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Software pricing - ludicrous? (pg. 3)
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by tehlord
No
Have you seen the Fairlight app?
I mean, I actually used one of those things in a studio in about '88 and it was about $30k at the time. Even the Emulator 2 that I used in a few tracks was about $5k's worth as it had a CD-ROM attached....in 1988!! |
Lol, know exactly what you mean.
I remember around that time my mate's dad was a graphic designer, and he got a CD-ROM drive for his computer, and we were drooling over it's future-ness . It cost £4,500 and the CD's were £100 a pop :eyes: |
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| Looney4Clooney |
me and my brother bought a tascam 8 track recorder in like 1992. Those where like 1000$ at the time and you could basically record 8 tracks that sounded like . And that is how you made your demo. No mixing. Basic levels and that was that. We didn't understand why it sounded so bad, We thought we needed better instruments. lol. Back then , unless you actually had studio experience, the word compressor meant nothing. EQ was a word you used to describe how you would EQ the final output. The tascam portastudio! lol
The concept of home recording did not exist until late late 90s. The idea of making a platinum record in your house was absurd. I think it was only until around 2002 - 5 where people started actually doing it that word started getting around that you don't need a million dollar studio. About the same time every studio started to fold. |
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| tehlord |
| quote: | Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
me and my brother bought a tascam 8 track recorder in like 1992. Those where like 1000$ at the time and you could basically record 8 tracks that sounded like . And that is how you made your demo. No mixing. Basic levels and that was that. We didn't understand why it sounded so bad, We thought we needed better instruments. lol. Back then , unless you actually had studio experience, the word compressor meant nothing. EQ was a word you used to describe how you would EQ the final output. The tascam portastudio! lol
The concept of home recording did not exist until late late 90s. The idea of making a platinum record in your house was absurd. I think it was only until around 2002 - 5 where people started actually doing it that word started getting around that you don't need a million dollar studio. About the same time every studio started to fold. |
You could get some pretty decent digital recording gear (Alesis ADAT and some new fangled minidisk multitracks) in the very early 90's, and set up a pretty tight studio for about £10k. I used to work with a couple of guys at the time who hoovered up a load of old analog gear (which had yet to start being appreciated) and put out very nice sounding white labels every weekend for a considerable profit most of the time. The great thing about the ADAT's where that you could daisy chain them for proper multitracking. I think we were using an Atari ST for sequencing duties too.
Granted, the ADAT's were about £1500 each I think, but that was the dawn of the pro'ish home studio. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
| i was about 12 so 1000 was a pretty big deal for the 8 track. That was about 5 months of delivering paper. |
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| Mel David |
| You have to factor inflation as well when comparing prices of studio gear from then to now. |
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by CalvP
There are definitely some dinosaurs left on the market that haven't adapted, but i would argue by & large the price of software has plummeted in the last few years - the number of sales is staggering. I think the only product i have ever purchased at the rrp is Logic, the rest have either been in cheap bundles, no brainer sales, the KVR marketplace, upgrade deals or in group buys.* |
Bear in mind, when logic 8 came out the price was dropped to half of what all the previous versions had been - it was considerably cheap than cubase and it put massive pressure on Steinberg to reciprocate.
Another factor to bear in mind, software, like music, used to be incredibly expensive to create - there were less people who could program (especially for audio) and firms used to have to invest ridiculous sums in copy protection. My tutor wrote the first widely used room analysis program, and commissioned motorola to the tune of $250,000 for the latest "uncrackable" copy protection code.
The day before it was commercially released, a student came up to him and asked him specific questions about how to use certain function. He was floored to learn that it was already cracked and readily available on limewire.
He then said it and only made personalised editions of the software for large acoustics firms for $30,000 a pop after that.
Now, software companies (at least the small ones) have realised that if you make it cheap enough, there's a big group of people who won't bother downloading a crack, they'll just buy it. No need to invest in super expensive copy protection - just make it cheap and sell more. |
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by CalvP
Can't knock Logic - tbh i'm surprised how expensive Cubase is in comparison, but i suppose Apple can afford loss leaders so perhaps that's not entirely fair?
I dare say the economic downturn has brought with it a fair share of positives - unemployment becomes rife leading more people to take up something creative like music making to express themselves BUT with much less disposable income. The clever ones have adapted & turned their back on the "cheap automatically devalues the product" notion & market the product at a fair price with a simple serial, so we all benefit:)
I do however appreciate the development costs in software & the worry of piracy, but having to use 3 different dongles pis*es me right off - iLok especially gives me nightmares (knock on wood nothing happens to mine) as having to post it off to EACH developer & incur all p&p costs if it breaks just seems farcical & certainly not in the legitimate buyers favour.
