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Autodesk subscription model
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[Andrew Kimery] “ow did you arrive at $14.95? I’d like Adobe to offer different application bundles for less, but $14.95 for everything just seems like a very low, and arbitrary, number. Avid’s annual subscription price is the same as Adobe’s yet with Adobe you get significantly more bang for your buck so should Avid charge $1.99 for MC?”
Adobe and Apple offered an inexpensive alternative to Avid. Apple still does.
[Andrew Kimery] “Better or not, the traditional software business model is disappearing and I don’t see that course changing. Also, don’t forget that towards the end of CS’s life Adobe changed the upgrade policy so that upgrade pricing only went back one version. So if you were on CS 5 you could get an upgrade discount to CS 6, but if you were on CS 4 and wanted to upgrade to CS 6 you would have to pay full retail for it. Creative Cloud or not, the Adobe was ending the ability for customers to ‘coast’ via the upgrade policy.”
I agree Adobe got greedy.
[Andrew Kimery] “Just speaking for myself, I’m less concerned with saving a few bucks today and more concerned with the long term health of the industry that makes the tools that I use to make a living.”
If Adobe offered the CC for $19.99 a month they would still make millions but Adobe wants to make billions.
[Andrew Kimery] “I’d much rather pay a subscription to Adobe for CC than for Adobe to copy BM’s game plan and release Adobe brand I/O devices and Adobe Brand control panels that are tied to their software.”
Adobe doesn’t have to make I/O hardware devices.
[Andrew Kimery] ” I think users are best served when they have the freedom to choose what they think is the best hardware and best software for their needs, even if that means mixing and matching hardware and software from different venders.”
I agree.
I am not saying the CC is horrible or way over priced but since we must use the cloud a price of $24.99 would be more reasonable. The CC is more buggy than the CS versions.
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[andy patterson] “I am not saying the CC is horrible or way over priced but since we must use the cloud a price of $24.99 would be more reasonable. The CC is more buggy than the CS versions.”
Andy, come on! Your price point keeps shifting. It doesn’t seem like you have any knowledgeable justification for the numbers you are suggesting, other than simply a desire to pay less.
And no, I don’t see CC as any more buggy than CS. All software is always buggy.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Andy –
Just curious to know that if a client of yours asked you to cut your rate by well more than half because they thought you were making too much profit, would you agree to do that? Probably not. So why would Adobe? A publicly held company like Adobe is not going to simply give up huge revenue.
I think you will see the rate increase in the future, not decrease. Probably small tick up. Or, what I would like to see, Adobe might consider offering an a la carte option for CC. Say $25/month for any five products in the cloud.
Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Oliver.
Inflamitory no. Cautionary yes. I think people deserve another view about this. Then they can decide for themselves. That’s all.
I am a bit surprised at the “access to your property via take it to somebody else who rents it” idea. How is that remotely equivelent to keeping control of your own IP? Wait, I get it. Adobe just wants me to maintain a lifelong friendship with at least one CC subscriber to enable me hastle free alteration of my own property if need be. They are clearly just out to encourage me to have more friends! (I should have picked up on that sooner.)
And yes, I actually have dumped the use of both Word and Excel.
Word is (to me) bloatware now. Much happier with Omwriter for disappearing into just writing without so many distractions – and Pages when I need formatting.
Excel offers nothing to me (at my level of use) I can’t do in Numbers.
I’m *trying” to evaluate my tool approaches on their actual merits rather than on the inertia of choices I (or even clients) made long ago and for which superior options might exist if only I keep open to them.
That’s seemed to work out pretty well the past decade for me.
YMMV.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “I am a bit surprised at the “access to your property via take it to somebody else who rents it” idea.”
All I’m saying is that you never loose access to your IP. First, the finished, exported master is unaffected. The project file – your “exposed workings” – stay in your possession. You merely lose access to opening it back up, if you quit paying. I’m simply saying you could open it anywhere else, since you still have access to the actual project file. That’s what clients do all the time when they take an existing project to another facility to revise it.
[Bill Davis] “And yes, I actually have dumped the use of both Word and Excel.”
I agree there are valid alternatives, but not if you have to regularly exchange document files with clients. Things like “tracked changes” are hit or miss. So opening a Word document in Pages doesn’t guarantee that you are getting the right info. Also Numbers, in particular, has the age-old Apple problem of not being able to scale large. Huge, complex spreadsheets are a dog in Numbers compared with Excel.
