So I've been a Bitwig fan boi for just under a year now. And Bitwig 2 has been announced. I was so excited, they have some amazing features added. But there's a big ass catch.

They have the worst licence model. A Perpetual licence. Fuck you Bitwig!!!

I will happily use a pirated copy of this bulshit despite going legit, they have made me so mad!

https://www.bitwig.com/en/home.html

 

What sort of perpetual horror have the lawyers thought up now?

 

yay !! ... great business model.. treat your paying customers as a potential criminal...
not fit to lick your.. umm e-licenser ( or whatever appendage they use )

they can stuff their bitwig.. and Steinberg can stuff their CB V9 for $99 too
bought V8.5 less than 6 months ago..

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 13, 2017

i hope ableton don't go this way with live 10 onwards. i also own reason, but their upgrades already seem too expensive, so i doubt they would dare!

 

It's despicable. Lots of companies now think this is acceptable end-user abuse practice. The maker of Nebula have just released an update to their product, called it "Nebula4" and are charging existing customers about 100euro to get it too. It's goddamn update to the same software you already bought, but call it a new product and suddenly you can charge everyone a second time for it.

Looks like Bitwig want about 200 euro as well, for every 12months that you, a legitimate paying customer, want to keep their software up to date. Fuck me sideways, that's a genius business move guys.

 

I can only wholeheartedly agree with you, mate. Terrible decision on their part. I was considering buying a license because occasionally I'm jamming with BW in Linux, but now I don't think I'm going to be buying a license. Too expensive. For that kinda money I can get Cubase edu version, for example. But I'm really satisfied with Reaper on Windows. No need for anything else. And yes - a cracked version of BW will have to do in Linux.

 

I will gladly pay the $200 for Logic 11, whenever that happens. And I do so hope the Camel Audio team has a large hand creating it.

Perhaps I should say "if that happens."

 

It's very similar to Cakewalk's model, which is rather good. You just have to buy a 12 month plan here every time (Cakewalk has 1 month min.).
Basically it's better for software that gets (major-) update often. I don't know if it's the case with Bitwig. Version 1 is now 2½ years old...

 

I don't know if it was a premonition... but in December I had bought Ableton Live 9 Suite. Anyway I don't like their new policy about BS2 license model. I don't like it at all. I'm a legit user and if I decide to move to BS2 I have to pay €159 (upgrade fee). It's a joke... a bad joke.
No funny. Not for me.
I had wait for BS2 and used BS1 even if it was so young, believing in its developers.
What a waste of time.

r u doing Bitwig?

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2017

Totally fair.

 

Lol..... Now with this new model "they will release updates more often"... This is totally bullshit, just look at Adobe...

Waiting for the 0Day.... Oh yeah...

 

I already said it in another thread, but it is important enough to repeat: Upgrade costs are a huge factor for all that do music by heart. Those people, me included, won't stop making music throughout their lifes. And now compare the various DAWs and their cost over, say, 20 years. You will quickly find out that Cubase and (now) Bitwig are way too expensive for a DAW. Imagine a hardware mixing desk, that you would need to pay year after year. Obviously you don't have to. You pay once for the desk, and if you want to you pay for extensions. And you can rely on that thing to work for several decades (if taken care of).

DAWs on the other hand only work until something new will be "invented". Maybe we will have some 128-bit processors and OS in a few years. For sure it will only take a year or two until Cubase or Bitwig will only work on those new PCs in their newest versions. But sadly those newer versions will contain the bugfixes that should have been fixed even before selling the last but one version. And there you are: Buying a new PC, a full payment for a new version of your DAW, and that all just for the bugfixes? Or live with all the bugs that you never paid for, but have to accept then?

On the long run I look at a balance between cost and benefit. If there is a DAW that costs €60 every two major versions, is actively and almost weekly updated (bugfixes!) and offers just as much or even more than its competitors - then I certainly don't look at any of those. Of course in relation to a lifetime use. I'm talking of Reaper. This is my decision, although there's one competitor that might be even more attractive. I just never got used to its strange structure. The best cost-benefit ratio without a doubt has FL Studio with its lifetime updates policy.

If you really care for costs, you must use one of them both. If you don't, then you don't really care about costs, but are lured by a fancy GUI or whatever else.

 

Bitwig is my main daw and all these new features should be on 1.x already.
They should have given this update to existing users for free for the next 12 month period.
The best selling point of bitwig is workflow quality and the only improvement i saw should have already been there.

We're not happy, we expected more from BWS 2.

 

Did I hear someone say Reaper?

 

One of the reasons I bought Bitwig (as my secondary DAW) was ambitious feature list pre-announced for v2 such as extensive collaboration features etc.
I don't remember exactly what were all features listed at that time but this 2.0 update doesn't look nearly that exciting.
The Bitwig hype over time cooled down and I kept asking my self how can they keep that rather large boat sailing.

The update price is rather insulting and it may be a sign of a sinking ship.
I really wish them successful future but I am leaving their ship now.

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2017

so begins the literal death of bitwig. see'ya, it's been fun.

 

I think Reaper and S1 have best update politics. I think we must pay (and not more than 30% of full price) only for major update/new version.
This Bitwig's politics is madness. And don't forget - Bitwig is not the best on the market. I think it have a lot of useless stuff. I worked in Live more than 2 years, but move to S1 and there are only 3 "-" in my list - Drum Rack; Sampler/Simpler and number of audio algorithms. But now I use Live by rewire in S1. And it's the best tandem)

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2017

Nope. Not at all. The most logical to me seems that, the perpetual upgrade models can work when the developing companies have an already large established user base, like Adobe, Cakewalk etc. Unless the product was so innovative that v.1 was an immediate hit (like Melodyne was for instance, but Melodyne is not a DAW), every other developer/publisher should find themselves between a rock and a hard place, when applying this model to a small user base, as you correctly mentioned. I cannot imagine FL Studio having the user base it has now, with a different upgrade policy than the one they kept all these years. Kudos to them, at least they seem to be on the right side of the fence.
I can only sadly remember what Apple unashamedly declared to 70k Windows/Logic registered users (including yours truly) when they bought E-magic and switched to strictly MacOSX versions: "Get a Mac". And i was like : "Really ? FU dudes. If i wanted a Mac i would have already gotten one, did this ever cross your mind ?" But of course they knew already, they just blatantly blackmailed a whole community to make the transition and give them even more money buying their hardware as well. Some friends who were depending on the soft because they did not want or had time to learn something else, they paid from some to many thousands to change platform. I found the whole "charade" ridiculous and outrageous. Logic 5 for Windows now collects dust in a drawer somewhere in my studio. I think there was a point in time, where i could crossgrade it for a Cubase version but i already owned Cubase too, so i left it there, being the relic of a different era.
In my experience, for us, the end customer, we have to be prepared for anything, so making ourselves comfortable with more than one DAW is essential, if it's your job of course. You never know when some developer devises some new scheme to "extort" their users for more money.
Cheers

 

A question about their "12 MONTHS OF FREE UPGRADES" :
what if their last upgrade has flaws and they can't fix it while my subscription is still valid?