emails not working as intended. We have generated more than a Million codes this past week, and somewhere during that work somebody screwed up. To be honest, that somebody was probably me, although I still have a bit of hope that we will find out that our email system didn’t work correctly. But let’s face it, it was probably a human mistake.

Now, I see some pretty upset comments in these last threads. While I have to say I expected some of these, I am (to be frank again) surprised by just how strongly some people in this group are against our new ideas. The truth is though, you will see some consolidation in the plugin market in the future. This trend has already begun, and in the end we are doing what a tech company has to do: we are adapting to the changes around us.

When I started Brainworx 15 years ago plugins were sold at 999 EUR (no kidding) for a bx_digital TDM V1, for example. We didn’t sell high volume of these early plugins, mainly because of the missing reach we had and the missing market (I mean, how many people did own full blown TDM systems back then?). But the more powerful native systems become the more people want access to great plugins, and we are determined to stay relevant in this business for years to come.

I understand that some of you are not happy having spent hundreds of Dollars with us in the past (some even a few thousand Dollars), and we are trying to offer these guys the best offer going forward with a 50% off deal not just for this year (if they want to start a subscription with us), but that offer would actually stay in place until they would actively unsubscribe.

We also invested heavily into bringing you some really great plugins to kick off our new bundle, and we have already announced many new plugins still to be launched this year.

Lastly, we do indeed not force anybody to subscribe to the new bundle, of course. And a lot of you have received codes today that would enable you to buy all 6 new plugins at $65 per plugin in average, if you buy them all. Then you can still use the monthly voucher codes, to bring your price for the 6 new plugins down, all the way down to $315, which is $52.50 per plugin, including new top plugins like Shadow Hills, Focusrite, Ampeg, Purple Audio etc.

We have said this before: we are not stopping to sell perpetual licenses. But we also can’t guarantee that we will be sending out 24H Flash Sale vouchers forever and every day, if that’s just not what we look at as a sustainable business anymore. After all, as a company we also have a responsibility towards 30+ employees, plus 28 partner companies and their employees and families.

This group has a tendency of tagging me personally about everything and anything that’s being asked or said here. While this is often funny and flattering, people seem to forget that this is not just “me” doing everything at PA. I own the company, so I take responsibility, but I am not alone.

We will continue our mission to enable lots of people around the globe to sound their best, and we’ll make it affordable, just like in the past. And we’ll try and cater for everyone.

As you can imagine we are signing up tons of people for the new subscription service right now (thank you!), and I hope that we can convince as many of you as possible in the next few months that the MEGA bundle is actually amazing value for what you pay. Ultimately we are aware though that no matter how hard we try we can never satisfy every single one of you.

Thank you again to everybody who has helped to make PA what it is today, and thank you for everybody who decides to continue to support us going forward.

And a sincere apology again for the less-than-perfect launch campaign today, that was certainly not great. I guess it was human though, and I hope you all understand.

Best wishes to all of you,

Dirk.

The thread is at: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/musi...iance-143.html and goes for many pages. Almost no one wants subscription plugins.

edit for additional:
Well that didn't take long Christopher. Click on the link and it says 'content not found'. What are they hiding?

[Stephen Bond]

Originally Posted by musicman691

We have said this before: we are not stopping to sell perpetual licenses. But we also can’t guarantee that we will be sending out 24H Flash Sale vouchers forever and every day, if that’s just not what we look at as a sustainable business anymore. After all, as a company we also have a responsibility towards 30+ employees, plus 28 partner companies and their employees and families.

Well the party may be over. Probably not though

It's slightly strange how they have gone about this. Firstly, offer some of the best sales and discounts ever in the history of the company.

Then bring out news of 6 new plugins and a "deal of a lifetime" to follow.

Lastly to drop the subscription bomb

It is clear that probably the majority of PIA customer hate the subscription model. That's why we are PIA customers. Great products, great prices when the sales drop and no fees thereafter or pay till you die "deal".

This is frankly NO DEAL except for PIA unless you are new to the party.

Let's see what happens went the dust settles but they have clearly misjudged the response big time.

