
If you are a recording engineer, producer, or recording studio owner you probably were paying attention to the announcement that WAVES plugins made last week. Waves is been established as one of the largest producer of plugins for audio recordings. Most studios, whether they are professional or home studios, have Waves plugins as part of their collection.
Waves would often run sales where their plugins would cost between $29 and $59 each, which is a very good deal for the quality of these plugins. However, they would get you with their update plans. In order to get the updated version of the plugin, after a year or so you have to pony up a lot more money to purchase the update plan. One could always choose to keep the old version, but at some point it may not be supported anymore as operating systems are updated. It was annoying, but most people could live with it and once you bought the plugin it was yours with what is called a “perpetual license.”
WHAT HAPPENED?
Out of the blue last week, Waves made a huge, sweeping change to their business model. Instead of purchasing perpetual licenses and then paying for the updates at a later time, they moved to a subscription only model where you pay a monthly fee for the use of their audio plugins. There were a couple of pricing tiers in this model where if you paid more per month you received access to more plugins. Perpetual licenses were no longer being provided and the only way to get Waves plugins was to purchase a monthly subscription.
This caused an uproar among recording engineers and producers, particularly among smaller studios and home studios who are on limited budgets. Reddit and Twitter were blowing up with negative responses to this change. While people were not happy about the subscription based model, most were unhappy about how the change came out of the blue with no build up and no warning. People were already a little frustrated with the way Waves charges for update plans. Most people feel updates should be included when an audio plugin is purchased.
Instantly message boards filled up with alternatives to Waves plugins. Spreadsheets were created and posted showing alternate plugins for Waves and where to purchase them. Competing plugins companies quickly jumped on this too and even changed marketing that day to promote the fact that they had perpetual licenses. It was a great day for those companies!
BACKTRACK
After a couple of days of continual negative publicity and comments about the change at Waves, the company released a statement saying they were going back to offering perpetual licenses along with their offering their new subscription based service. Just as quickly as they were gone, the perpetual licenses were back!
Here is a portion of the statement released by Meir Shashoua, CTO and co-founder of Waves,
Dear Waves community,
Over the past few days, many of you have expressed concerns about our decision to discontinue perpetual plugin licenses and our move to an exclusive plugin subscription model. I would like to start by apologizing for the frustration we have caused many of you, our loyal customers. We understand that our move was sudden and disruptive, and did not sufficiently take into consideration your needs, wishes, and preferences. We are genuinely sorry for the distress it has caused.
After respectfully listening to your concerns, I want to share with you that we are bringing back the perpetual plugin license model, side-by-side with the new subscriptions. You will again be able to get plugins as perpetual licenses, just as before.
FALLOUT
It's hard to say if there will be any lasting consequences for Waves after this. Waves has been seen as both an industry standard but also a nuisance in the way they do business. This certainly will not help. Message boards are still filled with negativity and asking for and posting alternatives to Waves plugins. In the short term, most current Waves users will continue using their plugins as usual. However, perhaps the next time they need to update, they go somewhere else to get their plugins.
If you want help recording your project, check out MAGIC ROOM MUSIC. We have a bunch of great plugins that we use to bring your project to life (yes, some of those are Waves plugins!). Contact us today about your next project.