Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
Is Subscription Fair to Developers and Users alike?
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I don't disagree with this. That's why I'm coming around to the idea that 3rd party app sources would improve the overall iOS/iPadOS software market.
Not sure I understand what you mean.
Precisely. This is a side note to the subscription thread, but many seem to take it for granted that desktop is more expensive than iOS but in reality it isn't necessarily so, not anymore.
I mean if you bought Logic for 200 units aeons ago and have been getting its amazing updates totally free ever since, including a full daw and arguably all the stock plugins you will ever really need for music production, well then Wotja or Loopy Pro are suddenly not that cheap, are they. 🙂
As for the hardware, a supremely capable m1 mini or air are also cheaper than a comparable iPad pro. And they can run Logic etc. as well as modern iOS apps.
Also, if I just look at my last couple of random desktop plugins purchases, they are pretty much at iOS prices but with much richer functionality - and in most cases decent resalability.
That said, I do love my iPad and I'm not into music software subscriptions even on the desktop.
Like others here, I am by default against subscription models for plugins. DAWs should be pay for upgrade to major versions. The only subscriptions that I would be for are for services that provide access to content (Beatport comes to mind).
Regarding plugins, if revenue is an issue, raise the purchase price. I would pay $40-$50 for a plugin as opposed to $5-$10 if the developer has made a good product and it fits my needs. But no way would I pay $5+/month for the same software.
So, to answer the question, no I don’t think subscription models are fair to the user. But I also don’t think a onetime $5-$10 fee is fair to the developer either.
That's part of the solution. The problem is that once the app is bought there are many who will hold on until they're forced to upgrade (by OS, for example). More than that, there seems to be the idea that future additions need cross a certain threshold to be worthy upgrade fee. This means that any improvements made by a developer are quite the gamble.
I think that when we buy apps, other than the expectation of a developer's duty to crush show-stopping bugs, we're buying an app in that state, in that moment, and from there any work done should really be paid for. While subscriptions can be abused, (if developers have a monopolistic hold on the market, for instance), I think that the model should ensure an appropriate level of motivation to continue work on improvements. Doing all that work, while hoping that by the time V2 is released everyone hasn't moved on to a competitor's product, is understandably a risk many wouldn't want to take.
I'm not saying subs are a viable prospect for much of the iOS product line (Single apps, for example), but i think there's a certain expectation of developers to shoulder all the burden of the aforementioned risk.
The capricious nature of the App Store (or at least the perception thereof) makes people, including me, hesitate to make a significant investment in a single iOS or iPadOS app. After all, Apple may strike the app dead with a lightning bolt from on high and there'll be nothing anyone can do about it. If the App Store wasn't the only way to get apps on my iPad, I could rationalize that if an app disappears from one source it might reappear at another. Or, if I could easily and legitimately sideload apps, I could reassure myself, as I do with many Mac apps, that if I keep a local copy of the installer and my license key around, I'll be able to reinstall indefinitely (at least until the app is no longer compatible with my installed OS or the available hardware).
It would also, perhaps, make it more attractive for makers of higher-priced apps, like Ableton, to port their flagship software to the platform, since they wouldn't be locked in to giving Apple a 15-30% cut that comes right out of their margins.
Ah...understood! Good points
Thanks for the clarification
We have seen in the last year many apps developer charging in the 20$ to 30$ for effect app. This is roughly 3x from the 5$ to 10$ app. I wonder if a dev can live on that.
App need to go up in price 3x to 5x. To me subscription is not a solution.
One aspect of subscription that I don't think as been discussed is that subscription are held as a potential solution. But what if the dev don't get enough subs or subs drop over time. Even if we all agree to subs their is only soon much money to go around in this small community.
If app prices go up 3 to 5 x too quickly, people simply won't buy them. Many people are living in post-covid economies that have yet to recover. Add to that a major cost of living crisis, particularly in Europe, as a result of the war.
Major increases in app prices within a short time frame will simply lead to people buying fewer apps and a smaller number of indie devs being able to make any significant income from their work. There is basically no market for non-essential goods in the real world that can sustain that kind of price increase unless it is spread over many years. I mean, people are choosing between eating or heating, They might forgo a few coffees for an app, but not many would be willing to forgo several meals for yet another analogue delay, reverb or compressor, say. They might instead, wisely, decide to forget about buying new apps entirely and go back and learn the apps they already have but rarely use. That would probably keep most of us busy for a good decade or so. They might decide it's finally time to knuckle down and learn Drambo or Loopy Pro or Wotja
Higher prices could have some good effects. If you are charging the same kind of prices as many desktop apps can be bought for at sale prices, people would need an extemely good reason to continue making music on their ipads rather than on a laptop. More competition might lead to a return to making innovative touchscreen apps instead of simple clones of desktop apps or hardware. This could lead to more desktop users switching to iOS or adding it to their workflow. If prices increase but there is no increase in innovation, it could lead to the slow death of the ios music making platform. So be careful what you wish for!
