One thing that has really started to bother me recently is update pricing for some audio plugins that I legitimately purchased.

Sometimes you're paying nearly what you paid for the software originally, for minor fixes and improvements (and maybe a couple legitimately new features), and that kind of makes me regret the purchase in the first place. Feels like you bought an unfinished product.

I keep seeing "$29 upgrade pricing for owners of previous versions". It's burned into my brain at this point.

I feel like some of you can probably relate, so I'd like to hear some horror stories of software devs trying to charge more money for minor improvements to their products.

I'll share a couple with you:

Audiomodern Playbeat 4 -

I basically did beta testing for this company to help them improve significant issues with Playbeat 3 (DAW playback sync issues, GUI issues, MIDI export functionality being garbage) and they made a couple minor changes, then ignored the rest, then released a new version (where they still didn't fix things) and are asking for another $29. No thanks.

Soundspot Plugins -

I bought these plugins on PluginBoutique a while ago (almost all of them), then PB bought SoundSpot or somehow took control over their plugins, reskinned them, made basically no improvements to them, then asked us to pay for upgrades for the reskinned plugins.

API Sonic Labs Speedrum -

Wanted to support this smaller dev. Bought Speedrum v1. It was a cool concept (Battery 4 clone), but was super slow to respond to things like sample chopping and had GUI issues/limited features for monophonic playback. Sent feedback to the dev, he said he had no idea what I was talking about, then released Speedrum v2 a month later with $29 upgrade pricing.

Acustica Audio -

I despise this company. So many of their products have serious bugs (Nebula 4 crashing, sample rate issues with EQs, terrible compressor response on certain plugin), and instead of fixing their products they just "completely rework and resample" the same hardware and release it as a new version.

This is almost a sneaky way to fix issues (which should have been an update) and get people to pay again. You can sell a reworked product for full price again and leave users of previous versions with unfixed products.

Waves -

Waves Update Plan. Enough Said.

Edit:

Baby Audio Transit 2 -

Released a new version within like 6 months of the first version being released instead of updating the old version. Also it costs full price to upgrade to the new version on PluginBoutique.

Just a few I can think of off the top of my head! Curious to hear some other peoples experiences or thoughts similar to my own.

Also I would like to thank all of the great teams that have allowed me to use new versions of products I've already purchased without having to pay again!

Rant over.

 

I don't think thats ever going to change... it sucks when it happens and it doesnt make it right but it is what it is

I still feel developers should choose to value their software as they please and we as consumers should choose whether to support them or not.

Great developers always find a middle ground thats fair for the consumer and themselves. There's a symbiotic relationship there thats respected and these are the developers I choose to support. Anything less than that I don't bother.

 

Side note, this is kind of how I feel lately about Native Instruments, particularly with the lack of consistent updates on Maschine. Even with their recent update, Maschine 3.0 feels sluggish compared to Maschine 2.0.

I was just watching Sarah2ill and she's pretty much summed up how I feel about NI at the moment.

The temptation to switch over to an AKAIMPC is there but I'll give it another year before I make the final decision. I just dont feel like NI really is committed to their development the same way AKAI is and their priority is to keep cash flow moving over keeping customers happy.

 

this has been going on since the advent of commercial third-party software. You do see this more often with lower priced software, and yes' they are usually some amount of unfinished. "everything will be fixed in the next update". That might be part of why they cost $29 to start with. Software for commercial/industrial business use case upgrade prices make these audio devs asking for another $29.00 look like saints.
They have no compunction charging massive sums of money for "customer programming" to fix something wrong with their own products.

You do not see this as often with more expensive audio software, with some glaring exceptions. Many $29 plugins are correctly priced, because they are junk.

 

Be grateful you are not an AVID user it seems.
ProTools users who used to pay for every upgrade in outright ownership, apparently now have to pay more than the software upgrades cost annually, just to keep their software activated, or go back to the pre-subscription version.

 

If it works as intended, and it is just minor fixes, I don't update. Security updates are nice, but you don't really need them if your audio computer is not connected to the internet, so I don't care about them at all really. This means, I only update to a new version if there is something that I really like/want/need. If I have to pay for it then, so be it.

