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Evidently, some of this is quantified.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “We scale up and down, too. It is more than once in a blue moon and our gigs, I’m sure, are even more temporary than yours. It’s one thing to fire up a few more copies of Avid for a few months, and it’s another thing to rent out a 3-day weeks worth of camera gear valued at $500,000.”
Maybe I misunderstood your previous comment. Usually when someone says something like “but how often does that happen?” it implies that the thing being talked about rarely happens. In this case, how often would people go month to month on an NLE subscription? In my neck of the woods, pretty often. For people not in my neck of the woods? Probably less often. I like that it’s an option though.
[Jeremy Garchow] “This “forces” subscription on some folks that don’t really need it. It is of no benefit to them, but yet directly benefits the provider with minimal requirements going back to those users. You are literally not getting what you pay for anymore if you are someone who needs an Adobe app once or twice a month. I just want to say this for the millionth time, I am not specifically pointing fingers at Adobe (they just keep coming up). “
It forces them to get Adobe software, which in the past meant buying it ($2500 if you needed the whole shebang) and upgrading as fast as your most upgrade-happy collaborator. Now it means $600/yr (assuming no CS owner discount) for the whole shebang (assuming some combination of single app and/or month-to-month doesn’t make it any cheaper that $600/yr). For someone that only occasionally needs Adobe software *and* interacts with others (which means they need to upgrade when others upgrade) the situation has never been ideal. I agree though that people that bought CS and then skipped 2-3 versions before upgrading are left out in the cold now.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I don’t know if it will work that way. I think we have learned in this forum over the years, that changing workflows is hard and takes a lot of time, which in turn costs money. It won’t be as easy as just switching from CC to Avid (or Pixelmator, or Smoke, or X/Motion, or whatever, mid-stream. There is a lot of careful consideration that needs to happen, but you know all this.”
Agreed, though FCP Legend hangs around, in large part, because people don’t want to move away from FCP Legend. If Apple somehow started charging $600/yr to use it you’d see people drop Legend like a hot box of rocks. Companies (and individuals) with massive investments in Avid (money, training, hardware/software, etc.,) moved to FCP because they wanted to move, and these days the barriers to switching are much, much lower. If people are motivated to move away from a vendor they will find a way to move away from a vendor (assuming their is competition to move to).
Granted, this is all from my perspective as an editor and PPro certainly does not have the presence in the NLE world that it does in the GFX or photography/print world. For editing there are multiple, viable alternatives to PPro where as I know that’s not true for all of Adobe’s apps.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Maybe I misunderstood your previous comment. Usually when someone says something like “but how often does that happen?” it implies that the thing being talked about rarely happens. In this case, how often would people go month to month on an NLE subscription? In my neck of the woods, pretty often. For people not in my neck of the woods? Probably less often. I like that it’s an option though.”
Production rental is just different, I think. It’s for shorter time periods (typically) than post. There’s a vast range of price points depending on what you need or what the job requires. We tend to own most of our post gear. We used to rent decks, but that’s pretty much gone. Another big difference is that we deal with rental houses. We don’t call up Arri for the camera, Sachtler for the tripod and Matthews for the c-stands when we rent. I have rented post machines in the past, and typically the software was already on it. Maybe it’s different today.
If true rental is what you need, then yes, subscription is convenient and beneficial for the user.
Using Adobe as the example (again), and as you point out, it is now $600/yr to use Adobe software. It was never $600/yr before. It was less expensive to be a loyal Adobe customer before subscription. It is more expensive to be a loyal Adobe customer today if you need anything more than Ps.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I have rented post machines in the past, and typically the software was already on it. Maybe it’s different today. “
I don’t think it is, though being able to rent NLE software directly from the manufacturer is pretty new so maybe some things will start changing.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Using Adobe as the example (again), and as you point out, it is now $600/yr to use Adobe software. It was never $600/yr before. It was less expensive to be a loyal Adobe customer before subscription. It is more expensive to be a loyal Adobe customer today if you need anything more than Ps.”
