The end of perpetual licenses

[abc1mce2]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Good morning from the UK! I appreciate your efforts to clarify it all. It feels every time the proposition changes - there's TWO licenses now? I'm going to try to understand it one more time.



1. The Ultimate Perpetual license. This now seems identical to everyone else's, working on the same rules going forward. Great.



2. Now there's a one year subscription for the Studio version added? And although it's a SUBSCRIPTION plan, this is called "PERPETUAL parachute"? And it's not for Ultimate at all?



Try as I might, I can't see any way that this makes sense.



Joanna Doe has just bought Carbon. Congrats Joanna! She starts using her new Utlimate perpetual license. But there's another license in her account too, a subscription plan for Studio. "What on Earth is that"? she says? She ignores it.



A year later - May 2023 - she is doing fine with it and lets her support plan lapse. But the next year - May 2024 - she needs to update because Apple changed the OS again. She can now either a) pay $399, get up to date and carry on as before in perpetuity, or b) use her free one year subscription for Studio. Hey it's free, she doesn't work in Post so choses the latter.



In 2025 she lets it lapse again. But - uh oh - she suddenly finds her rig doesn't work any more. Now she's stopped paying the Studio subs, she is relying on her Perpetual Ultimate Licence which only works on software up until May 2023. But she installed software on her machine in April 2024, when she had the Studio license. "Darn it" she says (I'm not using the real words she uses), "guess I'll roll back to the old version so my Ultimate license works again". But - uh oh - she can't do that because she only updated in the first place to make it work with her new MacOS. "Gosh darn it" she says (these definitely aren't the real words she uses).



Have I got all this right now? Is Joanna a plausible scenario?

Yes she could roll back to any Pro Tools version from PT10 to the current version of 2022.4.

If she's plans on using Carbon she can only revert back to version 2020.11 I believe.

She could run any PT version from PT10 forward natively or HD with HD hardware.

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[abc1mce2]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

OK, thanks abc. Holy cow.



So. That was then, still trying to wrap my head around the now.



This is what is on the Carbon specs page today, sentence by sentance.







Although they don’t name it, this is 1 year of Pro Tools Studio subscription, right? So Ultimate has gone for good for new Carbon users. That was worth $2.5k, versus $600 for (what is now called) Studio. That’s a $1.9k loss compared to last year right away.







Okay, so you keep going on the last version before your subscription expired. It’s not specified specifically, but presumably this will always be true for multiple lapses.







Like a Perpetual License-holder, you lose the extras until you start subscribing again.



Perhaps this is why you called it a “Perpetual Parachute Subscription”, which is a term I don’t see in any of their literature. It is like Perpetual for everyone else, except for two things:



1. There is no reinstatement fee, currently (I think) $349 for Studio. But:

2. Thereafter you have to pay the annual subscription rate, currently $249. For perpetual license-holders to keep current, it is $199.



Have I finally got it?



The big shocker for me now is that it is not Ultimate at all, and is accordingly worth far less, but aside from that let’s look at Joanna over 6 years and one lapse.



Year 1 - Included

Year 2 - Lapse.

Year 3-6 - Subscribe for $249pa



Total cost - $996.



Let’s compare with if it were a regular perpetual license.



Year 1 - Included

Year 2 - Lapse

Year 3 - Reinstatement $349

Year 4-6 - Support for $199pa



Total cost - $946. (But you don’t have some of those extras).



So in this scenario it’s still a worse deal. If Joanna never lapsed, over 6 years (including a free first year) it would be $1,245 on this deal, whereas if it were perpetual it would be $995.

Yes to statement 1.

Yes to statement 2.

Yes to statement 3, but I didn't do the math. You did it for me. Also until this week if you could find a reinstatement for Standard PT licenses, it was a bit more...$499. Avid has lowered the Reinstatement fees for both Ultimate ($999 now $749) and Standard now Studio ($499 now $349). This has devalued the Carbon Perpetual Parachute License a bit according to your 6 year price comparison scenario.

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[abc1mce2]

Here are some Document links related to Carbon and the old Carbon promo for your understanding.

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...n-Registration

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...equirements#PT

https://www.avid.com/products/pro-to...rn-and-support

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...FAQ/Carbon-FAQ

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...Q/Carbon-Promo

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...ctivation-date

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...ode&popup=true

[smurfyou]

Wow I think we can all agree this is head spinning and ridiculous.

But does anyone else notice that Carbon only comes with STANDARD support? Which means email only with a response time measured in days? For a $4k premium product??

Is that correct?

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by smurfyou

Wow I think we can all agree this is head spinning and ridiculous.

But does anyone else notice that Carbon only comes with STANDARD support? Which means email only with a response time measured in days? For a $4k premium product??

