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Worth pointing out, Apple only takes 30% on devs earning over $1M a year from the Appstore, as I understand it. Devs who earn less pay a 15% cut. It used to be 30 across the board but it changed to the above setup a few years ago.
This actually proves my point a bit. All those other fees would have to be eaten by Ableton. So if they "give the app away", they have to pay for everything else out of pocket.
Nothing is free
I get it though, i agree we just think differently about it, but i too am locked into Ableton Eco (I've bought Push 1/2/3SA) and upgraded every version since version 2. I'm super excited about where they are headed, i just wish they would build a 4x4 "big pad" MPE controller so I could finger drum better then with the smaller Push size pads. I would be over the moon if they pulled this one off someday!
I don't work for Ableton so I have no direct insight. That said, the nominal cost of Note plus the nominal cost of the "full Drift" IAP suggests to me that they're kind of using the App Store as a bit of direct customer feedback. Like, if you follow their Discord, you'd conclude that every single user of Note requires full Drift controls for the app to be useful, but that's just a (probably non-representative) sample of Note users. So, okay, put the feature out there with a $5 IAP. How many people buy it? That may inform whether they put the resources into providing more sound design features, or whether they're better off spending their time focused on e.g. the sequencer/piano roll. Similarly for the app itself: if they gave it away for free, anyone with even a passing interest in music apps would download it. But that doesn't tell them much. How many people are willing to spend $9 though? Again, that informs whether they're over-investing or under-investing in the iOS ecosystem.
At this point I think they've proven that there's a receptive audience for Note/Move, so dropping the price of the app makes sense in this frame. The strategy for app pricing becomes maximizing the user base.
That's my theory (again, based on no real insight whatsoever). If the "full wavetable" feature isn't an IAP if/when it ships, I'd take that as evidence that I might be on to something (i.e. they will have proven that there's a demand for sound design features).
That said, I also won't entirely discount the revenue impact for Ableton. Note is no doubt producing small numbers compared to Live, but if it's pulling in enough to fund its own development, that's not nothing.
The MIDI capture functionality is a key differentiator for Note; it makes for a very quick free-form workflow for coming up with ideas. I love it. The presets/instruments are great as well, and MIDI editing has become pretty powerful (it was very limited in the 1.0 version)
That said, it's very much locked in to the Ableton ecosystem. You can't export MIDI, and sound export options are very limited. So, if you don't run Live and you'll never run Live, I'm not sure how much sense it makes.
No, but that’s my point 😆
There is a monetary benefit for companies that provide customer loyalty schemes, and “free” incentives that reward customer loyalty, so they spread the word amongst friends and colleagues, generating new customers for their more expensive products.
Otherwise companies wouldn’t bother.
Instead of thinking of Note as an income stream, think instead of it as a marketing tool, generating goodwill in existing customers, enticing new users into the ecosystem, and an additional incentive as part of the Live studio bundle. All for the sake of a fiver (minus 15%, app support, tax, accountancy time etc.).
We don’t know how much profit is generated, but if it was my company, I’d weigh the income against the benefits of including it, at least, as part of the desktop package.
I was interested in buying a Push 3, but put off by the hardware issues when it was first launched. I ended up buying a Launchkey Mk4, which isn’t bad, but I’d really like an MPE controller like the Push, particularly as a lot of my favourite plugins (Fors for example) really make the best of MPE.
I've had a day one order push3sa and have had zero hardware issues with it. I use it all the time. I go to the coffee shop with it a few days a week for at least a couple hours each go and its heaven to work with.
Right, if you aren't willing to shell out 7 or 11 bucks for note, then you surely aren't interested in buying Live or a Note as the lowest barrier to entry which is hundreds of more dollars.
Thankya kindly! I’ll prolly pass then
Spent a bit of time with the beta last night. I don’t like browsing presets, and I quite enjoy Drift, so this strikes me as a worthwhile upgrade. No surprises there — I specifically requested the feature in a customer survey they ran last year.
As for the rest of it, I’m not arguing FOR paying more money to big tech; this just doesn’t meet my standards of enshittification. Note launched in late 2022 and has received some pretty major updates at no cost. They EASILY could have charged us for the MIDI editor that launched recently, for example. And when I first saw mention of IAP, I was worried they would start selling preset packs like basically every other app out there. Heck, if they really wanted to make some money, they would hide everything behind a subscription, give out some new samples and presets every month (with the option to purchase additional “premium” packs from big-name artists, of course), and provide annual-ish upgrades with new AI tools — instead, they’re charging a few dollars for under-the-hood access to a really rather nice synth, and making it REALLY easy to ignore if you’re not interested. I like that business model and I wish more companies this size followed it.
