A sigh of relief breathed from many in the audio production space after the software company this week Waves turned a plan around to sell its audio plugin library exclusively via subscription. The subscription offers Waves Essential for $14.99 per month and Waves Ultimate for $24.99 per month and is launching as a permanent replacement for buying perpetual licenses for individual products. Now Meir Shashoua, chief technical officer and co-founder of Waves, says those options will return “as soon as possible.”
For the first week after the Waves creative access subscription was initially announced, the move upset many music producers and sound engineers who have already paid subscriptions for a variety of creative software, such as Avid Pro Tools, Adobe Creative Suite, Universal Audio’s UAD Spark, and many sound libraries.
Now, waves notes on its website that users “who already have perpetual licenses can update your plugins again and receive a second license through the Waves Update Plan—again, just like before. This option will also be available in addition to and independently of the subscription program.”
While it’s a win for users, it’s unknown how long Waves will hold the perpetual license. Company has been dealing with piracy of its software for years, with Waves Plugins being one of the most cracked software for amateur audio engineers. The subscription model for Waves seemed imminent, with most of the bigger names in audio software already offering production software library subscriptions to drive higher recurring revenue and prevent piracy. For example, Adobe reported that it has significantly reduced the piracy of its products since the launch of Creative Suite and individual annual licenses for software such as Photoshop and Premiere Pro.
Despite the backlash, some users may find the Waves Creative Access subscription useful – existing users who continually update their plugins each year with the Waves Update Plan (which adds support for updated digital audio workstations and operating systems) may end up saving money annually, as it Essential package, at $149, is about the same price as upgrading two or three plugins per year.
To convince new or occasional users to pay for a subscription to over 100 audio plugins, Waves has also launched StudioVerse, a community-based library of plugin chains currently consisting of custom plugin presets and favorite plugin combos curated by famous music producers such as Chris Lord-Alge, Manny Marroquin, and Young Guru. Waves subscribers could use the StudioVerse plugin’s AI in their DAW to analyze their mix and recommend plugin chains to shape the sound of their music. This feature is only accessible through the Waves Creative Access subscription.
So for now, sound engineers who rely on Waves can safely choose whichever software package is best suited for their work, whether it’s a plugin or two or a monthly subscription to a library. With this model, it might be the most accessible the company has ever been (legally).
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