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Bitwig - Spectral Suite

With this "bad move" they are destroying the trust of their user base with suddenly changing whats "inside" the Studio version as a "core" feature and what arbitrary is outside ... `just switched´ to the "small friendly software company" Bitwig from Cubase, because being interested in its CLAP support, but now ...
 
Russell Anderson said:
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"
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Honestly The Grid was one of the selling points why I bought Bitwig a couple of years ago.

But after some time using Bitwig, I totally understood why users want development to focus on core functionalities. In fact, that was the reason I ended up selling my Bitwig license and moving to Cubase.

Actually, when the idea of Bitwig was first announced (I think around 2011?), a modular environment where people could create devices a la Reaktor right in the DAW was actually the big innovation. Here are some screenshots someone posted on KVR about that:

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Years passed, and then v1 was finally released without it. It wasn't until v3 in 2019 that they finally released The Grid.

Don't get me wrong, the grid is cool, but it's not even close to what was promised almost a decade earlier. Even today, 3 years after its release, you can't create submodules/containers and it's one of the most voted feature requests on Bitwish.

Bitwig has a long history of a bad relationship with its users.
 
Marcus Millfield said:
The backlash on this is really big. Hope they learn something from it.
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It saddens me to say this but... I doubt it.

Bitwig clearly has no clue how to communicate with users. When all the backslah started they should have made some kind of public announcement.

The actions they've taken so far was to publish that stupid support article and change the text on the buy page:

1665067480512.png

And honestly I wonder whether this will have legal consequences. Even with the "all Bitwig Studio updates" text, one could totally argue these new devices are part of Bitwig itself.
 
Pier said:
It saddens me to say this but... I doubt it.

Bitwig clearly has no clue how to communicate with users. When all the backslah started they should have made some kind of public announcement.

The actions they've taken so far was to publish that stupid support article and change the text on the buy page:

1665067480512.png

And honestly I wonder whether this will have legal consequences. Even with the "all Bitwig Studio updates" text, one could totally argue these new devices are part of Bitwig itself.
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I'm afraid you're right. We'll see what happens.

I'm on the fence on upgrading or not. This hasn't devalued the Bitwig software in any way for me, but does make me hesitant not knowing what will be in future updates and what will end up in an add-on. This situation just sucks.
 
I suspect one problem they've run into is that many of the customers have got wise to playing the update plan game, which is to simply only ever buy it on sale from a reseller and keep the code until you really need it for an update. So, you can with a little discipline get several months "free" and make sure you never wind up paying the full retail for the plan.

I wouldn't be surprised if their entire thought process for pricing the spectral suite was built around that observation: if you have an active, discounted plan, to get the suite now you pay €79, which oddly enough is more or less the difference between the normal discounted price and the current "Studio" update. However the difference between Studio and the Normal retail is just 20 or so.

The problem they've run into is that this can easily be seen as penalising people with active plans, some of whom may have cashed in a plan to get the free u-he plugin just weeks ago. You either commit to a full plan on the basis that this is cheaper long-term or buy the suite separately. If they are surprised by the backlash from that, it's not encouraging for the long term.
 
Marcus Millfield said:
This hasn't devalued the Bitwig software in any way for me
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Yeah, of course you can keep using the software as-is if you're happy with it and it works with your OS.

But deciding to renew a yearly plan of updates implies you're expecting something in return. There's a component of faith in the company that they will fulfill a promise. The issue here is that Bitwig has broken the trust of many users by deciding to change the terms without notifying customers in advance.

gamma-ut said:
I suspect one problem they've run into is that many of the customers have got wise to playing the update plan game, which is to simply only ever buy it on sale from a reseller and keep the code until you really need it for an update. So, you can with a little discipline get several months "free" and make sure you never wind up paying the full retail for the plan.
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My memory could be failing me but... wasn't there some measure implemented recently about this?

Like the codes bought at JRR had to be activated within a couple of days?

Edit:

I must've dreamed this or something.
 
Pier said:
The actions they've taken so far was to publish that stupid support article and change the text on the buy page:

1665067480512.png
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Wow, nice catch. And super frustrating. We all bought the upgrade plan under the old verbiage.

I'm just a hobbyist, it's really no skin off my back to sell my BitWig license on KnobCloud and buy another DAW. Any of them could work for my purposes. I'll just find a company with a history of treating its user base well. FL Studio looks appealing from that perspective.
 
Pier said:
1665067480512.png
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BRUH
BREEHHHHHHHH

That's SO BLATANT, I am AMAZED

Is it weird that I can still see this as a blunder of pure PR incompetence? Like they actually might be trying to better serve the demographic that was mad about the release of the grid under the update plan

maybe I'm crazy
 
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Mindbullets said:
Wow, nice catch. And super frustrating. We all bought the upgrade plan under the old verbiage.
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It's not mine, I got that image from Reddit :)

Mindbullets said:
I'm just a hobbyist, it's really no skin off my back to sell my BitWig license on KnobCloud and buy another DAW. Any of them could work for my purposes. I'll just find a company with a history of treating its user base well. FL Studio looks appealing from that perspective.
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That's exactly what I did 6 months ago. Sold my license on KnobCloud and bought Cubase 12.
 
fritzmartinbass said:
Please don't let this thread die. I feel so cheated. This is false advertising. I love Bitwig, but I can't stand behind this.
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If you're registered at KVR there's a 50+ page thread on this. KVR is Bitwig's "company forum". Believe me, this isn't going to blow over. Bitwig disregarded the update plans of thousands of their customers and changed the nature of their update plan mid stream, it really is one of the most tone deaf things I've seen a company do.

Honestly I've been debating just going back to Live for my sound design Clip based DAW needs, (MIDI comping and the fact that there are hundreds of great M4L devices readily available etc.) and this really just cements it. Ableton have never pulled anything even remotely like this. In the long run Live is cheaper even before this malarky, that's another part of it.
 
Emulating the Waves model probably isn't the secret to a quiet life in audio-software development.

"You get everything in Diamond's update plan, no wait, no you don't. That's Mercury now. No wait, no you don't..."
 
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