It cost $2500 for the whole shebang before (plus $525 per upgrade and, for the last couple of years if you skipped an upgrade you had to pay full price). Lower cost of entry certainly got me in the door. In the past I’d just use Adobe on work’s computers because I could never justify the cost to own a copy for myself. Now that I have it though I’ve probably used PPro (for sure) and AE more in the past 16 months than I have in the past 10 years. It was a bit of a chicken/egg problem and getting into Adobe inexpensively (relatively speaking) go the ball rolling.
I actually let my CC subscription lapse recently because I didn’t need it (no work I needed Adobe’s tools for) but that only lasted a couple of weeks before AE work came along so back on the subscription train I went. I agree that for long term users it’s going to eventually be more expensive which is why Adobe needs to keep adding others things to CC. Behance, the cloud storage, the fonts, are nice but those types of things need to keep coming down the pike. The Market Place seems cool (no cost, royalty free graphics, icons, etc.,) but needs to be more expansive. Buying Fotolia is another step in the right direction.
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[Bill Davis] “Never underestimate the massive power of a business model that generates revenue in exchange for doing nothing.”
I think you’re missing out on an opportunity for a great “sig line” here…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[Jeremy Garchow] “And also, who does this benefit in the long run? The user who uses the service once a month or Adobe (Avid, Autodesk, whoever)?”
Both?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Well David, after a couple of years…we’re just going to have to agree to disagree! 😉
You’re one of the few guys that still bangs on this drum quite a bit. I respect that opinion (I really do), but given the comments from some users even in this thread, I think your opinion flies in the face of some facts. Subscription is a mutual agreement. You are not compelled to subscribe, but we do our best to make the toolset incredibly valuable to you. If you do subscribe the onus of innovation for David is up to Adobe. If we fail to meet your criteria (whatever it is), then you have the option to walk away. Both parties win and only you have control over maintaining that agreement.
Frankly, at this point, I know the above won’t convince you but I’ll hold out some hope!
good luck,
Dennis – Adobe guy -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I get it, I get it. Honestly. I didn’t want to make this about Adobe CC, but I do think it does touch on the resistance to subscription, in general.”
You didn’t make it about CC. Bill did. And I get why there is resistance to subscription. David, Bill, and others have made some well-reasoned arguments against software rental.
I just think it’s important to point out that not all subscription services are based on the same business model of consumption arbitrage.
Moviepass and CC do not work on the same model at all, and I think that saying that Adobe is getting paid for doing nothing runs contrary to the evidence.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Moviepass and CC do not work on the same model at all, and I think that saying that Adobe is getting paid for doing nothing runs contrary to the evidence.”
EXACTLY.
This is the worst simile in the history of this forum, and that’s saying a lot. LOL The basis of a simile is that the things have to be similar, but in this case, they’re exactly the opposite!
Moviepass/Transit pass/gym membership/Gift card
- Vendor gets all the money up front
- Vendor doesn’t have to do anything to keep customer engaged
- Customer has to take significant action over long periods of time to receive any value
Software PURCHASE fits here. Vendor gets the money. Vendor doesn’t need to do anything after that. YOU have to hustle to get your money’s worth. That may never actually happen.
Compare that to:
Single purchase of movie ticket, bus ride, sandwich, iTunes download, etc.
- Customer pays for only what’s needed, when needed
- Customer otherwise keeps the money that the vendor would have had in scenario above
- VENDOR now has to take actions over long periods of time to PROVIDE value, or the customer goes elsewhere
Monthly software access fits HERE. You pay a month at a time, for exactly what you want. The theoretical vendor, for the sake of argument, let’s call them Abode, has to woo you if not monthly, no less than once a year.
Additionally, smaller transactions, whether monthly or annually, mean that at the end of every period, you’re vastly more likely to have extracted the value you need from the transaction — or you just don’t spend the money the next time.
So, sure, if you have a philosophical objection, no literary devices will sway you. I’d say that we’re wasting our time arguing about the aptness of literary devices at all, but arguing about the aptness of literary devices is all that separates us from the apes.
And if the financial model doesn’t work for you, welp, it doesn’t work. See above, re: literary devices.
