Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Subscription Model....
With so many companies going the subscription model, I'm curious to know, what it would take for anyone to be willing to pay for a subscription model and at what price?
Comments
@JohnnyGoodyear Is that a way to say you would never do a subscription...lol?
I won't subscribe to any app unless one of the following critaria is met...
It comes with at least 500mb of cloud storage, ESPECIALLY if the app is intended to be cross-platform between mobile, laptop, and desktop environments. I equate that to a storage locker you rent per month, and it's quite convenient.
It has an ever-evolving library of new content/assets that can be used. I equate this to the old Computer Music magazine subscription where you'd pay monthly and get a pack of shiny new one-shots and loops to play with.
It's like Netflix/Spotify.
I know Auxy made it to many people's shi...erm, RUBBISH list when it went subscription, but the way I see it, I have no patience to save up hundreds of dollars to buy all of the sample content outright. With the subscription that's $4.99/month, I not only have access to what's already there in the library but also all of the NEW sample content released on the monthly. Auxy is supergeil that way and has released at least one pack per month! THEY are doing subscription correctly.
I also pay monthly for Dropbox 1TB (would pay more if the morons would FINALLY release a 2TB version for consumers rather than businesses) and iCloud 2TB. Audio stems can often take up a ton of space after all, and these storage solutions are cross-platform.
Companies that made my rubbish list include GooseSoft (the idiot developer expects people to pay a subscription, even if it is a cheap $3.49/year, for a poorly programmed EQ AU
) and Intermorphic (they have a one-time-fee version of their flagship Wotja app, but if you're doing a generative music installation that lasts more than 8 hours, the morons expect people to pay for the monthly subscription version just for that feature). Celsys USED to be on that list until they caved and added the cross-platform cloud storage to Clip Studio Paint. Now they're a-ok in my book, ESPECIALLY since I can turn off two-finger tap undo in CSP.
Bottom line - You can equate this to the "wheat and chaff" passage from Matthew 3:12 - if you meet at least one of the criteria, I may or may not subscribe depending if I really need the app, but at least I'll give it a pass. HOWEVER, if you're so pretentious that you expect people to pay monthly over and over again for the same set of features (which I equate to subscribing to a magazine that prints the same articles over and over again)....well, you know where "chaff" ends up, right?
Most obvious questions would be...
I'll also add that any app that goes subscription MUST grandfather those who purchased IAP sound packs outright pre-subscription. They can choose whether to subscribe or not to access NEW content, but pre-subscription purchases MUST be honoured. Again, exactly how Auxy handled it.
@jwmmakerofmusic That was some good and honest stuff. Loved the Matthew 3:12 analogy.
@SpookyZoo Preset packs are a great idea, which we have plans for. You see for most devs, residual income keeps the boat afloat. Sporadic and unpredictable income doesn't. This is why it seems people are running to subscription model.
Just to be clear, I have no plans right now, but if I do happen to consider it. I can guarantee it would be worth it. A preset a day for life. Effects, and sounds, with a gazillion expansion packs, with the ability to offload sample ram to the cloud if need be.
I rather not have a subscription based app.
@jwmmakerofmusic I don't think it's right to call developers morons or idiots.
They're just trying to find a way to get paid for their work, whether you agree with it or not.
They may well have a number of clients using it for just that purpose that are happy to pay for the feature.
Don 't think we should be insulting them.
See mate? YOU get it. Your idea is a fair and balanced one. Although, "a preset a day" might be a bit too much. Perhaps one new preset pack per month and one new sample pack a month so bugs can ALSO be squashed simultaneously, depending on how many developers and content creators you work with,
For content, you can also outsource by licensing packs. One of my mates Toby (Black Octopus CEO) has his Leviathan 2 drums for usage in Auxy. Guess that's another criteria - if a mate's pack was licensed for usage in your app.
I completely respect any developer deciding to go subscription for music apps, but have personally decided not to participate. The main reason is not wanting to manage an accumulation of many recurring expenses. Also not having to revisit the decision whether an app is worth the expense periodically. I prefer to get the expense over with then forget it. I buy apps based on what they are now, not based on what is said they will evolve to.
The only exceptions are cloud storage and as an alternative to a large cash outlay such as Office 365 vs. purchasing the full Office suite.
