Pro Tools 12 - The Blowback Pro Tools 12 was announced at the NAMM show, but not many liked what they heard about. This applies to you even if you're not a Pro Tools user because of the influence it will have on all sectors of the audio software industry.
1. What's so new? In a nutshell, Pro Tools 12 will only be available via subscription. You can either go month to month at $29.95 per month or $299 per year, or get a "perpetual" license that allows you to purchase the software for $899. You also need a subscription for your hardware as well so that the software continues to work with it.
Here's the rub - If you stop paying your monthly subscription, the Pro Tools software will disappear from your computer. And a perpetual license is of little help since you still have to pay $899 per year to get any support or upgrades. Stop paying and the app remains on your computer, but no updates are available to you.
2. Large facilities aren't happy. The major film and television studios and large post houses that all run Pro Tools and Avid picture editors realize that it's going to cost them a lot more money every year to keep their systems running. Imaging if you have 200+ systems and you have to pay big dough every year just to keep working?
Plus there's an issue of putting anything in the cloud, which violates the Marvel standard for protecting film data. Kind of defeats the purpose of being tied to the cloud.
3. Musicians and producers aren't happy. It's going to cost more money per year and you're going to be tied at the hip with Avid closer than ever, which scares a lot of musicians. But most of all, there's no advantage to using Pro Tools 12 because there are no new features except for cloud collaboration, which is of limited use to most users.
4. Avid's not the only one headed to the cloud. Adobe was the pioneer of the subscription model, but this is new to audio. That said Cakewalk Sonar and Slate Digital are going that way too.
5. Will a new alternative emerge? Nuendo once made a lot of headway into the film and video post community until it was bought by Yamaha, who ignored that sector afterwards. It's a very powerful and capable system, and with great third-party IO hardware now widely available, don't be surprised to see Nuendo getting another close look. Of course, if Universal Audio ever bought or came out with a DAW, the discussion would probably be over.
Outlook: There's a lot more to this story than you read above, although there's not enough space to get into it here. However, if you're a Pro Tools user, you're going to see some changes in the next 12 months, either transferring to the subscription model, perhaps Avid backing down on some level to something easier to digest, or having to change to a new DAW app.
If you're not a Pro Tools user, expect your favorite DAW to at least test the subscription waters soon, especially if Avid is successful. |