Out of interest did he have any case to sue Motorola? what happens to the developers who used iLok1 which got cracked:conf:
It would seem the floodgates have opened now. More & more people are getting involved with music, so hopefully the prices are gonna keep falling...hope springs eternal right:p |
Agree - iLok and any USB based dongles can right off. The ILok thing is a complete joke. YOu pay to have all this expensive software loaded on to your iLok, then have to pay them extra for a secure backup (like $400) - I swear it's extortion because they known that if a studio loses it's dongle, they can't afford to have downtime.
The worst thing I've come across is dongle that won't work in USB hubs - a couple of those and you're out of USB ports, and other than getting a PCI USB board you're out of luck.
The other thing that annoys me is that the purchase price of the software has been signifigantly increased by that proprietary dongle. If you think what a software package costs in terms of materials it's pennies for the DVD, book (if any) and box, but the dongle probably adds at last $20 a shot, and that's not even taking in to consideration the associated costs like maintaning the serial number database and service issues, so all said and done it's probably twice that cost.
My tutor did get some money back, because this was meant to be defense grade protection, and there was a whole storm for motorola over it; When his acoustic program got cracked, motorola were forced to notify the department of Defense that all the material secured with it was now vulnerable. Ouch.
but in a lot cases, the contracts are written in a way that the protection is not a guarantee and they're basically doing the best they can.
The iLok is one of the only things that hasn't been properly cracked yet - there are workarounds but they're buggy and not worth it all things considered.
Steinberg for a long while (with cubase 5) had solid copy protection, but in the end some hackers managed it.
If I were a software manufacturer, I would make the software cheap enough to negate the biggest portion of piracy, offer great support for those that purchase and then flood the main torrent sites with defective virus laiden fake cracked versions. It would be far cheaper to employ someone to do this that make new fangled dongles that just piss people off. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
i think you have it backwards, ilock was cracked and syncrosoft wasn't. II think there were a few exploits for specific products but ilock was completely unlocked.I haven't seen any cracks around for any of my syncrosoft protected stuff ie VSL and their stuff and a few others and the only plugin on ilok i haven't seen cracked is Ivory 2 but since that product came out rather recently, they have updated ilok to some degree. I think part of the reason we are not seing 64 bit waves is an ilok issue as they are trying very hard that the fiasco they endured doesn't happen again.
both my ilok key and syncrosoft key work in a hub so maybe this depends on the setup. I actually user a switch styled hub allowing both computers to use the keys.
The best way to circumvent piracy is making it affordable and constantly giving updates. That way , you can kill any exploits while offering new updates that add functionality so anyone using a crack won't ever really have the real program.
For examble. SYmphobia just released a huge 7 gig update free and you won't be seing that around for a few months. I think if you constantly improve a product , people will just say it and buy it. |
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| Mel David |
The pricing of iPad apps at $0.99 cents is perfect.
Let's hope that either iPads get powerful enough to become your main DAW, or $0.99 - $9.99 becomes normal pricing for software. |
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| Richard Butler |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Now, software companies (at least the small ones) have realised that if you make it cheap enough, there's a big group of people who won't bother downloading a crack, they'll just buy it.
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Yep, I think this is likely to be the best business model going forward.
I personally cant stand trying to get a crack - I've honestly only got I think 1 crack. Just find wading through all the bull to be energy sapping and not something I want to spend time on. I'll happily pay small and often. |
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| Rodri Santos |
| it depends, z3ta for 20$ is ludicrous in some way also, it depends of the comparison , a preset bundle of nexus is a lot more expensive and it's just an expansion or take a drum sample pack of 20$... videogames cost 70$ and without pircay they would cost like 30$ there are many factors that make the price rise/decrease but i am sure the 200$+ stuff gets a lot less sales than the 20-50$ stuff, even in the professional sector, the difference between a 20$ filter and a 100$ filter is that high? |
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| fleec |
Hi guys I'm new to this forum.
The way I see it with software pricing is that you're getting the kind of stuff that people could only dream about 10 or 20 years ago, with far greater ease. The sheer amount of variety that's around now means you can really choose exactly the samples, VSTs, loops etc that you want.
However I can kind of see the point about paying the kind of cash mentioned earlier for EQ's and Compressors, but then again, they are of incredibly high quality.
The other thing is that people say it's not what you have, but what you do with what you have (up to a point of course). More expensive equipment will almost always equal better quality |
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