Stephen

[PatriotsBiker]

Originally Posted by musicman691

You're not kidding my friend> As you may know I also take part in a thread over on Gearslutz that asks the question: who uses Plugin Alliance. The last few pages Dirk has really taking a slagging over this debacle. For those that don't do Fakebook here's something that user Volt9 on GS posted that Dirk posted on FB:

Dirks message on FB:
...........................

This group has a tendency of tagging me personally about everything and anything that’s being asked or said here. While this is often funny and flattering, people seem to forget that this is not just “me” doing everything at PA. I own the company, so I take responsibility, but I am not alone.
........

Did he just kind of sort of throw his staff out in front of the bus? Dang!!!!

[64GTOBOY]

I admit to laughing at this bit "As you can imagine we are signing up tons of people for the new subscription service right now (thank you!), ..."

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Stephen Bond

Well the party may be over. Probably not though

It's slightly strange how they have gone about this. Firstly, offer some of the best sales and discounts ever in the history of the company.

Then bring out news of 6 new plugins and a "deal of a lifetime" to follow.

Lastly to drop the subscription bomb

It is clear that probably the majority of PIA customer hate the subscription model. That's why we are PIA customers. Great products, great prices when the sales drop and no fees thereafter or pay till you die "deal".

This is frankly NO DEAL except for PIA unless you are new to the party.

Let's see what happens went the dust settles but they have clearly misjudged the response big time.

Stephen

At least we still can get permanent licenses - but for how long?

Originally Posted by PatriotsBiker

Did he just kind of sort of throw his staff out in front of the bus? Dang!!!!

He may well have. Dirk surely misjudged his customers. Didn't he do his real research and not just talk to companies but to the people who actually buy s/w? If he did the latter he would have known how universally hated subscription models are by end users.

Originally Posted by 64GTOBOY

I admit to laughing at this bit "As you can imagine we are signing up tons of people for the new subscription service right now (thank you!), ..."

Whistling past the graveyard Dirk is. I know you've taken part in the GS thread I linked to - what do you think of it now?

[64GTOBOY]

Out of the "100" PIA plugins i probably have 70-80 and i was slightly interested in the FR channel strip but not enough to pay more than ~70 USD(after voucher), but nothing else.

I was already at the "Meh, they dont have anything else i really want" point anyway-i was only hoping for the Amek channel strip.

So at this point i really don't care. I will catch stuff when it's so old the price will drop, and if it doesn't- well no big deal.

I vaguely remember an email from PIA a couple of years back about some changes to the company internally that were going on, so this didn't surprise me all that much- if i was to guess , I would say they have taken on some kind of venture capital or other debt that hasn't been as easy to pay off as they had hoped and have been "guided" into doing something they may not have done a few years back. Don't really know , just a feel i got from all the clues of the past few years.

[Southsidemusic]

Jack / That is the exact same copy/paste message he posted on FB to calm down the crapstorm and try and divert some of the hostile posters away from blaming him alone even though he own PIA as he mentions many times in the FB posts.

It is really unfair for those Heavy Hitters and those of us who owns 90-100 of the PIA stuff to only get like 20-30 dollars less off the yearly price so tvis only make sense if you own 5-10 of their plugins or none. Then this is a really great deal but I understand why people are pissed off having spent thousands on 80-100 plugins and only get like 10-15% off the full price which is BS for sure!!!

Thank the Lord we only buy hardware these day and stopped messing with these developers and these neverending subscription deals they think everyone wants.

I wanna be able to open sessions 5 years from now without having to pay to get the plugins we ”rented” at the time so only perp plugins if we find rare stuff we want to buy.

[amagras]

Part of the appealing of the subscriptions (not so much for me) could be that you can have every new plugin available automatically in your account but what I've noticed is that companies are adding a lot of (not all of course) third party garbage to their everything bundles just to make then bigger and be able to say "we offer over 100" etc

Subscription will be over in a couple of years, at least if all the people I see talking about it do as they say. Otherwise I will trade my freedom of mobility for half a ton of hardware like Christopher