Is that correct?

Yes, another good point.

Of all Avid hardware, the only one that works with Studio is Carbon. It’s taken me this long to realise that this isn’t out of the goodness of their hearts, they migrated the package itself to Studio. Easy to miss, they don’t use the S word in any of their main page product info. It’s massively develaued, tied to the convoluted sub/perpetual hybrid plan and doesen’t even have priority support.

And yes, 7 documents of small print to try to explain all this madness tells its own story.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by smurfyou

But does anyone else notice that Carbon only comes with STANDARD support? Which means email only with a response time measured in days? For a $4k premium product??

Is that correct?

It gets a Studio/Vanilla license.
Studio/Vanilla only gets "standard support"

Ultimate/Flex get the other.
When they were giving Ultimate to Carbon users, they got the priority support (as long as you kept that Ultimate plan renewed)

[abc1mce2]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Yes, another good point.

Of all Avid hardware, the only one that works with Studio is Carbon. It’s taken me this long to realise that this isn’t out of the goodness of their hearts, they migrated the package itself to Studio. Easy to miss, they don’t use the S word in any of their main page product info. It’s massively develaued, tied to the convoluted sub/perpetual hybrid plan and doesen’t even have priority support.

And yes, 7 documents of small print to try to explain all this madness tells its own story.

It got confusing when Avid changed everything last week. Before last week there were only two types of licenses, Standard and Ultimate, regardless if it was a Perpetual License or Pro Tools Subscription. Carbon worked on both and Avid's other hardware needed Ultimate plus the Digi-Link iLok license to function.

The confusion before this week most Carbon users had already during the promo period. Most of us got clarity with these issues last Dec and Jan. I asked a lot of questions and Mark and Kyle cleared things up for several users on this forum in several threads. They were very helpful so I'm clear on a lot of these issues, but I do understand the frustration with Avid and how they constantly change things and not necessarily for the better, especially with this subscription-only model junk.

I guess with these three different versions of Subscription PT, the renaming of Stardand to Studio, what version of PT has what features, and what hardware works on what version of PT now has confused people a little more than before.

[grayter1]

Yep. Reading this thread gave me a headache.

I'm an Ultimate sub, and as someone so eloquently pointed out before the discussion was bogged down with the Carbon confusion, Avid expects that users like me will accept the price increase and get used to it.

It's like the old apologue - throw a frog into a boiling pot of water and it will immediately jump out, but raise the temp slowly in tepid water, it will be cooked while blissfuly unaware.

Once I saw the price increase, I went to my account and unchecked "Auto Renew". It expires in July. I've begun my exit plan and am busy printing VI tracks and stems. I'm also installing Nuendo on my new Mac Studio as I type this and jumping out of Avid's pot of boiling water.

tg

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by abc1mce2

It got confusing when Avid changed everything last week. Before last week there were only two types of licenses, Standard and Ultimate, regardless if it was a Perpetual License or Pro Tools Subscription. Carbon worked on both and Avid's other hardware needed Ultimate plus the Digi-Link iLok license to function.

The confusion before this week most Carbon users had already during the promo period. Most of us got clarity with these issues last Dec and Jan. I asked a lot of questions and Mark and Kyle cleared things up for several users on this forum in several threads. They were very helpful so I'm clear on a lot of these issues, but I do understand the frustration with Avid and how they constantly change things and not necessarily for the better, especially with this subscription-only model junk.

I guess with these three different versions of Subscription PT, the renaming of Stardand to Studio, what version of PT has what features, and what hardware works on what version of PT now has confused people a little more than before.

I guess many of us missed it earlier this year because we're not in the market for Carbon. The renewed interest now is that it provides the only semi-perpetual license opportunity for new customers. It's a bitter blow to find that doesn't exist at all for Ultimate - but even if it did, knowing you would have had to pay $999 pa anyway renders the loss moot pretty much.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by grayter1

Yep. Reading this thread gave me a headache.

I'm an Ultimate sub, and as someone so eloquently pointed out before the discussion was bogged down with the Carbon confusion, Avid expects that users like me will accept the price increase and get used to it.

It's like the old apologue - throw a frog into a boiling pot of water and it will immediately jump out, but raise the temp slowly in tepid water, it will be cooked while blissfuly unaware.

Once I saw the price increase, I went to my account and unchecked "Auto Renew". It expires in July. I've begun my exit plan and am busy printing VI tracks and stems. I'm also installing Nuendo on my new Mac Studio as I type this and jumping out of Avid's pot of boiling water.

tg

Quite something to come to this. I suppose you have the option of stumping up $99 for one month if you find down the road you're lacking something critical.