But yeah, I get the point. Waves plugins, I don't update ever really, because the plugins are mostly 10+ years old anyway. I don't see them improving anything really. It really feels like a money grab. I mean why would I update a plugin that works fine and that doesn't give me any extra value after the update?

 

Man, just forget about NI. They are completely cooked. Well, it's not like AKAI is in a better position, either. I'd say the best idea is to buy second hand and stick to older products from both. That goes for plugins, too.

"buy the way" ;) NI partnered with Akai recently (smells shady...), but the real owner of both is InMusic Group (they own Akai and tons of others-check this out) and Franciso Partners (NI) which bought NI in 2021 from someone else (can't remember, some German company)... NI got bought in *2019* by that German company and since then their products just kept getting worse and worse. Money is always the problem - keeping the greedy shareholders happy.

Kontakt 1 - 2002, Kontakt 2 - 2005, Kontakt 3 - 2008, Kontakt 4 - 2010, Kontakt 5 - 2012 (Best Version of Kontakt ever that I still use as a sampler, last Kontakt able to read akai/roland/emu/ensoniq CDs), Kontakt 6 - *2019* (beginning of the end), Kontakt 7 sept. 2022, Kontakt 8 sept 2024, Kontakt 9 sept 2026? If they survive.

 

Last edited: Apr 2, 2025

If a company like Waldorf makes a Largo 2, you don't have to buy it, but you do get something for your money. It also depends on how much money you have. In Russia, I heard that you either buy something to eat or software; you can't have both. That's why there's cracked software. It's illegal, but it's still kind of social.

So, I'm glad I'm not a Steinberg or NI user, as @SineWave already pointed out. Unfortunately, I've seen plenty of companies go bust. U-HE is a cool, innovative company with a reasonable pricing policy.

 

Absolutely agreed. One of the rare plugin companies I would buy plugins from. Reasonably priced and you get updates for free.

 

The adventurous game of some marketing managers was this cloud and rental system, where many users then publicly complained, and the manufacturer then partially reversed the offer.

Back then, Arturia would send a pretty cardboard box through the mail, containing a CD-ROM, a customer card with a number, and a trilingual manual. Oh yeah, and a USB dongle that eventually broke in half. Arturia then blamed Steinberg.

Today, there's simply a download link; with reFX Nexus, they were so frugal that they didn't even include a PDF manual for the user. Conclusion: rationalization at the expense of the user.

 

I agree that there needs to be a middle ground for developers charging upgrade fees. I think that quite a bit of my issue stems from some products being in basically a beta state upon release, which in turn means that the dev will be fixing stuff constantly as "updates" to the software when they are really fixing it. This might also limit meaningful time being spent adding features to a new version of the software that does warrant an upgrade that they can charge for.

It's interesting that you brought up NI. Don't they charge an upgrade fee for each new verison of Kontakt? That seems absurd to me given the price of Kontakt to begin with, and how insignificant (to the average user) the differences are when upgrading from 6 to 7 to 8.

 

AVID is batshit insane. I avoid them at all costs.

 

Agreed. U-He also releases products that don't need 5 upgraded versions over the course of 5 years, because the software they make is so full featured to be begin with. Every upgrade that they charge for is going to be meaningful.

 

NI Product Update Guide: Paid vs. Free

In this article, we explain the difference between paid and free updates.
The following examples use Battery, but the information applies to all NI product updates.

Paid Product Updates

We only charge an update fee when new major versions of NI products are released ('Major Updates').
For example, registered users of Battery 3 (or earlier versions) must pay the update price to download and use Battery 4.
This is because the update version is a completely separate product consisting of new software and a new library.

To purchase a product update, log in to the NI website with your Native ID and visit the main product page. You can find the update pricing by clicking BUY below the product banner. In this example, we're looking at the product page for Battery 4.

Free Software Updates

NI software updates are free when released incrementally or as maintenance updates within a major release (e.g., Battery 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, etc.). These free updates are available to registered users when new features or enhancements to the software are released.
Native Access detects if a previous version of the software is installed (e.g., Battery 4.0.0) and automatically displays the latest update for download in the Available Updates tab.