[Bill Davis] “I’m *trying” to evaluate my tool approaches on their actual merits rather than on the inertia of choices I (or even clients) made long ago and for which superior options might exist if only I keep open to them.”
Which is fine, but has nothing to do with the pros and cons of subscription as a business model.
But, let’s turn the tables…
Apple software is a risk, because they are holding my IP for ransom:
1. I can’t open old FCP7 or Color files anymore, because I can’t buy the software any longer.
2. I can’t open my project and document files, because Apple requires that I use their hardware.
3. My footage is all in ProRes, which is a format only controlled by Apple.See, the argument cuts both ways. ☺
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[andy patterson] “Adobe doesn’t have to make I/O hardware devices. “
It was just an example, but if Adobe wanted to drop software prices to compete with the price points Apple and BM are offering then Adobe would have to do something to fill that revenue void out since selling software to creatives would no longer be their primary source of income.
By creating other sources of revenue targeting creatives (Adobe Stock, Team Projects, etc.,) I think raising the CC subscription price is the last thing they want to do in order to boost revenue. Adobe also has two other company pillars (Marketing Cloud and Document Cloud), and while Marketing Cloud is growing a lot, Creative Cloud is still the biggest revenue generator by far. If the other two segments keep growing then I think that will help keep Creative Cloud prices stable which would be a win/win situation (Adobe revenue increases w/o a need to raise CC prices).
[Oliver Peters] “If you lapse on the annual support, MC continues to work, but is frozen and not upgradeable beyond the last valid updated version.”
I’ll add that even get bug fixes are unavailable once you stop paying, and if you want to get back on the train you have to pay full retail price again (no upgrade discounts).
[Bill Davis] “I am a bit surprised at the “access to your property via take it to somebody else who rents it” idea. How is that remotely equivelent to keeping control of your own IP? “
This situation is decades (if not a century or more) old. People rent gear (and/or rent crew) all the time and if they want to continue to use the equipment/crew beyond the scope of the original rental agreement they have to pay for it. Honestly, it’s not much different than a relationship we might have with a client. We do an agreed up amount of work for an agreed upon amount of time at an agreed upon price. Once it’s done the client is, by your definition, effectively locked out of their IP until they pay us, or a competitor, more money to access it again.
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[Andrew Kimery] “This situation is decades (if not a century or more) old. People rent gear … Honestly, it’s not much different than a relationship we might have with a client.”
I think the “sin” here is that software companies are changing the business relationship away from what people have been used to. You NEVER owned the software to start with. You only bought a perpetual license to use it. Now software companies are shifting from the perpetual license arrangement to a timed/payment-based model. People don’t like change.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “People don’t like change.”
Especially editors!
Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Oliver Peters] “I think the “sin” here is that software companies are changing the business relationship away from what people have been used to. “
And of course what people are used to varies from person to person. Much of my journey through the industry was along the ‘everything is rented’ path so when FCP got to the point of being ‘good enough’ *and* it was cheap enough to own that was novel to me.
I’m rather ambivalent about software subscriptions, but given the market conditions it’s either adapt (via alt business models like subscriptions) or die for many software venders.
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[Oliver Peters] “Andy, come on! Your price point keeps shifting. It doesn’t seem like you have any knowledgeable justification for the numbers you are suggesting, other than simply a desire to pay less.”
Adobe could charge $14.95 a month and still make money. They could charge $24.95 and make more money. The more people that are on the cloud the lower the price can be. Phone companies have dropped their prices form 2 years ago and offer better data plans. If we have to be on the perpetual treadmill and there are no DVDs the price should be less than the old school CS upgrades but they are not. We pay for upgrades even if they are not that great. I highly doubt we will see as big of upgrade from CS 4.0 to CS 5.0 again. BMD has offered free upgrades for DR. Having said that regardless if Apple and BMD both make hardware their software is direct competition for Adobe. If Adobe were like Apple we would pay $950.00 for the CC and get free updates for 6 years. And yea, I am aware Apple and BMD sell hardware but competition is competition. Look at Google Docs VS MS Office. It is a competitive world.
[Oliver Peters] “And no, I don’t see CC as any more buggy than CS. All software is always buggy.”
There are definitely more bugs since CC. I say if we are all going to be beta testers lower the price. I agree all software has bugs but we get more of them now. Adobe has gotten rid of the paid beta testers.
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