New Licensing

[holler]

Time for Avid to give some answers, so we can stop speculating.. It's tuesday, and it's been four days

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by holler

Time for Avid to give some answers, so we can stop speculating.. It's tuesday, and it's been four days

Amen.

In the meantime, this thread has gone a bit nuts imo. There are people saying "if PT goes the subscription only route"... before getting all riled up, whereas Avid are saying software subscription isn't even an option. What the....

Here's what we know:

1. There has been no hint of a software subscription option. All licenses will therefore continue to be permanent.

2. Support subscription offers a year's worth of product updates, alongside tech support.

3. People signing up to the software subs in November will get 5 extra months support / updates.

4. Non-subscribers will still get bug fix updates.

5. PT10 will continue to be bundled with PT11, at least in the short term.

6. CPTK owners of PT9 or PT10 can still upgrade to PT10 HD / PT11 HD.

7. New major versions of Pro Tools only available to existing customers via a support subscription.

As for the rest - and yes there's still plenty of blanks to be filled in - we wait and see. But endless posts complaining about things which aren't even an option or based on wild speculation do us no favours as a community. The signal to noise ratio plummets and Avid are less likely to take much interest imo.

[nigelpry]

Originally Posted by Alio 45

Possibly a bit short sighted of Avid if they do choose the subscription only route. As a Music technology lecturer in a UK College I've always insisted we use Pro Tools as it is the industry standard.

In these times of austerity I'm not sure I could convince the financial dept in my college to find the budget for this every year, we would need to look for an alternative.

I'm sure this would also be true of many other colleges and universities. Could Avid risk losing so many future PT users?

Alan

Remember the CPTK debacle ... of the two higher education establishments I've been involved with in the UK, both of whom used Pro Tools extensively as part of their degree courses, only one has upgraded to PT11.

And it had to, because it is also a company delivering Avid's certified training courses. I don't know how they've resolved the issue in the classrooms, where every iMac was equipped with a MBox Mini and PT with CPTK, but the only feasible way I can think of will have been for Avid to give it a set of licences to run HD in the classroom.

The other one, a university, has converted its courses to use Logic instead, with Pro Tools now an available option. The 2x HD based studios and the 9x CPTK based studios will continue to have Pro Tools available for now, but students already don't have to use it. Its not in the curriculum, just available to people who are interested.

From what I hear, they aren't planning to upgrade anytime soon. It seems most likely that they will stick with keeping PT10 available until such time as either OS or computer update requirements mean PT10 will no longer run. Then, it will be abandoned.

And that is 300 people a year in just one education facility who will no longer be exposed to Po Tools. Maybe only a few actually buy a copy of Pro Tools each year, but if that scenario is repeated nationally and globally, that's a lot of potential new owners of Pro Tools who may well never put their hands in their pockets to give money to Avid.

I'm sure Avid knows all of this, and in unconcerned by it, pressing on regardless with inflating its own ego as the clear market leader, and foisting upon its customer base a set of features likely to be of interest to a relatively small (but obviously very important) section of its clientele, while making a lower priority other enhancements that would be a positive benefit to ALL customers.

That, my friends, is probably one the biggest reasons why we should be very concerned about Avid (and Pro Tools') long term future :-(

[clive.gardner]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Amen.

In the meantime, this thread has gone a bit nuts imo. There are people saying "if PT goes the subscription only route"... before getting all riled up, whereas Avid are saying software subscription isn't even an option. What the....

Here's what we know:

For completeness, we also know as fact that there will no longer be any upgrade path for existing PT users unless entering into and maintaining a support plan.

[nigelpry]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

As for the rest - and yes there's still plenty of blanks to be filled in - we wait and see. But endless posts complaining about things which aren't even an option or based on wild speculation do us no favours as a community. The signal to noise ratio plummets and Avid are less likely to take much interest imo.

Guy,
I certainly hear what you say, but ...

