What is Apple's pricing strategy for Logic Pro?

[darkanddivine]

It's been interesting watching the development of Logic Pro over the years as an Ableton/Mac user. They have waxed and waned a little, at times really knocking it out of the park with new features - and at others falling a little behind the new kids on the block.

The new updates, however, are very impressive. The GUI of Logic for iPad caught my eye, and some of the new instrument in 10.8 are superb. I came along expecting Logic 10.8 to be a paid upgrade, and it isn't. I noticed that it's no longer Logic (Number) and simply Logic Pro, indicating the end of numbered updates.

I can't find much info on any desktop Apple apps that are paid subscriptions. And Logic hasn't been a paid upgrade for existing users since what appears to be 2013. I know Apple has the deepest of pockets and they need you to buy hardware, not software, and I heard that subscriptions is a growing area of growth for Apple.

In my mind this means one of two scenarios for Logic - and I'd be interested in what you think.

• Scenario 1: Apple is going to leave Logic Pro as a "carrot." You have to buy a Mac to use it, so an additional $200 is a nice add-on for revenues (assuming pro audio is a very small segment of their customer base.) However, now they've got Logic for iPad, that's another $50 per year, plus another hardware device to support it. Assuming a 4 year lifespan on an iPad, that's another $200 over the $200 Logic license, and 2 machines rather than one.
• Scenario 2: Apple will turn Logic Pro in its current form into Logic "Legacy" Edition. This will remain updated but will recieve no new features, and could be merged with Garageband which will also remain free. Logic Pro for desktop will have the Logic for iPad GUI ported over to modernise it, and this will be a subscription rather than a never ending perpetual license. Apple will need to work out how to balance this, if they're already asking users for $50 per year for the iPad app.

What do you think is going on here? And are there any examples of Apple running desktop app subscriptions that might give a hint?

 

[ArkSingularity]

Personally I'd be kinda surprised if they made it a subscription model on the Mac anytime in the near future, mostly just because they haven't really been trying to overhaul it over the past several years. They've added plenty of interesting stuff, but for the most part, they haven't really tried to change a winning formula.

I suppose there would be a lot of money to be made if they did go for the subscription model, but if money were the direct driving factor for maintaining Logic, Apple could have easily done that years ago. I suppose it's mainly just meant to be a really solid DAW to get people into the Apple ecosystem, and for that purpose, it works really well.

Logic is very easy to use (and very complete) compared to some of the other DAWs I've tried. Its painless workflow is one of its biggest selling points in my opinion.

 

[MajorFubar]

I can't make my mind up if I'd be tempted by a subscription Mac Logic Pro. On the one hand I object to subscription models: perpetual payment to rent something you never own (like how most people now consume music and video content). On the other hand, it financially-incentivises app development: there have been a few nice additions to LPX over the last ten years but I don't think I'm being unfair to say it's not exactly being 'proactively developed'.

 

[rm5]

• Scenario 1: Apple is going to leave Logic Pro as a "carrot." You have to buy a Mac to use it, so an additional $200 is a nice add-on for revenues (assuming pro audio is a very small segment of their customer base.) However, now they've got Logic for iPad, that's another $50 per year, plus another hardware device to support it. Assuming a 4 year lifespan on an iPad, that's another $200 over the $200 Logic license, and 2 machines rather than one.
• Scenario 2: Apple will turn Logic Pro in its current form into Logic "Legacy" Edition. This will remain updated but will recieve no new features, and could be merged with Garageband which will also remain free. Logic Pro for desktop will have the Logic for iPad GUI ported over to modernise it, and this will be a subscription rather than a never ending perpetual license. Apple will need to work out how to balance this, if they're already asking users for $50 per year for the iPad app.

Logic for iPad is absolutely useless for me, and I've already made my case on this forum about that. In my opinion, Apple's really trying to squeeze out as much money as possible from customers by making an iPad version that's a subscription.

Honestly, the Mac version of Logic has been getting geared towards EDM people ever since the 10.5 update with Live Loops. Less attention has been paid to stuff I use (i.e. external sample libraries), and the performance of such libraries (and Logic in general) has gotten worse since the 10.5 update.

