I think Renoise costs way too little. And quite many people I have spoken to think so as well. Lots of features have been added, but the price haven’t changed very much over the years. Why? In fact, probably the price tag itself, as a marketing object, must be constantly evaluated since many potential consumers might think “this has to be bad in comparison to Cubase (or whatever) if they have to dump the price to such a low level”.
Seriously, isn’t this also a matter of psychology and economical behaviour worthy of consideration? People tend to conclude stuff based on the price tag. They read a CM review of Renoise, see that it gets 10/10 and then wonder why the price is so low. This subconsciouly amounts to a feeling of “something must be bad…”
Maybe a split “Renoise Standard” for €49 and “Renoise Pro” for €299 would be proper to introduce at a later point. Considering the huge production values that Renoise ReWire-enabled versions bring for the tracker composer in a semi-pro studio environment, the price should be adjusted accordingly.
If I remember it correctly from past discussions, one of the reasons Renoise team wants to keep the €49 concept is as a means to fight piracy; with a lower price, less people are likely to install a cracked version. However, with the pace of development and voting possibilities there should be more incentives for people to be registered users. The tracker niche is too small; the pirates should be a minority anyway. Those who really are interested in sustaining the development of a professional tracker DAW will pay more if necessary.
In the end I suppose the Renoise team knows exactly what it is doing in regard to marketing issues, product prices, etc. The current model probably has major advantages, where the users can “pay” more in other values than money (such as contributions of music, video tutorials, help to newbies, etc).
Do you find my “consumer psychology” point valid? Why or why not?
I’m tellin you man… discount electronic music production magazine subscriptions for registered renoise users. “Value added” sells. No reason to raise the price.
if this happened as a consumer to pay €299, I do believe I would feel entitled to demand as many features as possible! As well as many others.
This is usually when Devs would stop posting in the general forums, or only use monikers.
and the moderators are not part of the team, and they have ban keys on their keyboards
in the sense of users who break ground constantly, and are constantly emulated, they seem to mostly use free software or renoise.
That means a lot.
Please don’t suggest a price hike again. My license is going to expire at 2.5 and I’d REALLY like to be able to afford a new one.
For me, I expect high prices when it comes to hardware. For software, I really shudder at the fact some of it (keep in mind, we’re buying NOTHING TANGIBLE) costs in upwards of 500USD. To me, when you think about the fact you’re buying 1’s and 0’s in the form of electrical pulses, it’s ridiculous. The time spent making it is about the same as hardware, yet you don’t have the need for physical parts to remanufacture the item repeatedly…an internet connection is pretty cheap these days. CD/DVD burners are pretty cheap these days…why is software costing 500 dollars?
I never got it and never will. You bought the box, now you gotta pay to use it…I do buy software that I think is a great value and I can live with anything that’s under 100 dollars USD, but if it reaches that upper area of my range, it BETTER be special. I would pay 100 dollars for ReNoise.
It’s a neat theory but I don’t think that raising the price is going to increase sales. The only reason I bought it was because of its very affordable price. As for thinking it’s a higher quality program due to its price, I think it’s made pretty clear from the front page that you can demo the program. Anyone seriously interested in buying the program will most likely demo it for awhile.
just because it’s not physical doesnt mean that not a lot of work goes into it. i don’t understand your argument with cd/dvd burners, just because burning data to cd is cheap the software has to be cheap too?
personally, I wouldn’t probably wouldnt have bought renoise if it were 100,-
well, maybe I would have, but only after a long hard think. 50,- is good for impulse buying
I understand the point Transcender is making, and this view is borne out by the number of studios who buy Pro Tools purely because clients expect to see it. If you surf around other software forums, you’ll notice some users of other software clearly have to own ‘x’ piece of software, or ‘x’ new amazing plug-in, to validate themselves. It makes them feel good that they are using a ‘pro’ piece of software/gear. Rarely does this mean they make good music…
I think Renoise is extremely good value, because it’s a fantastic programme that has loads of features and is super stable on my system. But its priced about right: its other software that is overpriced. Just look at traditional DAWs. Reaper has shown up the likes of Steinberg and Cakewalk; it’s proved that you can code a much better programme on a much lower budget. OK, so Cubase and Sonar are more mature products and include some subjectively better plug-ins than Reaper. But not THAT much better.
I know more than one person who run commercial studio’s or mastering services that have abandoned Cubase/Logic for Reaper. I also note that in Sound On Sound magazine (arguably the most respected music technology magazine out there) in some of their ‘mix resuce’ articles, the guy doing the mix rescue uses Reaper. The irony is he ends up doing a much better mix in Reaper than the original producer, who has usually (mis)used a whole load of more expensive software!
Like I say, Renoise is fairly priced. Other software is overpriced.
Renoise will always have “legitimacy” issues due to the fact that it’s not your standard DAW. Raising the price will not solve these… the only thing that will accomplish is an increase in notice from niche producers that want the “next best thing”.
I personally think the best thing Renoise could do is talk some of their more well known users into endorsing the app a bit more. I’d venture a good wager that a certain number of Warp and Planet Mu artists probably use Renoise… and having those artists come out of the Renoise closet would most likely have a profound effect on the software’s perceived legitimacy. Ableton started doing this before they became big… I think it’s time for Renoise to follow suit.
Terrible idea. Users who spend hundreds of Euro on audio software will expect everything. 24/7 support, piles of presets and samples, multitrack recording, etc etc. Renoise doesn’t have this and doesn’ need to: it’s far more humble than a big DAW, though it does what it does extremely well.
Also remember that Renoise is entirely digitally distributed. The way things are right now, it makes more sense to keep a low price: as the cost of producing a new copy is marginal, you can make more money by having a thousand people paying a small price than having only a few people pay a high price. And yes, those people who can’t pay a high price will pirate.