This brings us to yet another problem - lack of marketing. Very few devs are much good at it. Having a twitter account and posting on it once every few months to let people know you released an app is no kind of marketing 😂. Bleass are one of the few devs I can think of that really understand marketing (I won't include the desktop devs who make iOS ports), and they are likely to be one of the few devs actually able to make a full time living from app development. Coincidence? I think not.
Same goes for UI design. There is frankly some pretty terrible UI design on the platform. In fact, some of it is just downright laughably atrocious. You don't like that aspect and don't want to learn it? Or you disagree with the many users who tell you they hate your UIs? Fair enough. But don't expect that it will not impact your sales, particularly if you think you're going to he able to charge 20 or 30 bucks per app and crank them out on the regular.
Overall, there needs to be an increase in awareness of how sophisticated the platform is becoming. Many desktop people have no idea of the capabilities of iOS, the innovative nature of apps like AUM or Drambo or Loopy Pro that help us use all these cheap apps together in innovative ways. Or the (usually 😅) healthy and friendly relationship between devs and the community in places like this. But how to get this awareness? The organic growth model for ios music making doesn't really seem to be working very well, given how few devs are able to make a full time living, even a meagre one, from app development. If I were a dev I would seriously consider pitching in with some other devs to get a paid article about the ios music scene and my apps in a premium publication like Sound On Sound. I would be trying to get influential youtubers like Benn Jordan to do an interview with me, or I would at least be sending big desktop youtubers some promo codes. If even one ended up mentioning my app in one of his videos that would be a major win. Putting all your time into app development is unlikely to be a good strategy. Time and money need to be spent on marketing too.
In other words, you buy something and use it as long as you can - and you only pay for something new if it's worth it for you.
Mate, this is a perfectly normal and healthy attitude to being a consumer. Why are you calling it a "problem"? 🙂
It's a problem when developers have to put all the work into updating an app that people might then not want to pay to update, or at least not at that version. This is not a market of developers-as-entrepreneurs, willing to take the risk of investing a lot of time and energy for the chance of a huge life-changing pay-out; rather, it seems to be about passionate musicians-come-developers trying to eke out a living doing something they love. But if they can't even guarantee a living, being compensated for all work done, they will one-by-one start to disappear.
Thing is though, any market like this needs a balance. If devs are disappearing - and they certainly have been, at least a lot of the old iaa devs are no longer active - maybe that's simply what needs to happen. I don't think the average ios user is in a position to justify spending more on apps than they're already spending. Ios music, at least on the level done by many here, already counts for most as a significant chunk of cash per year for what - for the vast majority - is just a hobby. It may not seem like much money if you're used to earning / paying by the standards of San Fran or New York, but for many others $30 (which in app store terms is actually pretty much equivalent to £30, which is significantly more than $30) , is actually a lot of money.
Hence prices can increase but unless the user base also increases, or somehow magically becomes wealthier at a time of economic contraction, it will mean purchasers being much more discriminating about what they buy and then the 'problem' remains unsolved. The same amount of money will be entering the market but it will be split into fewer pieces, some devs will do OK, others will give up. I think initially, people here may keep buying even at higher prices, as they're already basically addicted to buying apps and used to buying the majority of new releases. However, at a certain point some or many will have a moment of reckoning with themselves where they decide that they really need to go cold turkey and stop buying every shiny new app released, or even put a moratorium on app purchasing for a while altogether, set a strict number of apps they allow themselves to purchase per month, or a set annual budget, or a rule that they only purchase apps on sale, or some similar means of taking control of their finances.
Yeah - I'm already at that point. And I bet I'm not the only one on the Forum who feels that way.
Hold on to your tablets because "a reckoning is coming". Especially as desktop developers muscle in on the iOS developer's app market.
Has kickstarter style campaign ever been tried for software? Or existing software?
It just totally downed on me that this could work.
The developer estimates how much the cost will be to make it viable. Interested users chip in until the objective is achieved. The journey begins.
Of course the dev would need to make a valid presentation and put in an initial investment to show their vision and convince the users they need the final product.
On iOS I don't know, but certainly on desktop and for hardware this has been done a lot. Pretty sure that Brian Clevinger used Kickstarter or something similar for his synth Plasmonic a few years ago.
Okay, I get this, thank you for the explanation. I guess my point then is, if completely normal customer behaviour is a problem for your business, then your business is probably not sustainable as a business.
I'm aware this is not a novel insight, because we already know it to be the case for a lot of the devs here, including very good ones. So maybe the question we should ask is not "how we can keep 127 different delay apps in existence" but, rather, something like "is it any wonder if most of these will gradually disappear".
The situation reminds me of the initial goldrush of the automotive industry when, within a few decades and in the US alone, "at least 1900 different companies were formed, producing over 3,000 makes of American automobiles". After a short but dizzying run, most of these disappeared in a similarly short period of time.
So maybe the question we should ask is not "how we can keep 127 different delay apps in existence" but, rather, something like "is it any wonder if most of these will gradually disappear".
