Why is keeping the perpetual license up to date over twice as expensive as getting a monthly subscription?  $499 to renew vs $239/year for subscription.

The 239/yr ("Standard") subscription does not include shared bins/project support, whereas perpetual does -- so they're not entirely the same product. That said, the short answer is Avid prefers you subscribe, rather than keep your perpetual. So if you don't need shared bins/projects, it is cheaper to let your perpetual license lapse and get a Standard subscription as soon as you need an updated version of MC.

This is correct. There are more features in the standard pereptuals, and you're only able to currently unlock some of those specific features either in subscriptions of Media Composer Ultimate (roughly $50 per month) and Enterprise (roughly $100 per month).   

Plus, it's not that subscriptions are at a baseline price and perpetiuals are more expensive... but the opposite... that perpetuals are at the baseline price, and subscriptions are cheaper.

Meaning, subscriptions are easier for Avid to develop and maintain, as well as easier for the engineers to maintain as bug-free of an upgrade path as possible.  When you're talking about a room full of engineers working on Media Composer's development, everything about creating and maintaining the app for perpetuals costs more in actual costs as well as increased cognitive load. So, since standard subscriptions cost less for Avid to create and maintain than standard perpetuals, we're able to push that savings onto the costs for customers. 

@job ter burg - Good point.  Thanks.  Will do. My updates expire in a couple weeks.

I really hate the idea of leaving Avid after cutting on it for over 2 decades, but I keep having to turn to Premeire for various functions when I need them.  Maybe I'll let my updates lapse and spend the next year migrating to Premeire and start using Avid as the back up instead of the main editor.  I can always decide to come back as a monthly customer in a couple years if I decide I need whatever new functions Avid comes up with.

@chris bove - your first point makes sense, but the rest seems to be a rather disingenuous used car salesman response.  The price for consumers to keep their perpetual licenses has continued to rise while the subscription rate has stayed pretty much the same since it's introduction - matching price with Premeire.  The amount of coding the activate/deactive requires is quite minimal so wouldn't account for the additional price.  On the upside, it makes leaving Avid easier.

Hi Ssnygg,

Nearly everyone here on these forums are freelance editors or production company editors, and so nearly all of us have multiple NLE apps in our computer docks.  That's what you do to make clients happy and to roll with the tides of whatever work comes our way as editors.  I not only understand the need to learn Premiere and Avid and Resolve and FCP and even things like Edius and Vegas etc, but I expect it. 

Gone are the days of only using one NLE. Some workflows are better for some projects and some are not. Avid Media Composer will always be here, because it has truly dedicated workflows that the others don't. If Premiere works better for you on a project, use it. If Avid works better on another, then use it. 

It's this kind of a flexible nature in hopping between apps from one project to another that created the subscription mindset in the first place. It's made perpetuals and subscriptions a hot topic in recent years, because the real conversation is whether a certain editor's business model is leaning towards CapEx or OpEx purchases for software. 

As of a few years ago, the industry surpassed 50% towards subscriptions, and today it's far, far in favor of them. Everyone's realized that taking the monthly subscription costs and factoring them into invoices is the new norm. Since clients are also doing the same - with their own operating applications - they don't bat an eyelash at the thought of it. 

Hence why perpetuals are falling out of favor, and also why the various things that are in place to support them are growing more and more expensive. 

Now, you can call me names if you want to... but I don't work in sales, and nothing I've said on this thread is false. I'm simply trying to convey what I know and help manage expectations. 

Chris, you know I think highly of you. I'm just not buying the argument that the industry wants subscriptions. I personally don't know any user that does, at all -- especially not longtime loyal Avid customers. Facility managers, maybe. And vendors like Avid, sure. Not end users and one-man-shops or boutiques. If there are any on these forums, I hope they chime in and make me stand corrected. Until they do, my thoughts are this move to SaaS is a beancounter's dream, no one else's.

My experience is the same as Job's.

Chris Bové:

Meaning, subscriptions are easier for Avid to develop and maintain, as well as easier for the engineers to maintain as bug-free of an upgrade path as possible.

Chris Bové:

everything about creating and maintaining the app for perpetuals costs more in actual costs as well as increased cognitive load.

Chris,

I honestly would like to hear the technical and commercial explanations why the above statements are true. 

camoscato:

My experience is the same as Job's.

As is mine.

Also many, like me, have not renewed our perpetual licenses, and continue to use older versions.

My appreciation for subscriptions began when Ultimate came out. 

I've been freelancing on NLEs since the early 90's. Back then, it was commercial work, where the agencies owned te Avids, and we needed to get hired by them for the luxury of sitting at their machines. Later on, it was broadcast and doc work, where I would get access to whichever machine was available. Very quickly, those of us freelancers who hopped around a lot between machines learned to have a "go bag" with us at all times. It contained our user settings on a floppy disk (later a thumb drive), my own keyboard, mouse, Nostromo keypad or some other pad with extra buttons, or a Wacom or Kingston, perhaps a blank drive or two, and so on.

Somewhere in the early to mid 2000's, when prices had come down, it was finally possible for editors to own their own software. That came with either dongles, which I've always hated because they break (and I've seen it take up to 30 days for the replacements to come in), or manually typing in the codes. 