We are only in the position of speculating because of Avid's poor management of its communications with its customer base. The communications, documents, webpages that have been made available so far are so poor, and leave so many areas open to speculation, that, frankly, they should not be at all surprised at the reaction.

Given that Avid is a company of the size it is, and given it's backlash experience last time around, you'd expect it's people to have learned lessons.

Either it hasn't, or more ominously, Avid has decided that floating incomplete policy info and gauging the response is the optimum way to finalise the fine print of the policy.

After all, if we hadn't kicked up such a fuss, Avid would have happily taken $1000 from all CPTK owners to upgrade to HD. Are we naive enough to think that Avid did not already have $599 in its mind as a fall back position, and, who knows, an even smaller amount if the fuss hadn't died down at that price.

Keeping quiet until we know the facts is absolutely fine in a world 100% populated by reasonable and fair minded people. But, in Avid's ecosystem? Really?

[Doctor West]

I also work at a educational studio facility as well as a on location supporter in several big studios in Denmark and teach pro tools for the musicians union in DK.
If this license system isn't at competitive market level price and beneficial for long term users, all of these facilities will start using a different DAW as standard.

It is not like the other DAWs can't do what pro tools is doing, they are just not the standard....yet.

I am pretty sure that if the supporters and teachers in this thread think is un-beneficial and propose a different DAW to the next generation sound-engineers, the long term damage to AVID would be severe.

What do you say AVID? Why haven't You given us any answers?

[noiseboyuk]

Clive - would you mind linking to that bit about support subscription being the only path to upgrade? I probably just missed the bit where they spelled that out.

Originally Posted by nigelpry

Keeping quiet until we know the facts is absolutely fine in a world 100% populated by reasonable and fair minded people. But, in Avid's ecosystem? Really?

Just to be clear, I'm not saying we all have to keep quiet about everything, rather not to whip up a storm about things we already know CAN'T happen, such as moving to a software rental model only. It can only muddy things ever further. Hence the list of the known knowns... there's still plenty of unknown knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns of course...

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Clive - would you mind linking to that bit about support subscription being the only path to upgrade? I probably just missed the bit where they spelled that out.



Just to be clear, I'm not saying we all have to keep quiet about everything, rather not to whip up a storm about things we already know CAN'T happen, such as moving to a software rental model only. It can only muddy things ever further. Hence the list of the known knowns... there's still plenty of unknown knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns of course...

It's somewheres in the FAQ and someone also posted exactly about that earlier in this thread.

[Paolino_o]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Clive - would you mind linking to that bit about support subscription being the only path to upgrade? I probably just missed the bit where they spelled that out.

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...2014-Offer-FAQ

"However, all new feature updates/upgrades will only be available to customers who have a standard Avid Support plan for Pro Tools."

[clive.gardner]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Clive - would you mind linking to that bit about support subscription being the only path to upgrade? I probably just missed the bit where they spelled that out.

This is referenced in a few places, however:

From the FAQ at http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...2014-Offer-FAQ

Q. I just purchased an upgrade to Pro Tools 11. Are you saying that I now have to additionally purchase this upgrade?

A. No, you can choose to wait and purchase standard support upon the next Pro Tools release to get on the one-year support/upgrade plan. However, if you choose never to purchase standard support, you will not be able to upgrade your software beyond Pro Tools 11, meaning you will miss out on being able to collaborate with other Pro Tools users through the cloud and sell your music in the Avid Marketplace. If you purchase the $199/$599 upgrade by December 20, 2014 (even though you’re already on Pro Tools 11), you can enjoy the benefits of being on Avid Support, including getting all future Pro Tools updates/upgrades and access to expert advice and help whenever you need it, through March 31, 2016. That’s up to 17 months of support benefits, depending on when you purchase.

Also Tony reiterated this over on PTE:

"The support plans provide all major upgrades—not just "dot" releases—and additional customer support for 12 months. Major software upgrades will be offered only through these support plans."