BIG WAVES NEWS

[Bob Womack]

Email from Waves:

Dear Waves community, My name is Meir Shashoua, and I’m the CTO and Co-Founder of Waves Audio.

Over the past few days, many of you have expressed concerns about our decision to discontinue perpetual plugin licenses and our move to an exclusive plugin subscription model. I would like to start by apologizing for the frustration we have caused many of you, our loyal customers. We understand that our move was sudden and disruptive, and did not sufficiently take into consideration your needs, wishes, and preferences. We are genuinely sorry for the distress it has caused.

After respectfully listening to your concerns, I want to share with you that we are bringing back the perpetual plugin license model, side-by-side with the new subscriptions. You will again be able to get plugins as perpetual licenses, just as before.

In addition, those of you who already own perpetual licenses will once again be able to update your plugins and receive a second license via the Waves Update Plan—again, just as before. This option, too, will be available alongside and independently of the subscription program.

We are currently putting all our efforts into making perpetual licenses available to you again, as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you can keep up-to-date on this news page, where we will post the latest updates on perpetual license availability.

I would like you to know that we are committed to you, our users. We listened to your feedback, and we will continue to listen to you. Waves is a company filled with users and creators, just like you, and we are all as passionate about the products as you are. With this in mind, we will strive to find the way to make things right by you, and hopefully regain your trust.

Thank you for your feedback and continued support—I wish you all the best,

Meir Shashoua
CTO and Co-Founder, Waves Audio

I like the fact that he STARTED with an apology. He got it.

Bob

[jim1960]

It's nice when a company quickly realizes they've made a pretty big error in reading the room and rectifies it in a way that doesn't create even more animosity.

I didn't think the sub plan was going to work out well for Waves anyway. Most people don't like having to subscribe so they're going to be very choosy. From a quality standpoint, I don't think Waves stands up well against Plugin Alliance and, given the choice between the two, I think PA would grab the lion's share.

Personally, I'm happy with this news. I don't use a lot of Waves plugins anymore so I wouldn't miss the vast majority of the ones I own, however, I really do like the CLA Bass Module and I'd have missed that one quite a bit.

[AcousticDreams]

It is so very nice that they are listening to the public. There are a few Waves Plugins that Bob, Duplemeter and others recommended, that I did not have the chance to get.

The Big Question: Will they still offer those individual plug ins at their old great prices? Most everything was in the $29 to $39 dollars. Or will they now inflate those prices? From a marketing standpoint, this is their chance to raise the prices on individual plugin's making the subscription look more promising. I hope they don't do that.

What is your guess?

[DanR]

Thanks for sharing. It's good to know that they do listen to their customers.

[b1j]

Some products you just don’t want to rent.

Like land-line phones.

[j3ffr0]

I now see that I got the same note. I was mad enough that I wasn't going to read anything from Waves. However, the fact that he/they listened and are trying to make it right -- I guess I'm not even mad anymore. Everyone makes mistakes.

Good save!

[KevWind]

An Interesting turn of events even though I had the Platinum bundle I only ever used a few and since Waves does not support AAX-DSP I really don't have much use anymore ...

[jim1960]

I feel like we should have run a thread on all the sales companies had in response to Waves and their self-inflicted wound. I've seen quite a few of them.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by jim1960

I feel like we should have run a thread on all the sales companies had in response to Waves and their self-inflicted wound. I've seen quite a few of them.

I can only assume that they saw AAX- DSP as a sales conflict with their DiGiGrid DSP hardware products

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

I can only assume that they saw AAX- DSP as a sales conflict with their DiGiGrid DSP hardware products

I haven't look at Waves in so long that I had to look up "DiGiGrid DSP" to see what it is.