In the video game world, the DAW is free. Think about it. What are the two biggest game builders around?
Unity and Unreal engine. Not Unity LE and Unreal lite, the real things. Blender (the 3D animation and design platform) is also free.
So why do us audio guys still have to pay for our software? Does this tell us something about the direction we’re heading? In 30 years (and thanks to the guys at Reaper), might DAWs one day be free as well?
I’m sure they will. Does Pro-Tools still make you pay money to use more than 24 tracks? Maybe it wasn’t 24, but there was a limit. I think it will be like name-brand medication. A lot of people are still gonna pay for the big guns like Cakewalk and Pro-Tools, but there will plenty of serviceable substitutes (like Reaper) that are much cheaper or possibly even free.
I’m a big fan of REAPER !
I got Pro Tools First with my Scarlett interface but I didn’t even bother setting it up because I learned that you can only record 3 songs, which can only be stored on the Cloud?? What ? You can’t even do what you want with your own music? Three songs? That’s ridiculous. They just want you to pay their ridiculous prices on an upgrade. I don’t feel much trust for their brand. In fact, everything about them bothers me.
REAPER is incredible. They’re the kind of company that makes you want to give back to them.
Seems like there’s four distinct ways of of doing this:
There definitely was a 24 track limit. Because I remember paying thousands of dollars for Pro Tools 1, then being pissed as hell when I hit the 24 tracks lol. Even now, there are key commands and functions you don’t get in the standard package. They will never be able to do away with PT standard, because the HD version still costs way too much for most people. And they’ll never be able to do away with HD because something like 83% of avids revenue is high end users (you can look at their shareholders report).
If Reaper keeps developing features, at the rate its going, I think it could be a hands down better DAW than Logic and ProTools standard within 5-7 years. Because its rate of improvement is just insane compared to other DAWs. I don’t think Reaper will ever have the cash to compete with PT HD in the development department. In fact, I’m fairly certain they won’t. Avid buys distressed companies, acquires their assets, then assimilates their intellectual property into their product lines. Thats how they avoid ever paying full price for R&D. Reaper is almost total opposite, where they seem to be about value, innovation, and pure commitment to one product. Its pretty rare imo.
Know why? Because they listen to their consumers! I wish all companies were as open as Reaper. They’re kind of like the Firefox of DAWs. I agree completely, the leaps they’ve made in the past four years I’ve used it are nothing short of astounding. They don’t make you shell out thousands for every new addition either, your license is good for what is it, two whole updated versions? Their independent use discount is awesome too, really gives a lot of the DIY low-budget people a powerful tool to use without breaking the bank. Props to Cockos. I use it for pretty much everything now.
Seems like you could circumvent the 24-track thing by bouncing. Still a massive headache though, but who do they think they’re going to deter?
Hint: 1, 2, and 3 involve paying money, which means they are not free. Call me old fashioned, but ‘free’ means ‘not paying anything’ to me.
The guys at Magix are the same, but both are utterly dedicated to profit. They listen and innovate, but the rate of improvement has been slowing recently.
Exactly. I also love the “free” plugins demos that big companies give, but it turns out you need a $300 iLok to use them. I have one, but that’s still deliberately misleading. If you’re giving away something for free, I’m not giving you my card number, I don’t want to give you my name, and I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops. Just let me download the damn thing, (cough cough) Steve Slate.
I don’t see DAWs being free any time real soon because the music production market is much smaller than the video game market. Video game market is huuuuuuge, and it pretty much decided that charging developers a fee to create games was slowing down the industry rather than speeding it up.
Musicians are different. We have too much emotional connection with our software and gear. Programmers just want to make their product and sell it. Musicians want to have gold spray painted vinyl tacked to their walls. They want trophies and they want to put big names in parentheses next to their names.
Programmers are a very different breed from musicians. I don’t see a lot of correlation between their business models.
You mean those Gold Discs I got aren’t GOLD???
Who charged you $300 for an ilok?
Hey, flash player is a free plugin lol.
Dang. That’s mind-blowing to really think about what are emotional connections to instruments essentially are, how they are different from other people connections (to things), and what exactly the connection is to, why the connection forms. Like…am I connected to my computer? Or am I more connected to what’s on it? Or am I more connected to what I think it does for me? Is a musician truly more emotionally connected to his computer than a programmer? If you take a way the DAW you’re not connected to it at all right? But if you take away a programmers complier, reshaper, and GUI designer, then detach his computer from the internet, the thing is a damn paperweight? Right? …So emotional attachment? How does that work? 
I was thinking about this when I was in law school. Lawyers literally have nothing to sell but their time. Unlike the music world, there’s no ‘gear’ to drool over. There’s really nothing to ‘buy’ that has the equivalent substance and necessity that a briefcase full of microphones or a portable 12 space rack of preamps and interfaces do to an audio guy. We can’t do our jobs without a thing. We must have a monitoring source. We must have a device that captures audio, however simple that is. A lawyer? Nope. He talks, he gets paid. He writes a letter, he gets paid. Make a threat, he gets paid.
…what are some other professions where there’s a propensity to attach to gear like this one?