Anyhow, I hope this doesn’t come across as confrontational — I see that most of us are sick of arguing and just want to talk about Note again. Hope everyone’s having a great day! Here’s my latest:
Last week I was tidying my library and deleted a set where I had sampled a bunch of found sounds and ambience from our spring trip to Hong Kong. I assumed that all the samples would still be in my User Library, but it turns out that recorded samples are deleted with the set unless you specifically save them. Not a big deal in the long run, but I had captured some pretty interesting audio and now it’s just gone. What’s your most recent goof?
My phone overheated due to the excessive scrolling required to read the posts on the last 2 pages…
I assume you meant shouldn’t rather than should.
No I wasn’t arguing that people who disagree shouldn’t talk to each other. I was perceiving a vibe, that admittedly might not be true, that folks were trying to convince each other. Especially when the exchange kept going on and on after it was probably clear from everyone reading that there two sets of opinions that would never merge (not that they should).
tldr, I was just being a smartass 🙂
To your last point, IMO the only aspect of the update that was being discussed was the cost. I saw very little discussion of Drift Full.
I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, just chewing the fat and sharing an alternative point of view based on my own experiences (kinda what forums are for 🤷♀️) in marketing.
Since we don’t know what Ableton’s plans, aims, or income from the app are, any of the suggestions presented on this thread could be a good way forward for it.
I’m absolutely happy to acknowledge that @drez is right, if they’re making a decent return from the app as a product in its own right, and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves, and - relevant to Drift - if the closed system can support IAP pricing for a series of added functionality.
For example, I’d love it if it worked as a controller too.
Tempted to get Ableton Live now.. Logic Pro for iPad is giving me a headache but I suppose I’ll stick with it because I don’t own a desk/laptop at all right now . Just M1 iPad Pro. But I’m tempted , no doubt about it .
I love it. I’ve got Logic and Maschine on my laptop as well, but Live is my go-to DAW. Since getting a faster laptop I’ve hardly touched the ipad for music making.
As I've said elsewhere on this thread, Note pretty much turned me into a Live user. I'm strongly considering letting my LP4i subscription lapse. Note includes an Ableton Live Lite license, so you can check it out for nothing but the cost of a computer to run it on
Yeah, my mobile experience has mostly come to an end other than using Note and I've moved all "doodling" to Push3 and my Hardware (Syntakt/Digitakt2/Digitone2/Edge/TD-3) and then Ableton with VCV rack if I want to experiment with modular. I use Note just to do some silly thing sitting somewhere for a few minutes and then just sending that to ableton or push if i want to go further with it. I find no reason to get too detailed with something on a phone or iPad when the detailed work is waaaaay easier to do with Ableton and a keyboard/mouse. It's mostly a splitting of duties. Its not "always" the way i work, i also write straight into ableton if i'm working on orchestral songs, i'm probably just starting that in ableton desktop anyway. But different genre's, i can start that on anything!
Yeah agreed. I have an M2 Macbook Air and it handles anything I throw at it in Live or Logic or whatever. Worth remembering that most of these DAWS have been around since the PowerPC era so any M-series SoC is a lot of hardware to throw at it. I'd probably be doing just as well with an M1 Air (though I did spring for the big storage and 24GB RAM on my laptop and I don't regret that). I'm starting to look sideways at my M1 iPad Pro, but that's just because the battery life isn't what it used to be (and honestly I've probably still got at least a year or so before it gets bad enough to do something about it).
I give them a bit of slack since the RAM and storage is wired to the SoC and is therefore absurdly fast, but yeah, I doubt it needs to be as expensive as it is (and of course they've been overcharging for RAM and storage since before Apple Silicon). I believe the minimum amount of RAM shipping on a new Mac is now 16GB though, so any new Mac will have plenty of headroom for Live IMO, unless you have very high-end requirements. And USB3 SSD external drives are plenty fast enough to store projects and samples etc.
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Okaaay... not "twisting myself into a pretzel" to defend anything, or pushing anyone into overpriced upgrades. I'm "giving them a bit of slack", to quote myself. And even that came with caveats. I was largely agreeing with you! My advice was to purchase external storage! I pointed out that the current base model is sufficient!
Here's my hot take: setting aside the price differential between the memory and storage tiers (which I know for some is impossible), Apple hardware is a good deal for the performance and reliability you get, compared to the rest of the market, at any given price point. And it's been that way for years now.
