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Native Instruments and iZotope Merger


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Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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Not a fan of that. Especially since NI has an uncertain future as per recent announcements. I don"t want them to end up doing subscription only for ALL of those items now!

Yamaha: Motif XF8, MODX7, YS200, CVP-305, CLP-130, YPG-235, PSR-295, PSS-470 | Roland: Fantom 7, JV-1000

Kurzweil: PC3-76, PC4 (88) | Hammond: SK Pro 73 | Korg: Triton LE 76, N1R, X5DR | Emu: Proteus/1 | Casio: CT-370 | Novation: Launchkey 37 MK3 | Technics: WSA1R

Former: Emu Proformance Plus & Mo'Phatt, Korg Krome 61, Roland Fantom XR & JV-1010, Yamaha MX61, Behringer CAT

Assorted electric & acoustic guitars and electric basses | Roland TD-17 KVX | Alesis SamplePad Pro | Assorted organs, accordions, other instruments

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haha, slightly OT but in a similar area....I just tried looking at a really small utility, I mean tiny, for enabling apple magic keyboard functions in W10 - even they want $9.99 per year, instead of the old days where you'd just pay like $25 or so and then just have it. ALL developers are starting to realise the cash-cow that is subscription based services.

 

One day, and sooner than we'd like it will be the ONLY way to purchase software licenses!

There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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Not sure what to think. I have Komplete and own a few of the lower-end Izotope plugins--including two very nice reverbs that are under the exponential audio brand, that iirc was bought by Izotope--and there's not a lot of overlap in the lineup between these two I don't think. NI's effects tend to be pretty old now, and Izotope's synths (Iris 2 at least) are basically abandonware.

 

I find the izotope mastering/mixing plugins interesting--I get good results with them but I don't really know what they are doing, so I tend to stick with more traditional tools (at least until I feel I'm proficient with the old-school do-it-manually methods.)

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For sure, I had already made the decision last week after iZotope's "Pro" subscription-only updates and product additions, to see if I can extract myself from any dependency on that company's products and sell all of my iZotope licenses. Then there was the Steinberg announcement of switching off of eLicenser (my iZotope licenses are on iLok and I don't think I can switch them to computer-hosted as a result, making them harder to sell).

 

As I have said countless times on various forums and in direct communication with vendors, most of us can't afford more than a couple of subscriptions per year, and yet many of us are dealing with essential products in our workflow that come from a large number of vendors (or at least more than the number we can afford to subscribe to).

Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1,

Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

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If we get to the point of subscription-only across the board, I will abandon computers and go back to the old ways -- I was heading that way anyway pre-pandemic, but COVID threw a monkey wrench into those plans.

Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1,

Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

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If the market for subscription continues to develop, I wonder if subscription prices will begin to fragment based on usage, so as to differentiate between frequent users and occasional users?

 

You could also have fragmentation based on feature-set to support different workflows. The Spitfire Audio BBC Symphony Orchestra Core doesn't have as many instruments, articulations and mic positions as the Pro version. A composer with the Core version could send a DAW file to a producer with the Pro version who renders the mix to audio.

 

Stair-step pricing techniques like these would move the purchase point closer to the consumption point, resulting in a more efficient (and hopefully affordable) market.

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The worst subscription of all is Adobe, as they hold your data captive if you lapse the subscription during non-use of their products.

Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1,

Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

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I also have a bitter work-related experience with subscriptions, as my resume has suffered as a result of them. IT departments don't like paying expensive licensing fees for a product that may be critical to your job but not on a daily basis, so ultimately my Matlab and PhotoShop and Illustrator licenses would get taken away from me, causing my skill sets to lapse. Fortunately my AutoCAD license was never taken away to save money.

 

All of those mentioned products, except for maybe Adobe Creative Suite, went up in price by a factor of three or more after removing the perpetual license options, and as it's annual vs. per-release, the real-world cost factor is probably ten times what it was.

 

Sales and marketing departments like subscriptions -- especially when a company is more established -- because it makes it easier for them to predict company profits and costs, which boards of directors and major stockholders like. I can tell you this is a FACT and not an OPINION, because I was on the inside when this trend began (I worked for Autodesk for seven years), and was a dissenting voice in those meetings.

Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1,

Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

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As with so many things these days, I'm taking a wait and see approach.

 

I also like this famous Zen parable:

 

Once upon a time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. 'Such bad luck,' they said sympathetically.

 

'Maybe,' the farmer replied.

 

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. 'How wonderful,' the neighbors exclaimed.

 

'Maybe,' replied the old man.

 

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

 

'Maybe,' answered the farmer.

 

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son"s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

 

'Maybe,' said the farmer.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

My Blue Someday appears on Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon

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I've been planning to take my recording computer offline in the foreseeable future. Easy enough on a Mac to make a bootable duplicate disc. Lots of lightly used computers out there at decent prices.

 

I think we have some time still. I also think that the subscription model will never be the only option. Adobe established a virtual monopoly in the software category they inhabit.

I stopped using their Creative Suite. I may buy Photoshop Elements 2021. I may add Corel Draw if I think I'll use it enough but I don't work in that realm of endeavor anymore so I probably won't.

 

There will always be plugin developers who sell their products outright and or offer free plugins. Unless the big companies buy up ALL the upstarts we will have options.

 

A friend of mine is running a studio using an older Windows machine and Presonus Studio One version 1. He's perfectly happy. Audacity is free, Waveform Free is free, I'm sure there are other DAWS.

I've thought about getting a Lexicon rack mount multi effects unit of some sort.

 

I believe we will have options for some time to come. If we don't want to support subscription services we won't have to do so.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I am a real fan of iZotope products and I live and die by RX. I write educational articles for the iZotope website on various topics, and have always been proud of my association with the company and thankful that they give me this platform from which to teach a worthwhile audience. They're good people and they make good products and frankly I like them a lot and have never met or worked with anyone there that hasn't been wonderful.

 

I am decidedly not a fan of Native Instruments products and never have been. I don't like their licensing system, their customer support, or how they build up ecosystems only to abandon them when they're not panning out and ditching their customers (KORE, anyone?), and my personal dealings with the higher-ups there (previous administration, admittedly) ranged from stiffly polite to downright unpleasant. I do not own any NI products and never will. I don't even allow bundled trial versions on my computers.

 

If I am ever asked by my iZotope colleagues to start writing NI material, it will not be a comfortable moment for me.

 

As for subscriptions: between streaming services and pay-to-play software, we are now suffering the death of 1000 tiny cuts. Five dollars a month here, ten there, twenty over there, and your paycheck vanishes before you even get a chance to spend it. I can see why companies love this model... cash flow is more stable and it's much harder to crack something that only works if it can talk to the mothership on a regular basis. They claim they can offer better customer support and more integrated blah blah blah, but in my experience all they're really doing is taking advantage of their monopoly to force you to pay. For me to be willing to pay for a subscription, a package had better be really offering me a lot of power for what I pay. Alas, Google GSuite falls into that category.

 

Personally, I like owning licenses and not having to beg to keep using the software that I need to do my job. When Microsoft shifted Office completely to subscription, I switched to LibreOffice and haven't regretted it for a moment. The only Adobe product I use is InCopy because my major client is married to InDesign, and I make them pay for my subscription; for everything else, I bought into Affinity and am completely happy with it. On the music side, none of the software houses I work with, whether macOS or iOS, has shown any hint of moving to a subscription model, and there are enough tiny companies making great products that don't like or want to support a subscription model that I don't think I'll ever be totally out of software I like to make music with.

 

At least, I hope not. I do enjoy my hardware, but an iPad is a lot easier to put in a backpack.

Dr. Mike Metlay (PhD in nuclear physics, golly gosh) :D

Musician, Author, Editor, Educator, Impresario, Online Radio Guy, Cut-Rate Polymath, and Kindly Pedant

Editor-in-Chief, Bjooks ~ Author of SYNTH GEMS 1

 

clicky!:  more about me ~ my radio station (and my fam) ~ my local tribe ~ my day job ~ my bookmy music

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