It's an unpopular opinion, but Waves is actually making a sound business decision, as much as you want to bitch about it online.
(In case you haven't heard: Waves is causing ripples in the audio community for changing their business model from stand-alone plug-in purchases to a subscription
model).
Let's just put it into a business perspective.
First of all, keep in mind that Waves are in the business of making money.
They do so by helping you make your music
sound better, BUT they are not helping you make good music out of the kindness of their hearts. Your dope Soundcloud upload isn't going to help a multi-million dollar company pay for salaries, software development, and server fees.
So knowing that...let's assume they have one million customers.
That's maybe
conservative, maybe overinflated. I don't have their numbers because they are a private company, and the math is simply for demonstration purposes.
As you might know, they built up a discount business model where every customer was waiting for the absolute lowest price (usually $29/plug-in).
This probably sold
a lot of plug-ins but undoubtedly brought in a lot of discount shoppers who would never pay the full price, forcing Waves to ride the discount-promotion-merry-go-round forever.
This is the nature of our industry because musicians and aspiring "music producers" (i.e. anyone with a 2-channel interface, a microphone, and some samples) wear the "Starving Artist" badge on their shoulders with pride and hunt for
discounts wherever possible. It hurts because it's true.
(I personally think the "Starving Artist" mentality is one of the biggest viruses infecting our creative community, but that's a post for another day.)
So if one million customers have an AOV (average order value) of $29 and buy 5 plug-ins in their
lifetime, then that's $145 million in total revenue.
Now let's assume that Waves has pissed off 50% of their customers and are only left with 500,000 paying users for the subscription model.
They have two tiers: $14.99/mo and $24.99/mo.
Assuming that 70% of their remaining customers pay $14.99/mo and the rest pay $24.99/mo, the average subscription price is $17.99.
That's $8,995,999 in revenue every month.
Assuming that they NEVER get another customer again (unlikely), they'll surpass the lifetime value from their previous
model in 16 months. That's a pretty short time frame for a business.
I get it; there's subscription fatigue out there. You're tired of paying for all this stuff every month. But that's not Waves's problem. That's just a poor budgeting decision on your part.
I also like to think that Waves aren't going to pocket this
cash to inflate their checkbooks so they can buy some islands or some shit.
I think they might keep being a good company dedicated to developing good plug-ins for their customers.
Remember: they can only help you make good music if they have the money to do so.
And when you have a solid MRR (monthly recurring revenue), it allows you to make better strategic decisions, take more creative risks, and serve your customers better.
Will it work? I don't know. Time will tell.
(and
maybe you should get the Audio Issues EQ plug-in before I get too inspired and get any hare-brained business model ideas...)
But even with all the hate about this decision going around the shitposting forums, it still is a pretty
sound business decision for a company that wants to stay strong, relevant, and creative.
What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts if they're thoughtful and measured.
But I reserve the right to delete or make fun of any whiny little rage-troll comments, angry that they
can't use their RVox anymore.
Cheers,
Björgvin