Look, Avid did the same thing with Pro Tools fairly recently—now you have to pay $1000/year for PT. Sonar (who made a DAW called Cakewalk) is gonna do the same thing with their new platforms Next and Sonar. A lot of products are going to a subscription model now.

I will tell you, that between Logic's performance degradation in the past few years, along with the possibility that it will move to a subscription model... I might be forced to stop using it at some point.

 

[olavsu1]

Sonar (who made a DAW called Cakewalk) is gonna do the same thing with their new platforms Next and Sonar. A lot of products are going to a subscription model now.

What? It was Cakewalk who made DAW called Sonar.
the original Cakewalk is dead by parent company bankruptsy. Now are Sonar developed by BandLab, who infected Sonar with spyware.

 

[rm5]

What? It was Cakewalk who made DAW called Sonar.
the original Cakewalk is dead by parent company bankruptsy. Now are Sonar developed by BandLab, who infected Sonar with spyware.

I'll admit defeat here, I was completely wrong about that! My apologies...

 

[thingstoponder]

I don’t think there will be a new paid upgrade. If there is it will be subscription. Same with Final Cut. Remember, Final Cut is still on 10 and it’s been 12 years. I used to think they wouldn’t change the version number because they were both X and Apple loves that number, but some time ago they dropped X from the names of both. I’d say there’s basically no chance of a Logic 11 and Final Cut Pro 11, but I wouldn’t rule out a subscription model.

As for the business model? I can’t imagine they make money directly on them, but they do sell hardware because people love these apps and don’t want to worry about paid $500 upgrades every year and dongles and all the other stuff you deal with with pro software.

 

[dropadrop]

Some of the new features require a semi-recent device. I expect this is quite delibarate, so people will upgrade, and likely upgrade to something with a bigger drive.

This also goes to performance upgrades. Competitors have an incentive to make their software work on a set of computers that is as broad as possible because it expands the group of potential customers. This also goes for the upgrades they charge for, if it improves performance people might consider it an investment to keep the old device. For Apple it’s opposite, they won’t get money for the software, but might be able to get you to buy a new computer.

Logic for ipad pricing could be a test to gauge the popularity of subscriptions. It could also be a test to see how many customers also buy the tablet. The ipad logic seems quite optimised and makes me assume they could make performance better on macs as well if they wanted.

It’s very hard to say. Very likely they are calculating the value of a customer / family and looking at ways to increase it. There are many ways to do that, and subscriptions might not be the most effective.

Imagine for a moment how there product management might prioritise different work while choosing what to do:
- Improve performance. Could bring some new customers or keep old ones. Would reduce computer sales.
- AI mastering etc. Will work for marketing and make people go wow. Will increase computer sales. Will show value of the neural engine and possibly mean the computer upgrade is to a more expensive model, or at least faster CPU

Assuming performance is not bad then it’s not a hard choice. In a perfect world you’d get both of course.

 

[MajorFubar]

The most interesting development that's happened in the 16 months since this thread was started is the launch of Logic 11 for Mac and Logic 2 for iPad. Crucially, Apple chose to not to go down the subscription route for Logic 11, which almost certainly means, for better or for worse, they probably won't change that strategy any time soon. I remain committed to the POV I posted in #3 that while I hate subscription models with a passion, they do at least incentivise development, especially for a company like Apple which mainly sells hardware plus pay-to-view and pay-to-read subscription-services.

We live in a weird world where people expect their apps and OS's to be constantly updated for free when 30 years ago you bought something like Cubase for your Atari ST on about 5 floppy discs and when they brought out a new version you didn't expect them to post every purchaser a new bunch of discs for nothing.

 

[MajorFubar]

...that said, the industry doesn't play as fairly as it once did, so is it really surprising how customers have grown a sense of entitlement?

Hackers like DosDude have proved time and time again that with a little ethical hacking even OS's can be patched to run effectively on computers on which Apple have started the obsolescence time-bomb by officially excluding the hardware. As a result, customers have grown a pretty healthy scepticism, for example why will certain recent features in Apple apps only run on M-chip Macs when the later generations of Intel Mac Pros and Intel MBPs are obviously powerful enough? There didn't used to be this level of distrust between manufacturers and customers: the industry is entirely responsible for creating it, along with the resulting customer sense of entitlement.