Nothing I do music wise falls into either of those categories, so subscriptions will not be a part of my iOS music apps future. I’m also not a sample pack monger, so content based subscriptions are of no interest either.
That said, I wish any developer who tries it success, albeit without my participation.
-peace
No, no. I just think you might get some pushback and I wanted to acknowledge that up front
I think the subscription problem (as many see it) is that we're collecting a lot of them these days and I think, like it or not, they can be fine. I unwillingly pay Adobe 50 bucks a month and I use a lot of their products EVERY month and I make a living in part as a result. I LIKE a lot of apps (yours included!), but they are part of my hobby and pleasure, at an essentially amateur level, and if I were to subscribe to all of the apps I've bought and quite like I wouldn't be able to buy milk.
It's a tough one because I REALLY want you to stay in business and keep doing what you're doing, but I can't afford to pay you (that cumulative you) every month....
The problem with subscriptions is that you always forget to cancel the damn things...
Right mate, and I respectfully disagree with your stance. "Idiot" and "moron" are light insults, not heavy vicious digs. Tossing out vicious digs on developers would be wrong, because as you said, they DO need to be paid for their work and I can respect that fact. However...
Intermorphic releases a new version of the one-time-fee Wotja per year. We have the OPTION whether we want to upgrade or not. Why not abolish the 8-hour time limit? To me, not abolishing it on the one-time-fee version makes no sense, and so to me it is rather moronic. You probably know that my opinion of GooseEQ is that it comes off as a reskinned version of the free ReaEQ VST and was laggy on my iPad Pro 2017.
I'm a bit of a bulldog in that my opinions are often brutally honest. It's one reason why I often get betatesting gigs.
Right? At least when you have too many at once.
Me too.
I just manage to find bugs without insults.
I do agree with you here however...
@jwmmakerofmusic Dude, you can’t be calling developers idiots on this forum! I don’t care how good a beta tester you are... lol.
@GospelMusicians good on you for gathering some market research before changing your business model.
If I look at something like Bm3, if everything worked as bug free and well as something like Photoshop on desktop then I would easily pay those same prices, about $240/year.
That means everything is nailed down, all the automation works as expected, I can trim and merge clips preserving automation, slicing to pattern works with gaps, banks save with patterns properly, recording audio tracks happens solid every time (no recording for five minues and... nothing?, (let’s throw in five point editing on audio clips to boot), automating of loop start/end, some sort of quick file browser with wav preview where you can drop ranges on to pads quickly, midi export, transient detection on slices etc. Not expecting the moon, just the goods.
Anyway, yes I made this into a BM3 post.
I would consider Cubasis too if it had the features I wanted (blah blah blah, lists feature here...)
Anyway. I would never subscribe to a single synth (eh, maybe if it had a huge library ala Synthmaster One) or an effect (ok sugar bytes suite maybe, but throw in the synths too heh) but I am certainly into subscribing to big things that are super robust and complete like Photoshop, 3DS max, After FX etc. I feel these things are probably a good four or five years away.
Sure I can mate.
It tends to annoy them/push their buttons a bit, maybe make them think that their idea of how to implement subscription pricing may not be the best/is so illogical it'd confound Spock. Besides, 99% of developers I know and know about are okay. It's just those two that irk me really.
I do like @GospelMusicians coming here to gauge the atmosphere. I'm glad they and I are on the same page regarding subscriptions though, lol.
I don't insult when finding bugs. Only when irked or p***taking, USUALLY the latter.
Subscribing to Cubasis would SUCK. Subscribing to an iOS version of Reason, complete with INCLUDED 1TB of cloud services, for like $9.99/month, would be REASONable. (I'm so going to hell for such a bad pun, lol.)
