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Comment by cruano | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to see them adopt this whole Rent-to-own model [1]. It's not quite a subscription since you end up with a full license to a particular version, but it is kinda like a subscription in the sense that a new version will be out by the time you are done with your payments. And it seems like you can "extend" it to get the new version, so it's a subscription with extra steps.

IMO that's a better model for consumers since you do get something at the end of it. And if you are a professional, you were probably already getting the latest and greatest every time anyways.

[1] https://www.ableton.com/en/rent-to-own-ableton-live/

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I did a double take when I first saw that a few months ago. You can pause and pick it up again and keep your progress towards full ownership. So nice, extremely consumer friendly.

I used Ableton 9 for many years before upgrading to 12.

The model just works because you don’t need to upgrade constantly, it’s nothing like a subscription.

I only upgraded to get the Apple Silicon version for my newer Mac. I'm sure I'll be on 12 for quite a while.

I really think its a decent model, one really doesn't usually need the latest and greatest version of Ableton to do most things and the rent to own option give broke artist a way to get into the software while the developers still get paid.

Their competitor Bitwig has a rather ethical payment model if that's what you're looking for: you pay for a perpetual license to the current version and the next year of updates.

Which is also the case for Ableton and other DAW like Renoise. You pay for the perpetual license to the ongoing major version and any upgrade until the next one. In the case of Ableton, they have around 4 years between major version? Renoise is slightly different, you pay for a full cycle of versioning up to the same minor version one major version up, eg from 2.4 to 3.4.

In general, for most DAW the whole subscription practices did not fully takeover like for other creative software like photography or video.

How much different is ableton live vs ableton live lite? I get the latter free with my audio interface, not sure if terms are changing with 13 but they let me get version 12 with my 10 year old focusrite.

Extremely different. Lite has track limit (8) and is missing EQ8 - the stock multiband equaliser, among other things.

Ableton makes this extremely clear in:

https://www.ableton.com/en/live/compare-editions/

go through it and you'll see that Standard is the least you'd want, and Suite is a great deal.

I think the biggest thing is a track limit (8?), but I'm sure there's other things. Max4live, etc.

three main version are Lite, Standard and Suite. Lite is pretty decent and almost has everything that Standard has except limits you to 8 tracks, Suite is where the real magic is though with Max4Live and such.

It's a transitional stage from perpetual licenses to subscriptions.

Maybe or maybe not. I would say in general most of us here are not fans of subscription services. Those of use who have sold software and tried subscription services are very aware of the hate received by many of those paying for the subscriptions. I assure you that Ableton management is extremely aware of the general unfavorable opinion users have of subscription software. This rent-to-own model is an attempt to provide a quality product to as many users as possible and still manage to operate a going concern. Almost no one gets into the creative software space with the intention of gouging their users. There are much better outlets for people with those intentions.

Now, if Ableton ends up being acquired by a private equity firm, you may very well see a shift in their pricing model where extracting revenue from customers at the expense of product quality becomes primary.

If you have worked with any of the people currently, or formerly, running Ableton, you will know that they worked hard to regain their financial independence from their outside investors and I doubt becoming a predatory software subscription service is on their roadmap.

It also wouldn’t work because I can just keep using the current version indefinitely.

There is very little reason to upgrade to the latest versions IMO

Substance was also really cool company with the same model and Adobe bought them out.

> if Ableton ends up being acquired by a private equity firm

That 'if' really is doing a lot of heavy lifting and I hope it really is nothing more than an 'if'. PE feels like the Sith in Star Wars, a dark force that works in the dark and wants to take everything that is good and extract money from it until it inevitably dies.

Source?

> so it's a subscription with extra steps.

To me it sounds like a subscription with all of the benefits, with none of the downsides, so basically not at all like a subscription, more like a loan you can take almost, as subscriptions are basically used by companies who want to extract as much "value" from users as they humanly and legally can.

> And if you are a professional, you were probably already getting the latest and greatest every time anyways.

I guess it depends on how much money you make, and where you live. Here in Spain, professional users of Ableton tend to be a version or two behind the latest (even a couple of months ago I saw someone using Ableton 10 still, its many years old), as it isn't a free upgrade, and musicians aren't exactly making a ton of cash.

Then most people using Ableton don't use all of Ableton, but parts of it. If you're not using it for sequencing, and the new version mostly have sequencing updates (just an example), then skipping upgrading makes a ton of sense.

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