Software subscriptions vs Lifetime Software Purchase

[HDFan]

There have been many posts complaining about the software subscription model now used by vendors such as as Adobe and Microsoft. Roon is a subscription music player which has offered both lifetime purchases and monthly subscriptions. They refer to their lifetime subscriptions as "junk food". Great to start a business, but not something that will sustain it. They just increased their lifetime option price by $200, and posted an explanation for the price increase.

It makes for very interesting reading, detailing the difficulties that a small company has in managing income to sustain and grow a business. It is the most transparent and honest justification for a software price increase that I have ever seen.

The bottom line is that a small company cannot survive on lifetime subscriptions.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/lifetime-price-increase-499-699/84339

 

[Tommo66]

There have been many posts complaining about the software subscription model now used by vendors such as as Adobe and Microsoft. Roon is a subscription music player which has offered both lifetime purchases and monthly subscriptions. They refer to their lifetime subscriptions as "junk food". Great to start a business, but not something that will sustain it. They just increased their lifetime option price by $200, and posted an explanation for the price increase.

It makes for very interesting reading, detailing the difficulties that a small company has in managing income to sustain and grow a business. It is the most transparent and honest justification for a software price increase that I have ever seen.

The bottom line is that a small company cannot survive on lifetime subscriptions.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/lifetime-price-increase-499-699/84339

Some companies would argue the opposite, steady monthly income is a more sustainable model. Personally I object to lifetime access, as you have no recourse if the company goes bust.

 

[||\||]

I am sitting here, struggling to understand just why anyone would pay $500 for music organization.

 

[HDFan]

Some companies would argue the opposite, steady monthly income is a more sustainable model

That's what they are saying. They are discouraging lifetime subscriptions, and likely will discontinue them in the future. That's why they call them "junk food". They are not sustainable.

I am sitting here, struggling to understand just why anyone would pay $500 for music organization.

It isn't worth it for most people. But for those who really love music and want to:

1. Integrate their playlists from iTunes, Tidal, Quobuz, etc.
2. Play music encoded with virtually all codecs, including those that Apple does not support, such as DSD
2. use on non-Apple devices. Easily switch between HomePods (some restrictions), iMac, DAC, Home Theater system, etc. Bowers & Wilkins, JBL, Krell, Mark Levinson, Meridian, NAD, Teac, etc. all have Roon enabled devices.
3. Run the Roon server on non-Apple devices, such as a NAS, network players, so you don't have to keep your computer running.
4. Easily use with desktop and mobile apps
4. "the depth of Roon’s all-encompassing library-based reach and top-shelf sound quality preferences are what makes it the most superior interface currently on the market."

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/hands-roon-music-playback-management-system

And those are just a few of its features ...

 

[theluggage]

Great to start a business, but not something that will sustain it.

Well, it is hardly surprising that customers and developers disagree on how much they want to pay for software and, conversely, how much money they think they deserve to make.

I think some developers have under-priced their 'perpetual' license (and some users expect something for nothing) - e.g. I bought Pixelmator years ago (...the regular price was only about $30 and I got it for a no-brainer discount price in a promotion) and I'm still getting updates: that's unsustainable - then there was a wailing and gnashing of teeth when they launched "Pixelmator Pro" as a separate, paid product (presumably because the developers had unreasonable expectations about hot meals and sleeping indoors). On the other hand, it is far, far too easy to take a $99.95 app and say "Only $10/month" and rely on punters not being able to multiply by 36 (3 years being a reasonable half-life for most tech).

One factor is whether the software is useful without regular updates. There are some applications that will continue to do the job that they were bought for until they hit some outside-context problem like Apple dropping Rosetta or 32-bit support (...and even those are usually flagged years in advance) - at which point its reasonable to ask for an upgrade fee. It is ridiculous to put an artificial time limit in software and force users to pay an ongoing subscription if they're not using an ongoing service. Its the developers job to make the software better so users will pay for updates.

