Should Steinberg have the motto of NetFlix?

That of course is a good motto too. I have nothing against copy protection, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the performance of the program…others in the past have claimed so, how valid that is I don’t know :question: I haven’t noticed, my uses are very basic, and don’t hit things very hard I guess.

Honestly I haven’t followed the music industry and the issues as a whole over the years. I have however heard many things over the years. I don’t know if ‘piracy’ is solely to blame for the music industries problems. I CAN say that the PRICE of going to concerts is nearly a cost prohibitive proportions. We were thinking about going to a concert a few weeks ago…at near $200 per ticket, though I could actually afford it without losing my house or anything, but I just said ‘forget THAT crap’ … I have far more important & things of absolute necessity things to spend my money on…so we were concert-less, and the artist has two less audience members. Now had the tickets been like $50.00 each we would have went. Question is, how many OTHERS were of the same mind-set as us? Would the concert have brought in, 5 thousand, 10 thousand more people had the tickets been less expensive? I for one, will not spend $200 per ticket to see damn $#%&@%* JESUS! …if he really existed that is :unamused:

But…according to the interview with Kevin Spacy, he was claiming that at least by NetFlix’s motto, of having a fair price itself is the reason for less piracy, and success of the company. People will pay a super reasonable price, rather than bother stealing it, and I PERSONALLY I fully AGREE! For ourselves, and THIS is the sole reason why the BlockBuster movie rental business has FAILED…BlockBusters motto was … “Give the customer what they want, when they want it, charge a fair price (For US and our BlockBuster company that is!) and if the customer brings back our movies 10 minutes late, we’ll stick it to up right up the stink hole” … “and we’ll also make them pay for our ridiculous expenses!” I know, I’ve done work in a blockBuster building, their lighting control systems alone were over the top complicated and ridiculously expenses. Though we could very well AFFORD to rent a movie at BlockBuster, we REFUSED to rent their movies at some point on principle! Instead we began renting ALL our movies at RedBox, for just $1.00 per movie!!! Wew NEVER have rented SO many movies before in our lives! No need to download/steal movies as such a ridiculously low price…hell it’s not even worth getting on the computer by price comparison! So, before BlockBusters demise (good riddance you MoFo’s) RedBox got ALL our business…and without a single doubt, with RedBoxe’s low, low price I’d have to say that we spent FAR more money overall at RedBox than at BlockBuster, even though BlockBusters rates were MANY times more expensive PER movie!

Now take Steinberg… just HOW LOW would they have to sell their software where people would NOT bother to crack to code, or NOT bother to download a cracked version? I’m betting if their prices were a lot lower, they would sell TENS OF HOUSANDS of more Steinberg software copies, as in my BlockBuster VS RedBox example! But instead, they keep their prices HIGH and have far less actual BUYERS. :bulb:

In my own case, I’m a hobby musician/recordist. I and others I know personally, simply don’t need to spend $500-$600 to upgrade …and I’m talking JUST Cubase…HOWEVER…if the price of say Cubase 7, prolly soon to be version 8 were say, under $200…I couldn’t resist and might buy it anyway for the hell of it. It certainly wouldn’t be the 1st time I bought software I never ended up using…like WaveLab! :unamused: Another reason holding me back is, if Steinberg also made it possible to run Cubase 7 or 8 on a Win XP 32 system, where I wouldn’t have to upgrade anything ELSE, I would be considering it even more. So if I had to buy Cubase 7/8 AND trash ALL my hardware & other software…it would be more tempting. For a hobby, all those expenses are just not worth it for me personally. My buddy who uses Cubase feels the same way…and he has more income to blow than me.

No, well…I probably miss-quoted Kevin Spacy on that figure! :smiley: :laughing: :mrgreen: I guess I should have found a link of what he said exactly! But I was lazy last night, and I saw him talking on TV last night.

The POINT remains the same and I’m pretty sure I got, and am conveying the gist of what he was saying.

Blockbuster didn’t fail because of their late fees. They were just made obsolete by DVDs in vending machines and internet streaming….
Steinberg COULD (of course) sell more copies by lowering their price but then they make less profit per sale. The correct price is the one that maximizes profit. If the price is too high then there are not as many sales if the price is too low then there is not enough profit per sale. This is how the correct price is determined.

No, I didn’t mean BlockBuster LATE fee’s were ‘alone’ responsible for their demise. Overall, yes…the vending machines like the popular RedBox DVD’s for 5 times lower the price, as well as the RedBox late fee’s are $1.00 per day…as opposed to BlockBusters laate fee’s of $5.00 per day. At the end of the day, it was the PRICE differences that made the difference…the same with NetFlix, which I know people who use NetFlix, and would never go to BlockBuster again (before they went away).


Your description of setting of price does make good sense, but just how accurate that is simply can’t be known by regular people, let alone CEO’s of major companies. I for one will not go by what any company CLAIMS the set prices of ANYTHING is. Another example is SafeWay grocery store vs Wal-Mart stores for certain foods…we can pay $5.99 for Nestlie French Vanilla Coffee creamer at Safeway, yet we BUY it at Wal-Mart for only $2.99… and they have their highly complicated SET PRICES by so called experts! :unamused:

Now, I bet if Wal-Mart sold copies of Cubase, and were ALLOWED to sell it at a price THEY wanted…as opposed to what they’d be FORCED to … for the fair competition BS, they’d sell it for an unheard of low price.