LOL.
Spot on!
D'ya mean 126?! We've already lost 'Lunar Lander', and for reasons that should serve as a clear warning.
Yup! Too many developers chasing reduced spending power of an increasingly GAS'd-out and tool-overwhelmed user-base...within a very niche market. It ain't looking good.
Subscriptions, while not workable in many iOS contexts, could possibly help save bigger platforms. But for various reasons it seems people are too entrenched in their anti-sub positions. The only other way I can think to perhaps gain a stronger foot-hold would be for, thus far, iOS-only developers to expand to the desktop market.
Like with many other things around the world I think we’re focusing on the wrong / irrelevant topic...
There won’t be good answers if the question* is failing... (*I don’t mean thread title)
Imo this can’t get better unless significant changes from Apple are allowed to go down - it is happening, but very slowly (by design).
My first question would be, who is better positioned to apply pressure on Apple... not blaming devs because I think the answer is us the customers, but imo devs don’t do enough in that regard... also, what we’re seeing now (vote with your valet) is one - though not the only, but quite important - way the customers are able tackle this...
I guess the music production app market on iOS is so small that apple wouldn't feel much of a dent if everyone stopped buying, tbh. Only if people were maybe no longer buying new ios hardware to make music... They'd feel that a bit more but it's still a relatively small niche I reckon
Yeah 🤷🏽
The market isn’t necessarily small, but atm the model is to quickly sell quickly disposable junk... (not only music making related)
I’m talking about changes to OS and AppStore... creative fields were always kept afloat by the pro segment but in its current form the platform looks more like a bad joke...
devs barely know who their customers are... there is no meaningful support between the players to any direction (customer/dev/Apple)
Apple knows it’s unsustainable and knows changes are necessary, but milking it was always their strength.
And most average iPhone/iPad users are more than happy with what GarageBand offers...
...and it's free to boot, ok you have to buy an iDevice to get it but still.
While I've seen quite a few people who use iPads for music, it's mostly for score-sheets, remotes, tuners, voice-memos, notebooks etc. they have ZERO interest in producing on the iPad.
All I get is 'I'm not interested in that, I've got my Mac for that'... (I mean they have a valid point, comparing iOS offerings to things like Logic or Live, especially on a MacBook Air is a dead run and it's NOT about the money at all).
It will definitely be interesting to see what direction iPadOS17 will take during this years WWDC'23...
...will we finally get to pro-apps or will the iPad be 'cemented' as an 'just an add on' for the Macs?
“ ...will we finally get to pro-apps or will the iPad be 'cemented' as an 'just an add on' for the Macs?”
or the most likely scenario... they throw us a bone... just enough to keep enough people excited... we will digest it for a year and wait for the next big reveal that never comes
Forget the 'pro' apps, I say. Focus on attracting hobbyists who will find enjoying interacting with a touch screen more enjoyable than sitting with a laptop. If this platform has a future, it lies there.
What we need most is the revolutionary touch screen stuff and the experimentalism of the earlier apps, but in auv3 form. At a bare minimum, all apps supporting multi touch.
But much better if it is stuff that is giving an experience that desktop can't remotely approach in terms of creative interactions. Stuff that gives the pleasure of playing an actual instrument, without necessarily needing years of practice to get good results.
The platform needs to play to its strengths instead of just bringing things like Logic to a device that is really a bit too small for that, unless it has a radical redesign. Most 'pros' want to work on far larger screens than 12.9 inches.
And if a truly different experience is given, its appeal will be not only to hobbyists, but to all musicians who want to interact in a novel way with sound. Enough of the hardware mindset or desktop software mindset, bring on something truly revolutionary but also very powerful. It's already been said here before that an iPad, even with current daw limitations, is massively more powerful than most of the stuff that much of the music of the past we appreciate today was made on.
Well, an external 4K screen and stage-manager could do that when needed
For tracking a session an external screen is not essential.
But I agree that the 'innovation' is mostly gone and focus seems to do those dreaded JUCE ports that lack proper OS integration and rely on hosts providing certain features that are a rarity on iPadOS...
We'll see where things go...
Personally I spend more time on desktop, partly because my eyes suck (Keratoconus but not super severe yet but distracting enough).
Cheers!
I'm a bit confused about the usefulness of stage manager. Aum doesn't seem to handle it on the iPad. Aum always takes up the full screen even when stage manager is turned on. Would this be different if I was linked to an external screen? If not, which ios apps support this Samu? Cheers bro!
Good thinking and that would be pretty cool.
I can't think of how it could be implemented with the current App Store restrictions though. The only way a developer could compensate the participants would be to give them free codes for the app. That would constitute selling codes and violate the developer agreement in a big way.
Perhaps refunding the purchase price to the kickstarter on proof of having purchased on the App Store might work. This would have to be a manual process though because developers don't receive any identifiable information about purchasers from the App Store.
I used to think Pre-Orders would work for something like this. But then learned that the developer doesn't get anything until the app is actually released.