So yes, if you want the Renoise community to consist of fussy paid users constantly demanding new features, and hordes of feckless pirates on the other hand, then please do quadruple the price.
That said, if and when renoise gets the mooted DAW-like features (piano roll, arranger, audio tracks etc) then a small price rise might make sense, but no more than 100 Euro IMHO.
As far as consumer psychology goes, I don’t get you at all. I think most people will look at a 49 Euro program with a 10/10 score and subconsciously start reaching for their wallet. People always appreciate good value.
I am currently scraping together the pennies to register my copy of Renoise. I am also a Logic user (took me quite a while to scrape together enough for that!) and I must admit if Renoise was any more than fifty quid I would be put off. Not saying I wouldn’t pay a hundred for it, just that it would be a much bigger investment for me so would have to justify it a lot more. I am as far from a pro user you can get though so have no idea if a price hike would make Renoise more viable to them.
Good point about getting pro users to endorse the product though.
Transcender, I don’t think you are wrong, I just don’t think that suggesting it in a forum is going to get a lot of public support. You are correct about the psychology of pricing.
It must be nice developing a program which its users from time to time suggest paying more for.
Still, it seems what you’re after, mainstream acceptance and a drastically higher number users, isn’t mainly what the project is about. Your point has been proven, I think: High price has some effect on the perceived value. That is not necessarily applicable in this specific context, as goals may be different.
That is true, the more users pay, the more they’ll expect. Especially if they’re new users and they don’t understand what trackers really are. My understanding of trackers is different now then it was a year ago. A year ago I was still in the DAW mindset, thinking that things could ONLY be achieved certain ways. I was wrong.
I think you should bump up the price, but only by like $10. I think it’s enough money where new users won’t expect too many things, but you’ll still put some dosh in your pocket. As for pirates, idk what to tell you. They’ll pirate whether it’s expensive or cheap. I’ll admit, ALL my software is pirated, except renoise (admin: if you want check your records, I’m registered under this account’s email). Money’s tough for me (as it is for most I’m sure), so I’m just afraid of buying software that’s expensive or that I won’t really use. I hopped on the renoise wagon because I saw something pure/different in this program. I used it at first and was kind of on the fence, but as soon as I understood the work flow, I fell in love with it. I see how strong of a community this is, discussing improvements, helping new users, pointing out new tricks, etc. This is all coming from most of the users that aren’t actually on the Renoise team, but in a sense they are. I don’t see that happening with any other program. Sure, they have forums as well, but pretty much the only active users on there are the admins. That’s why I love all this.
In my opinion, the WORST thing you can do is add those DAW features. It will mark the end of Renoise. It’ll be a slippery slope. New users will come in and see some DAW features, and since they’ll still be in the DAW mindset, they’ll expect more DAW features (on top of the piano roll, beatslicer, etc) and next thing you know Renoise will be your standard DAW, with some tracking abilities.
That’s just not going to happen. Even with audiotracks and arranger features, Renoise is still a tracker first and foremost. The price hasn’t got anything to do with that.
I never said the programmers shouldn’t get compensated for their work. However, no matter if it’s megabuck software or modest bedroom product, the same amount of time goes into the program and (sadly) both will take advantage of their audience for free pre-release bugtesting, optimization, feature ideas, etc. so I don’t see why Abelton should charge 500 dollars for their program, regardless of how good it is while there have been some ridiculously good programs that have been released at 100$ and below price range.
It just makes no sense to me. I don’t know a single soul that actually bought an abelton license but I know 30 people that prefer it. You know why? Cause 500 dollars for a some bits and bytes is retarded…
well, actually the reason for this price difference, at least in theory, should be quite obvious: Ableton software is not made by only one person, and the company is not composed of an handful of geeks. When your company grows, sadly the percentage of people actually working into making the product dramatically lowers, while the percentage of people working for the sole purpose of the company to exist raises: human resource management, wages management, promotion, customer care, even hygiene are all things which - I repeat - in theory, your company should take care of, at user’s expense.
also, softwares are not just bits. I’ll make a simple example: take EastWest Symphonic Orchestra. It’s not just a media player streaming a bunch of WAV files: behind this project there is a recording hall, an entire orchestra hired to record the complete articulation of each instrument, audio engineers, and so on.
Personally I still think that lots of softwares are overpriced, but saying that there is no difference between a Company product and a bedroom project means not having even a bare idea about what making software is.
I know it’s a tracker, but once you start throwing in DAW specific or horizontal stuff like the piano roll, then it starts deviating from what a tracker is. I guess unless you make the piano roll scroll vertically as well.
Regardless, I wouldn’t mind paying a little more for this program.
This is one of the reasons i used to start with pirated versions, simply because the purchase price was way too high to invest into without knowing for sure i’m gonna use the stuff, however the trail-period was too restricting to get a good idea how frequent i needed the product. (i had no chance to lay the product aside for a few months and then pick it up again once i thought, perhaps this tool can be of use right now)
The way the Reaper license model deals with this is really reasonable:fully functional, yet after 30 days you get a nag-timer before you can continue. Also the level of licensing:80 for personal use, 250 for commercial use is fair, this means:it is affordable for everyone and it also tells folks:this product is also usable in a professional environment. Even though Reaper is not perfect, it has my sympathy which is worth registration alone. Though i have no idea how support is on the Cockos forums or from Cockos his support team. Their license model already works pretty inviting.
The commercial use price is the only element that Renoise lacks and is perhaps a thing that larger production studio’s need to be convinced Renoise is a product that can be used in studio’s as well.
As well as many others.