Source: https://support.native-instruments....-Produkt-Updates-Kostenpflichtig-vs-kostenlos

 

It's pretty awesome that Xfer didn't charge an upgrade fee for Serum 2. Considering the crazy amount of new features they added, it would be well worth the upgrade cost of something like $29. Don't think many people would complain about that.

For something like Playbeat 4 they added basically nothing other than what they say is "a state of the art AI pattern generation engine" and then they're still having to do minor bugfixes like "Resolved an issue with the Flam adjustment"

29 dollars for that? And I'm 99% sure that means that Playbeat 3 will never have anything new added to it like correct MIDI export functionality.

I could stomach a $10-20 upgrade, but $29 is greedy as fuck in my opinion. I also own all of their plugins and don't get any reduced cost to upgrade one of their plugins. Voting with my wallet and never buying anything from them again.

 

"The cost to upgrade from Kontakt versions 1 to 6 to Kontakt 7 is $49.50. If you're looking to crossgrade, the price is $99.50, and the full version of Kontakt 7 is available for $149.50. This is about the lowest price you will see for Kontakt 7."

I still think the upgrade cost should be less that $49.50 between versions, but it is nice that they'll let you pay that for an upgrade from any version.

The whole crossgrade thing is weird, because basically everyone can get free Kontakt player and then upgrade to full v7. Seems like a shitty thing to do that will trick some consumers into paying $149.50 when they all could pay $99.50 (assuming I'm understanding that correctly).

 

Playbeat 4 - They added a fair amount of functionality in the new version, and from my experience, there is nothing broken. all features working fine on my end.

SoundSpot - never heard of em, so i cant speak on wether or not they were just reskinned or if they added additional functionality, but this is typical when a company goes under / bought out. New investors need to make their money back.

Speedrum - just because you are experiencing those issues, does not mean the dev knows what you are talking about. Did you provide him with logs, videos of faulty behavior etc? I dont think he was just sitting around twiddling his thumbs, got your email, told you to screw yourself, and then secretly did everything in your email and released the update. He likely had the update planned for a while, and you just bought at the wrong time. Still should have given to you for free, if you had bought it just a month before.

Acustica - Nebula has never crashed for me, have not encountered any sample rate issues except for in the trials. The compressors suck for the most part yes. They do fix most bugs, but agree they leave some sitting for years which is super annoying. They dont just rework and resample the hardware tho, or at least they dont say that. Sand for example was a completely different console, some broadcast specific SSL, which was idiotic in its own way.

Waves - yes. they got a ton of backlash for subscription model, and then went around and made it a subscription in sheeps clothing anyways. majority of their plugins suck regardless.

Transit pissed me off too. Ive never been so salty about a plugin update. I'll happily pay small dev's who do significant updates, as i understand they need to eat and coding takes time. But that was a blatant money grab. they barely added any functionality. They added a bunch of "new" modules. that were for the most part just alternative versions of the existing modules, utility shit that should have been in the original, etc. a couple of new modules yes, but yah, cmon, 6 months after release?!?! BS! i wrote them and told them they completely lost me as a customer.


When it comes down to it, i dont mind paying again if its significant, even if a company says "lifetime free updates" .I dont care, happy to pay if its a plugin i use regularly, and the new product is worth the upgrade pricing. If its not, just dont upgrade, or wait until the next upgrade comes in another year or whatever.

This will become the new norm too. Not just in plugin land, but in every walk of life. Soon EVERYTHING will have a subscription model. Your car, your microwave, your eyeglasses, whatever!! You'll own nothing and be happy!!! lets gooooo!!! thanks Klaus Schwab!

 

Couldn't have said it better myself SineWave. From the historical timeline of ownership to how it tanked, to which was "The Best Version of Kontakt" (in 5.x) and was the golden era of NI during that period, as they still had most of their OG staff, their acquisitions and added talent were bringing useful products to the table, they had worked out a lot of the kinks and it was a period when cpu's were able to better fulfill the promises in ability, the had Reaktor spinning off great ideas and products and a healthy active user base, you could talk to them on the phone and whatnot... and they supported their hardware (at least for the most part)..... it really started sliding after that apex iirc... but they were always trending up since the late 90's with things like Generator etc, and then with the new products through the 00's, and around half way through the 2010's, or more leaning towards the end of the 2010's.... it's been death spiraling since..