Hence, since I purchased all of the options, sitting down to start working always took 5-10 minutes worth of just typing in a whole series of activation codes. 

But as soon as Ultimate came out, all I needed to do was login and click Activate. I was launching Composer ten seconds after my butt hit the chair. 8-12 hours later, I deactivate and that's that.

As users, everyone's allowed their opinions. When it comes to the discussion of perpetuals versus subscriptions, there is no one right answer because there are too may cohorts of users out there. 

Chris Bové:

As users, everyone's allowed their opinions. When it comes to the discussion of perpetuals versus subscriptions, there is no one right answer because there are too may cohorts of users out there. 

Completely agree and thank you for sharing your/Avid's position. And exactly the reason why I want to hear your/Avid's argumentation/opinion why these statements

Chris Bové:

Meaning, subscriptions are easier for Avid to develop and maintain, as well as easier for the engineers to maintain as bug-free of an upgrade path as possible.

Chris Bové:

everything about creating and maintaining the app for perpetuals costs more in actual costs as well as increased cognitive load.

are true. 

Chris Bové:

as soon as Ultimate came out, all I needed to do was login and click Activate.

I appreciate you sharing that real-life experience, but your argument seems to advocate in favor of (properly working) software activation over dongles -- not subscription vs perpetual. There is no reason your activation experience on Ultimate could not be made to work with perpetual.

there is no one right answer because there are too may cohorts of users out there.

Yet Avid has decided to cater to some of those cohorts, abandoning the existing system that other cohorts know and love. Much like Adobe has done years ago -- and no one using Adobe products loved that decision at the time.

The reason for the change, simply put, is an economic one, benefitting Avid the company. I've heard the arguments, and that's what they boil down to. It's not for the customers or end users, it's for Avid. And it is is fine, I guess, since we want Avid to thrive and have the necessary resources to keep/make Avid products great.

But please then don't pretend 'the industry' is asking for something when it is in fact simply being done for the benefit of Avid's shareholders.

I'm not going to shill for Avid or rail against Avid. But frankly, read the business writing on the wall. Any company, even yourselves if your are independent contractors, should be pricing and business modeling based on what generates profit. No one here is in this for the selfless betterment of mankind. It's about the $$$$.

Adobe proved subscription models make software providers more money. Adobe switched to subscriptions a little over 10 years ago. At the time, everyone else in the industry said to their customers, "we're not going subscription because we know you don't want that." And, "just watch, everyone is going to abandon Adobe due to subscription pricing and Adobe will be forced back to perpetual licensing." While Adobe said, "hold my beer."

Over the ensuing years Adobe's customers didn't flee. It wasn't too long before Adobe's revenue started "going to the moon." The below are in billions. Adobe went from a ~2 billion dollar company selling perpetual licenses to a 12-billion dollar company selling subscriptions. In 10+ years they didn't double revenues, they didn't quadruple revenues, they mutliplied their revenue by almost 6x.

Adobe Revenue:

You see your competition's (Adobe) revnue grow 6x over ten+ years while your's has barely budged. Obviously the subsciption business model makes money - lot's and lots of money. So, follow it. Is it a model that's good for the customer? That is debatable. Is it a model that's going to go away because we are tired of the constant micro billing from every corner of our lives, absolutely not.

The difference being MC customers already paying anually. It's just not accounted for as a subscription in the books. And Adobe offer a much wider range of products for a much larger market, and they offer them in various packages. Avid doesn't even offer an MC-PT bundle...

Anyway, as long as we agree that this is for Avid's sake, not an "industry need".

@ck123   Yes, the subscription model makes more money than perpetual alone because it's easier for a first time user to say "eh.. $30, sure.  Why not, I'll try it out" as opposed to dropping $1,500 to start and then a couple hundred per year for upgrades.  But for those who already paid the upfront fee, it feels like a kick in the nads to then pay twice as much more than everyone else on to keep it up to date.  Just because something is good at attracting new customers doesn't mean you should ignore your existing customers.

Besides the easy-in for new users, Adobe also massively improved most of their software without raising the price much, (and continue to do so) so that's another reason for their increase in sales.  It used to be no one ever wanted to use Premeire becasue it had a history of crashing and taking your footage with it.  Now, it's as stable as Avid currently is.  So that graph you showed isn't a pure reflection of subscription model but a lot of other things including a societal move towards creating digital media, ease of schools getting and managing licenses and more.  One license from Adobe includes just about every tool a starting student could possibly need.   All of these resons contribute to them earning major bank.  It's not just the subscription model.  Adobe made the switch to subscription right around the time they started getting good, so they didn't lose a lot of users, and most Adobe users need more than one of their products, some of which (photoshop and After Effects) are heads above a lot of similar products, so a lot of people came back because the bundled pricing.   As Job ter Burg pointed out, Avid doesn't have that.

But, yes, I realize that corporations are interested in making the most money they can.  That is reasonable. Sometimes, though, half copying what successful companies are doing without understanding why it works ends up throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  And I'm that baby :)  (and all my future students as well)