This you? Which way do you want it? Is 8GB enough, or is it a crime that Apple ever sold an AS Mac with 8GB?
This thread seems to have you up in arms generally. It's hard to understand since you're a Bitwig user, and presumably therefore not a Note user?
I happen to agree that they stuck with 8GB of memory for way too long. That’s a ridiculous ploy by Apple to get you to buy more boxes. I will never buy the lowest amount of memory on anything though. No one should ever do that. Save up longer to get more memory. You will actually be saving money in the long term because you won’t need to upgrade machines as fast, IMO.
What is Drift, and where do you find the IAP store?
You need to be running the beta.
@gravytop
https://www.ableton.com/en/live-manual/12/live-instrument-reference/
Scroll down to drift
On the other hand, Apple is offering consumers the M4 Mac Mini, probably the most powerful computer (for the price) available today. 🤔
Yeah, when I'm working in my home studio, I have a an AMD 5590x with 128G of RAM and various SSD's. I've found that my MacBook M1 Max with 64G of RAM keeps up pretty damn good when i transfer sets between the two. This M1 Max is still very formidable, and a lot of it has to do with RAM, IMO. Especially with big sample libraries. I would never go any less that 64G, but that's because of the string/brass libraries I use can get purdy huge.
As an example, my work bought me an M2 MacBook (not Max) with only 16G of Ram (sooo mad) and i'm tapping out all the time. Running bunches of containers and lab work (I'm a cloud architect) on my personal M1 Max is way better than that M2 with 16G. Like not even close.
So yeah, i'm debating on replacing that damn 5590x with a newer Mac, but can't decide if I want to replace my MacBook or just buy a Mac Studio instead maybe next year. The one thing right now that is killing me about windows is that you can't have multiple sound cards as ASIO devices like i can do on a Mac with Coreaudio. That is HUGE issue for me with a bunch of devices.
Anyway, to bring this back to Note, all of the best ideas I ever make are like 4-6 tracks. For me it's about the idea of the "sound" of the track and that's all i really need. When I open Note, and it just randomly adds sounds to the track, i do my absolute damndest to not change them and just work with what I get. This way, i don't focus on finding the sounds, I work on finding the "music" around them. This simple thing has been extremely helpful for me. I can be walking around and take 5 min to pop open Note, open a new song and just slap down whatever comes to mind. Even if it's very simple, it doesn't matter. I don't need to get into detail. MAYBE some light automation if that creates the "character" of the sound so that i take that along with it, but then i just shut it off and go on with life. THEN, later, if it is worthy of more time (ie, it doesn't totally suck), I will just send that over to my Push when I go to the coffee shop and go a little further with it. If it then passes that test, then i will start working with it on my MacBook or Studio PC. This workflow is absolutely killer for ideas. Trying to do anything reeeeally meaningful on an iPhone is absolutely tedious AF. I've got a song i've written right now that has like 60 tracks in Nanostudio 2 that I've been working on only when i'm waiting for something (so, similar to how I use Note now), and its taken me 5 years basically. Started on it pre covid. I couldn't really work on it much during covid because i was never out waiting for something (in line at the coffee shop, waiting for food, in line at the store). But it's been a crazy experiment i will never do again 😂.
My point is, instead of finishing the song on a device that really has been brutal to do the detail work on, it's SOOOOO much easier to do on a laptop or PC. 100x (I automate like 5-10 parameters per track sometimes). This is where Note has just been the missing piece of my own workflow which is "create as many ideas as you can until one sticks". I've said it before, the act of being creative is more important to me than finishing a song. Just thinking differently for a bit instead of the way I think all day at my job is the most important thing. Note allows me to do that anywhere at any time and capture an idea that might be useful...or...not 🤷🏼. It doesn't really matter. At least i was creative for a bit. BUT, if it's worthy of more work, I can instantly drop it into my normal workflow.
This got a bit long, sorry about that.
I found my M1 Mini (16/512) struggled a bit with some VST’s in Live (Spacecraft and Fors Tela, for example), might have been better with more RAM.
Upgraded last year to a 14” MBP M4 Pro 24/512, and it’s a total beast - I can throw anything into Live and it doesn’t break a sweat. Totally recommended. I even run Logic and Live together sometimes, utilising Logic’s MIDI AU FX support, copying and pasting between the two.
Started watching the Push 3 videos again…it’s my birthday in a few weeks, maybe I should treat myself…