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Bitwig - Spectral Suite

Thinking a bit more about this I'm starting to get a very different picture.

At first I was thinking that they really fucked up their release strategy and communication. They should have communicated in advance they were planning to release paid Bitwig add-ons, right? People could have decided in advance if they wanted to buy/renew under those terms or not.

But then, I remembered there was the U-He promo recently. Of course Bitwig aren't idiots. They knew their user base wouldn't like this. Probably a big percentage of people wouldn't have bought/renewed even with the U-He thing. So instead, they consciously decided to release the paid add-ons after the promo.

I don't know. I typically attribute stuff like this to ignorance instead malice, but now I'm not so sure. The timing is too perfect.

I do think Bitwig probably didn't imagine the backlash would be so strong.
Exactly! They may have irreparably damaged their brand loyalty in one fell swoop unless they can come up with some brilliant damage control ASAP. In retrospect the U-He promo seems like a last-ditch money grab ala iZotope. Perhaps a sell-out to Francisco Partners is next.
 
I would understand this addon thing if they had released them in CLAP format so everyone can buy them and use them in their DAW if it supports CLAP. Now they are clearly aimed at Bitwiggers and the company is starting to tell what they should use their DAW for. This clearly is not what they deem essential and makes me worried what oyher things they will not deem essential in the future. Will the features I NEED be deemed not essential?

I too have supported Bitwig as they are the new guy and I feel more options on the market make the market healthier, but this is not a healthy way to reward your supporters.
 
You're right. This has everything to do with the notion of supporting a small developer and their innovative (sort off, whole other discussion) product. This creates a certain bond: you pay a pretty hefty upgrade fee every year, but you do it because you know it'll help the developer evolve the product you invested a lot of time and effort in to get to know, use and help support. You're part of a community who stand by that dev who from the beginning was clear that the upgrade plans are there to support any future development and release. And then for them to break that trust, that bond. That's not something you can easily come back from. People feel betrayed.
This perfectly sums it up. I bought Bitwig as a possible replacement for Live since Ableton were dragging their feet with MPE, and Ableton can really drag their feet sometimes. I even bought an update plan that ran out a while ago. We end users have accepted a slightly higher price for keeping updated in Bitwig to help develop it into something new, and for them to take that money and develop a paid plug in suite is flat out betrayal.

When they came out, I didn't pay them much attention, they had a controller script in place, with no native support, you were supposed to know how to code your own controller script. So they crowd sourced their control surface support. I smelled something a little fishy there and didn't give them the time of day.

I think I'm done now. Besides DP and Live both have MPE support, that's the main reason I was interested in Bitwig. It's IMO not even up for debate which is more powerful in terms of feature set, Live with Max4Live kills the Grid etc.
 
Another thing that bothers me here is that to me this whole scheme smells preplanned. The sale with u-he right before this and the way Polarity defended the move and mentioned/speculated that maybe there would be 3rd party creators. For me this feels a little too close to comfort knowing Polarity works with the Bitwig development team. Was there shared knowledge before hand of this move and how many others knew before hand...
 
I can see the problem for Bitwig. The pushback on The Grid being part of the update plan was seen by many as "not part of the core functionalities they most wanted bitwig to have as part of the update plan", ...so in that sense, this is the response. Why not just communicate about it though? Maybe a few surveys now and again would be good, alongside just a general dialogue (one that is ongoing) about the vision for core updates and business models, at least once they're sufficiently through the pipeline enough to speak about in public.

Not having known how the grid was received it was easier to be angry, now I'm just disappointed. The sense of underhandedness and Waves-y/Avid-y flavor surrounding how this was carried out still sours the air a bit.

I've only speculative potential buyer interested in the sound design bits, so as a solidly reaper/cubase/FL Studio user, I will harbor no discontent about how the bitwig community feels or reacts. It makes sense to be mad now, it will probably fade over the month, but I hope the developers/the press folks say something. Just talking about the difficulties of the past years of development, pursuing development directions, the impossible task of pleasing everyone, The Grid, these new addons and the futute of add ons and core development... that would be a healing step
 
Another thing that bothers me here is that to me this whole scheme smells preplanned. The sale with u-he right before this and the way Polarity defended the move and mentioned/speculated that maybe there would be 3rd party creators. For me this feels a little too close to comfort knowing Polarity works with the Bitwig development team. Was there shared knowledge before hand of this move and how many others knew before hand...
I think influencers in general are just awful. Surrogate "friends", ugh. I watched maybe one Polarity video and realized I just can't. The fact these people have patreons, I just don't get it?

