About subscription software and how it came to be the necessary evil

LucidMusicInc

Depending on how it's marketed and its pricing I suppose it would be fair... if I had to pay between 10-20 bucks each year so that my favourite app continued to improve and the developers were willing to listen to / support us users then sure.

Unreasonable subscriptions are dangerous however. Asking for 10 dollars a month as some have, is crazy. Also there needs to be some permanence, like say I can continue to use fully and save work with the app but the ability to export or connect with other apps becomes locked out.

There needs to be some agreement when the development finishes that subscription should go back to purchase.

Edit (speaking hypothetically)

Iostress

@AudioGus said:

@Iostress said:

@AudioGus said:

@MonzoPro said:
For many noodlers like myself, mucking about with this stuff for the sheer joy of it, there's only so much money in the biscuit tin. If prices go up, or subscriptions become more common we'll just buy less apps, or abandon the platform completely.

I don't open 90% of the apps I've bought over the years, some I've spent less than half an hour with. But all those developers have benefitted from my custom, which also helps iOS music move forward as a whole.

Small beans for some, but better than no beans at all.

Yah this is a big part of the iOS nut for me. Over the years i have spent a lot in simply 'figuring it out' and well over 90% of my purchases will never be used. Things I thought were the answer turned out to be duds and things i didn't expect/think were even possible turned out to be indespensible. Of course I want individual devs to be rewarded but when I look at what I spent overall if all the app prices were doubled so that Big Mac prices became Footlong prices I would have been on the hook for four grand and not two. In the end it was a cluttered ambiguous space with lots of dead ends.

Thank God I am done exploring.

Thats probably a big part of the problem on ios. People buying what they don't need. Just out of curiosity or boredom. It's easy done at throwaway prices.

Serious fulltime devs should separate themselves from the throwaway apps crowd asap and just make it clear that refunds will be given within 7 days. Or if possible give app for free with a 7 day time lock that kills it if the unlock IAP isn't used after that. So people can check an app out and see if it's worth its 'higher than average' price to them.

If something sounds mind blowing or is useful in unique ways then people won't decide to do without it just because it's more expensive.

For me they were not purchases made out of curiosity or boredom.

So no 'Oh its only a few bucks, might as well check it out, I'm sure it'll get used on something now and again' kind of purchases?

There'll always be a few users who manage to only buy what they really need but that doesn't seem like the norm and is almost entirely down to the low prices.

Same as people using cracked software often have so much to choose from and constantly adding so often that they don't focus on getting the most out of the best of what they already have. Overkill/distraction is normally fools gold in the grand scheme (finishing pieces of music and to the best possible standard using the tools you have). Not saying that applies to you personally. But it certainly did to me way back when I was downloading £100s of cracked software/samples every week and constantly installing 5 new plugs before I'd fully learned how to get the best out of the previous pile..

When I went legit with software I bought about 5% of all the cracked stuff I'd downloaded... Binned the rest. That's the kind of hit that devs will take when ios prices increase. But that's the right way. People have just got used to wasting money on stuff they don't really need. Wanting 'everything'. And devs have gotten used to receiving that flippant money on ios. If people just bought what was really necessary to their music then the devs making good stuff that is a ton of work and warranted the higher price would still sell downloads at higher pricing. Quality and hard work would prevail.

I buy vinyl if I dig an LP and then I listen to it repeatedly. The artist gets paid a decent amount. I get a quality product. Instead of just skimming Spotify and giving that artist a couple of pence along with a bunch of artists/records that I dont really like enough for it to be my job to pay them anything just cos I listened to their song/lp once out of curiosity.

From reading the organelle forum I’ve had insight into the kind of timescale and hours that some of the coders there put in to some of the patches. Some incredible stuff gets built in a matter of days/weeks. Things like this are great, but should’nt be valued as high as something that has taken months/years. Devs aren’t stupid. They’re quite capable of pricing their own work accurately and sell to the people that really need it and the debate/issue can be forgotten. I think partly some devs are maybe afraid that people don’t actually need their app enough to pay for it at higher price. Which means they’re basically manipulating sales by keeping the price low and targeting people’s loose change and casual purchases. Which isn’t the coolest aspect of modern culture that someone can have a hand in perpetuating..

Michael

I think partly some devs are maybe afraid that people don’t actually need their app enough to pay for it at higher price. Which means they’re basically manipulating sales by keeping the price low and targeting people’s loose change and casual purchases. Which isn’t the coolest aspect of modern culture that someone can have a hand in perpetuating..

In my experience, that's not it at all; if you charge $50 for an app, you might get a couple of sales a day. If you charge $5, you'll get 10 times that many, and if it's decent app, you'll get 10 times the word of mouth, 10 times the creations posted on YouTube...so, more exposure in the long term. Could be I'm seeing it wrong, and that's not true at all; I've certainly not done the research, so it's all assumptions. But the price elasticity is certainly A Thing.

u0421793

Pricing is pretty much the hard problem, in most areas that involve a price.

[Deleted User]

I have not, nor will ever buy a subscription app.

In the desktop world, I stopped buying Photoshop when it went that way, and still get all the use I need from my last proper iteration.

Iostress

Well BM3 is free right now so I'll probably never pay for an app again and just wait for sales. Devs are making their own problems... No further sympathies from me on this 'issue' I'm afraid.. Devs need to really blame each other. For these kind of promotions and for all the throwaway apps that some devs have made to cash in a quick buck. Apple and users haven't built and priced the landscape.

People generally charge what they think something is worth. If it is worth it then people will buy it. Or they will pay less and that is what it is worth.

That's how the valuation of everything else in the world works. Seems simple really?