Love Neo- Soul Keys & BASSalicous, although i have only used them both once or twice since i bought them, so a monthly subscription is something that just wouldn't work for me. It would just be impossible to pay for multiple subscriptions for music apps on ios, it would just be too expensive for someone like me. Perhaps quality ios instruments like Neo-Soul Keys need to be more expensive to begin with. You would lose casual customers like me who don't really need them, but you would gain a more professional user base, who would be happy to pay for incremental updates & more content via IAP. For example, i just paid for an incremental update from Ableton Live 9.5, to Ableton 10 on the desktop (the offered deal was so good that i also went from standard-suite at the same time). However this is the first paid update for Ableton Live in over five or six years. I use it every day, so it is worth it for me. If it went to subscription though, i wouldn't go for it. I prefer to pay upfront, so i can manage my day to day finances. I still remember the days when going overdrawn by a couple of quid in UK bank accounts used to cost £30.00 each time it happened, usually because of some small direct debit that had been forgotten about. When i ran a small business, this was a constant nightmare for me, because as a sole trader cash flow can be quite unpredictable.........the banks didn't give a damn of course...........Subscriptions, are just too easy to lose track of.....
You have a quality product, i really hope you find a way to keep it viable............
I think my problem with subscriptions for synths is that you basically have to justify the subscription by adding a ton of content. You have to convince the consumer to pay for a lot of different types of icing for the same cake. But if I just want to go nuts with just a sine wave and a filter, I’m paying every month for the right to do so.
Subscriptions for apps are a solution for developers, and I believe developers deserves a solution that balances their efforts with income. However, it’s not a good solution for consumers when it comes to synths and fx. To me, renting a synth isn’t equal to renting a space (dropbox, iCloud, my apt...) Online storage, music streaming... these are services. Synths just aren’t. Treating them as such will only delay a real, customer driven solution IMHO.
That's actually well said.....It makes sense.
Forget it! People have enough monthlies!
The stinging capitalism of Apple is enough...
Apps costs near to nothing compared to old school hardware.
We boomers had to use all our savings and work beside school to get the gear. Over 4000 $ for 1 Synth.
And a top synth for 9.99... that’s Robin Hood prices.
And if we were lucky our dad would beat us with a stick... if we were lucky! 😂 😂 😂
Ain’t that so @LinearLineman ? We must set things in perspective for the kids 😆 😝 😂
So, in other words, we shouldn't complain much about subscriptions or something, or subscriptions do suck and you're just marvelling at how cheap everything is compared to years ago, or...? (Just trying to figure out your take amongst the amusing rambling mate.)
Looking at the potential business opportunity, I think a subscription model would work for customers that want to improve using Masters Teachers and need:
Sites doing this well exist:
And the 800 pound Gorilla in subscription software: Adobe.
To make it work: pick a niche you know well... like Gospel Music composing/production. This site does not cater to the niche and you're potential contribution is not going to get recognized.
I'd expect a student of what you might have to offer would pay
$10-25 a month if they believed it would insure their success in that field.
Well done.
I definitely don’t pay for subscriptions to software. I would consider it, but I’m not sure what it would take to get get me to go that route. I know for say Neo Soul Keys Studio, I don’t see any reason why I’d be buying a subscription. If you got some new sounds in it like Yamaha CP 80 or something I’d be fine with an IAP for something like that.
No subscription whatsoever. When Auxy turned to the subscription model, I deleted it immediately, along with the IAPs I had already purchased. If Gadget and Cubasis were going that direction too, I would be done with iOS music making. I don‘t like the concept at all.
A great tune is called "Never on Sunday." I'd parody the lyrics as to a subscription model for ANY software to be "Never on days ending in Y."
I pay a reoccurring rent for a place to live. Car insurance, storage, phone, etc. eat monthly into my sporadic musician income.
Everybody want those monthly payments. Soon, you'll be paying more for those goodies than your rent.
The "American Dream" is to buy a house and stop paying rent.
I don't rent musical instruments (fine for kids learning...).
I don't need the latest and greatest. There is ONE THING Neo Soul Keys needs, which is to make it an app and not an "audio unit" (whatever THAT actually is).
So PLEASE don't make that feature a rental!
I use an antiquated version of Microsoft Word (that I bought). That will be the case for ANY software that goes rental.
This is an unfortunate trend everywhere - e.g., Uber (rent a ride). Throwaway, plastic culture. No "pride of ownership." And when the buyer ties of the app, they will stop the subscription. I'd rather pay a bigger chunk once, with free upgrades in perpetuity.
It works just fine.
Neo Soul Keys is fantastic, buy if I'm going to rent a Fender Rhodes electric piano every month, it better come with Roadies. Wait - I OWN an actual, 1974, 88 key Fender Rhodes stage model electric piano (but no Roadies...).