Other applications, out of necessity, have to work "close to the metal" and hence regularly get broken by OS updates, or have to stay in sync with other constantly shifting services. I'd guess that Roon is in this category, looking at the laundry list of devices and (worse) services that it has to keep up with to be useful (and bearing in mind that the target customer is likely to be a gadget freak who want's to use all the new stuff, not someone still rocking their 1980 HiFi). I'm assuming that $699 for Roon includes "lifetime updates" and, likewise, that their Catalina-compatible post-iTunes update landed in a timely fashion.

In that case, a fairer pricing model would be $x/year subscription or $y for a perpetual license + 1 year's free updates, where the break-even comes if you go 2 years or so without updates. Or "After x year's subscription you have a perpetual license but no further updates".

There's also a valid concern when "subscription" means "Dies instantly - taking all your work with it - if either (a) you stop paying the subscription or (b) the developer goes bust and shuts down their servers". So, if a developer wants to make a subscription-only service they really need to have a solution to that (e.g. software remains active but with a few well-chosen restrictions, and use open file formats).

It also depends whether the software is aimed at private users or businesses. In a business context, there can be tax/admin/planning advantages to paying by subscription (similar to the argument for leasing hardware). For a home user - not so much. I think this is where Adobe get away with it - even before they moved to a subscription model, they'd priced themselves out of the home/hobbyist market.

I think, for products like Roon it comes down to "buyer beware" - just remember to work out the TCO over a reasonable time (I commend the monthly charge x36 test) when deciding what its worth to you. The more egregious examples are the likes of MS and Adobe, where many people have no choice but to go with the "industry standard".

 

[nicho]

There's also a valid concern when "subscription" means "Dies instantly - taking all your work with it - if either (a) you stop paying the subscription or (b) the developer goes bust and shuts down their servers". So, if a developer wants to make a subscription-only service they really need to have a solution to that (e.g. software remains active but with a few well-chosen restrictions, and use open file formats).

B isn't a concern unique to monthly subscriptions. It could just as easily happen in the case of a lifetime subscription, at any point in time.

Those "close to the metal" applications like parallels can also be broken by a new operating system, and a lack of support would mean you have a choice between not upgrading, or upgrading and not having the application you paid a lot of money for. At least in the case of a subscription, you could cease paying and look for an alternative.

 

[theluggage]

B isn't a concern unique to monthly subscriptions. It could just as easily happen in the case of a lifetime subscription, at any point in time.

Only if the application is necessarily dependent on a remote server to work - in which case a subscription makes sense, since the vendor is providing an ongoing service. There's no sense in making a spreadsheet, wordprocessor or image editor tied to a remote server. If you fire up your old Mac Classic and it is still in working condition, that copy of Aldus Pagemaker or Digital Darkroom will still work fine today (which may be a lifesaver if you need to recover an ancient file).

Subscription-only software, by its very nature, needs to "phone home" regularly to check that you are paid up, and if the maker goes bust it could be dead within a month.

Those "close to the metal" applications like parallels can also be broken by a new operating system, and a lack of support would mean you have a choice between not upgrading, or upgrading and not having the application you paid a lot of money for.

I've already said that those are the sort of apps where a subscription might make more sense... but that's the cost of always wanting to have the latest OS. In reality, when a new OS comes out, you have at least a year or two before not having the new shiny becomes a real deal-breaker (the irresponsible way that Apple nags users to upgrade the millisecond a new OS launches is a whole other discussion). As for Parallels, I find that I only need a new version every 2-3 years which makes their discounted upgrades better value than the subscription.

At least in the case of a subscription, you could cease paying and look for an alternative.

No you can't, at least not in that order, because as soon as you stop paying, the application stops working (if it doesn't then we're not talking about the same kind of subscription). With a "perpetual" license you have a long breathing space to plan your migration - along with keeping a backup boot disc or even old hardware around if you need to access old work (I've got an old mac with Snow Leopard - i.e. Rosetta - and an ancient copy of Adobe CS, oh, and BootCamp'd Windows XP, gathering dust in the corner - probably time to dump it now but it has been useful several times in the past to get at old files).