But wow, heavens to Bowie, comparing Creative Cloud to a moviepass is stupendously inapt. Be a grown-up and take responsibility for stepping in before autopay kicks in. Keeping transactions smaller and more frequent puts ALL the power with you. Make Adobe keep earning your business.
Because that’s my other issue with literary devices. Nobody loves making sh|t up more than I do, but the one thing I’m not hearing out there is, “You know what? I’m just not getting my $29/months’s worth of value out of Adobe. They’re sitting on my money and getting lazy. They clearly don’t care about customer-responsive development.”
There may be some alternate universe where Spock has a beard and Adobe ISN’T the benchmark for major vendor customer-responsive development, but it sure ain’t this one.
So let’s at least set aside that aspect of Simile Or Not: The Debate until there’s a reason to debate whether Adobe is actually delivering. I’ve yet to see any meaningful debate on THAT.
The rest is all just literary wrasslin’, which, again, I’m fine with. What with arguing about literary devices bein’ all that separates from the apes and all.
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[Tim Wilson] “Keeping transactions smaller and more frequent puts ALL the power with you. Make Adobe keep earning your business.”
Tim – similes aside and with all due respect to you and Dennis, I think you’re both ignoring the elephant in the room.
If I have to pay the software vendor rent *forever* or lose the ability to open the proprietary project files containing my creative property, how does that give me, the user, ALL the power? What if I’m an artist with years of investment in creative work done with the tool? What if my work is completely non-commercial with no client to bill? How do I just walk away from years of investment in the ecosystem?
I’m not following the argument.
Let’s take the software rental model to its logical extreme. Let’s pretend that every application on your personal computer required monthly rent *forever* or it stops running. How many applications do you have on your machine? I have over 200. Even at a buck a month it’s untenable. How about five bucks a month for the more specialized apps? See where it’s going? Is this the kind of digital world you want to live in? Would the personal computer revolution have happened if it started with the rental model for software?
Yes, it’s about choice. No one I know of is complaining about subscription-based software as an *option*. But when rental is forced on users without an fair exit path, then it’s about something else entirely. There are many possible win-win scenarios that reward and encourage subscription loyalty while offering a fair exit. We’ve discussed them here at length.
You’re right it’s about power. But I must disagree that it’s about giving ALL the power to the user. It’s actually the exact opposite.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums -
[Dennis Radeke] “You’re one of the few guys that still bangs on this drum quite a bit.”
Hi Dennis. I’m not sure that’s the case. For every person who is “banging drums” (I’m a confessed drum banger) there are many more that are simply voting with their purchases. As an example: a couple of quotes from the recent CNET (albeit unscientific) survey (posted Dec 9):
“In the unscientific survey, to which 284 people responded, 95 percent of Creative Suite customers said they don’t plan to move to the Creative Cloud, indicating that a sizeable population is still eager to take Adobe to task for its shifting business.”…..
Their major objections were as follows: 72 percent said it was too expensive; 56 percent said the current Creative Suite products were good enough; and 28 percent said they plan to switch to products from Adobe competitors.…..Adobe’s financial fortunes hinge on converting CS customers to CC subscriptions; with no more CS upgrades, they’re no longer paying. “Creative Cloud is around 3 million [customers], or 23 percent of Adobe’s 12.8 million active base,” said RBC Capital Markets analyst Ross MacMillan.
I and many more like me are no longer paying Adobe any money whatsoever. As a result, it seems like its more than just activism, its marketplace.
[Dennis Radeke] “Subscription is a mutual agreement. You are not compelled to subscribe”
Certainly true technically, but it really is more complicated than that, particularly for those of us who are smaller entities working for (and with) much larger ones. With proprietary formats being leveraged by Adobe, we are often forced to contend with format and compatibility issues that are key to our livelihood. As a result, many loyal Adobe customers don’t consider Adobe’s shift to mandatory subscriptions to be all that mutual. The option to simply stop using Adobe software if we don’t like it is often simply untenable. That’s why you have an enormous base of users willing to simply sit on CS6, refusing to migrate to subscriptions, until competitors (wishful thinking perhaps) establish alternatives.
This is simply much more complicated than banging drums.
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