I mean I get the idea of helpful videos showing off features of a DAW, but there's so dammed much fluff in these influencer videos, chat at the beginning, then there's more of an appeal to their own cleverness rather than really breaking down a feature set. The video I watched was on the Grid, and he was introducing it by showing off his hundreds of modules self generating music machine. A literal "look how kewl I am, look how powerful this is" approach, almost no break down of how to do what he did, just an ego flex and advertisement for the Grid, and 15 minutes I won't get back.
 
Another thing that bothers me here is that to me this whole scheme smells preplanned. The sale with u-he right before this and the way Polarity defended the move and mentioned/speculated that maybe there would be 3rd party creators. For me this feels a little too close to comfort knowing Polarity works with the Bitwig development team. Was there shared knowledge before hand of this move and how many others knew before hand...
It's a slippery slope. YouTuber's generally cross the line into shill territory once they become recognized as a so-called "influencer" and accept sponsorship whether in $ or NFR software.
 
It's a slippery slope. YouTuber's generally cross the line into shill territory once they become recognized as a so-called "influencer" and accept sponsorship whether in $ or NFR software.
A good example is Kenny Gioia slipping into influencer territory, coupled with sponsorship by Cockos. I have no problem with one or so videos where you show your face, but the main focus of any DAW video I want to see should not be you. I'm sorry if that's rude but I don't really care that much about people I don't know in real life, I don't want a single one way conversation with any uncanny valley at all in it. I don't mind knowing it's a human, but why on earth do we need to act like we're friends? because it's not real, it's not why I'm watching the video, I want to know about Reapers bouncing options, and I'm not lonely enough to get comfort from your small talk.
We somehow went from the concept of a little bit of mystery being a good thing to influencers and reality TV. We went from learning to virtual "friends" and I'm obviously alone in my disgust, because it's wildly popular, and it makes me sad to think about how lonely people must be that this is normal now.
 
This is part of what I am thinking. The CLAP format, the u-he sales... How much do they share?
Not much, looking from the outside in. U-he/Urs' communication regarding Zebra 3 for instance has been very transparent, with reassurance of continued communication about developments as release nears. Bitwig, I'm too new to them to say, but they really screwed the pooch even if it was just an unfortunate overcorrection from offering people updates that they didn't want. The explicit lack of communication about it adjacent to the recent sales and marketing does not do them any favors at all.
 
Not much, looking from the outside in. U-he/Urs' communication regarding Zebra 3 for instance has been very transparent, with reassurance of continued communication about developments as release nears. Bitwig, I'm too new to them to say, but they really screwed the pooch even if it was just an unfortunate overcorrection from offering people updates that they didn't want. The explicit lack of communication about it adjacent to the recent sales and marketing does not do them any favors at all.
I've been using Bitwig here and there for a couple years, and honestly lack of communication is pretty normal for developers and DAWs, but they did talk about a online collaboration feature when they started years ago, and they have not mentioned it since. They talked at first about the entire DAW being modular, and that's not happening either. Basically they aren't that great at being transparent.

Urs on the other hand is an open book. One of the good guys, I met him in real life around the time of Zebra 1, he's the real deal, and I always took his leaning away from Ableton towards Bitwig as a positive sign, but like people are mentioning, it's obvious that's not the case here. No transparency, no loyalty to customers.

My upgrade from Zebra 1 was $25, my upgrade to Zebra 3 will be free since I bought Dark Zebra. You can't beat that in the audio software world and Bitwig are not learning from U-He at all apparently. People are loyal to that kind of honorable behavior.
 
Today Bitwig released their first add-on "Spectral Suite".


Though it looks really interesting, a lot of customers feel betrayed by Bitwig, as it is not included in the upgrade plan.

What are your thoughts on this?
I would have been interested as a plugins suite usable everywhere.

Just like I never bought a Reason - only extension, there's no way I'll purchase a Bitwig expansion.
 
I'm composing a forthcoming, polite and generous email (and increasingly concise... writing something short and dense always takes me longer than writing a 9 page essay), I am hoping for clarification on "add-ons" and mostly an answer to this question:

If the Grid were released today, it would be as an add-on, yes?

I do not see how the Grid constitutes a core functionality while the Spectral Suite does not. So long as this is a clear change in policy that constitutes an attempt to keep actual core features and workflow improvements contained within the plan, and all "unique sound design generator/effects plugin" features as add-ons, I can get down with it based solely on the fact that at least it is consistent with itself.

That being said,
I agree that this would have been a perfect push for the CLAP format and would have given a reason for these to be called addons.
I agree 100% with this, too.
 
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