With this I simply don’t believe that if Steinberg lowered their prices, they’d lose money, but would actually make more overall. But then again, they have their existing user base of incessant upgraders, and I’m betting these people make up for a major share of their income, and you can only get so much out of these people…on the other hand, you have newcomers, and people who do NOT keep upgrading…it’s THESE people that I would guess that could bring in more buyers & upgraders if the prices were lowered. As I keep saying, if say Cubase 8 was super cheap, I would probably buy it…it would be a 1st upgrade in more than a decade! But at $500-$600 or so, I will definitely NOT, Though I can afford it without fear of death, it’s simply not good money spent for a handful of hours per month I actually spend on music…Not because I don’t WANT to, I just don’t have the luxury of spending that much time on it.

It’s not valid to compare Steinberg with Netflix. You pay a subscription for Netflix and your money’s gone, and if you stop paying your subscription your content is also gone, and you have nothing at all.

Thank-you!

There is no comparison here to Steinberg. Pandora or similar, maybe. Artists get peanuts from pandora, what about netflix-exclusive actors? I bet they make a little more than peanuts!

True dat my bro’s …Steinberg cannot be completely compared to NetFlix…but that was never the POINT to compare really…what I’m hearing, is talk on the defensive of Steinberg & excuses. Jumping JaHEAsus what LOYALTY here! Next, I’ll be strung up like the good Ol’ days of old, and put at the back of the bus like my forefathers, or worse drug on a dirt road by Yahoo’s! :laughing:

The POINT that I our very lovely & sexy Kevin Spacy was trying to make, was to say that the music industry failed to deliver in the current market & world we live in, but NetFlix delivers…much like RedBox delivers. And NOW that consumers can download JUST the one song at a time that THEY want at any given time, instead of buying an artists crappy CD where there one or two songs you can even stand to listen to, THAT is DELIVERY of what is wanted in this day & age my jungle buddies!..like years ago when I bought the Fire Fall album…which fits my ‘alternative’ lifestyle…as boy bands & Justin Bieber do. It doesn’t really matter if the product is something you consume ONCE or you can keep consuming it time after time…and if you’re a fly, you can actually regurgitate your meal after you eat it, and then eat it again :smiley:

Oh! Now I see! You ARE talking about the current state of the music industry after all!

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

The movie industry learned from the music industry fall that began with file sharing. Apple finished the grave with it’s depreciation of the value ($$) of music. That hurt more than the major labels. It hurt every artist.

Have fun poking the bear…

what’s funny is I canceled NetFlix about 2 years ago as it has nothing worth watching. It’s basically the worlds largest collection of unwatchable movies.

Put your damn glasses on and read some sub-titles! :laughing:

I do tend to agree though!

I did a free 30 day trial and never actually watched ANY of the free content. Seriously, not a SINGLE movie or show.

I watch a couple of movies per month, it’s worth the monthly fee for me.

Even so, it is still leaps-and-bounds ahead of network television, quality wise. I can force myself to watch even the worst NetFlix, but I can’t watch network television.

There are some really good NetFlix titles too. Stuff you can’t find anywhere else; not even the cut-out bins. :wink:

Aloha guys,

Just to chime in.

To me Netflix is about consumption and Steinberg is about creation.

my 2cents
{‘-’}

Honestly I’ve never used NetFlix myself :slight_smile: We use RedBox quite often!..I’d say about 1 to 2 DVD’s per week. We are NOT movie critics, and I can enjoy most movies for what they are. Some are absolutely fantastic, sure some suck donky balls. Lately my sister has been loaning us her movies…she owns well over 300 movies, maybe 400. With RedBox (or NetFlix), along with friends and/or family sharing movies with you, there’s little need to steal a movie by way of download these days. Besides, you can always rent, and copy it…that’s only HALF stealing :smiley: :laughing:
As for the major networks, I disagree…and to not like it is probably more so a mind set of again, that ‘perceived’ value thing… we use an antenna for FREE TV here and we get a LOT of stations…it’s as clear as cable & satellite… did I mention FREE? We have several TV shows that we watch on the networks faithfully, that we highly enjoy…“24” …“Grimm” … “Under The Dome” … “Hannibal” … “Super Natural” and others. There’s the PBS stations that take the place of Discovery Channel & History type channels. There’s channels that play classic movies only, channels that play classic TV shows etc. Many times we get caught up on watching great stuff on FREE TV, that we have to hold off on watching DVD’s…or we’ll just record what’s on TV & then watch it later…to record something off TV…is THAT stealing too? Oh, well.

Back on topic…about Steinberg having a motto similar to NetFlix, but more ‘applying the logic’. To me, it seems that their motto is to “keep price inflated for perceived value” and “milk the customer for all their worth” … Just me I guess. For example…Take the cost of OWNING a DVD Movie…how much does THAT cost you to buy the LATEST movie that came out on DVD when it was just playing at the theater weeks before??? Oh, maybe $19.00? Now how much did the movie cost to MAKE? I’d guess MILLIONS more than the cost to develop, or should I say, change/alter Cubase into a so called ‘New Version’ to keep selling to you. Sure, it’s there’s a ‘Supply & Demand’ factor here…and Wal-Mart (like DVD movies) isn’t selling copies of Cubase by the millions.

Steinberg can not only take a hint from the motto/mind set of NetFlix, but also from RedBox, as well as from Wal-Mart…oh you laugh now, but how long ago was it that you thought it absurd that having a RedBox DVD vending machine at a grocery store, or at a McDonald’s fast food joint? At least DAW softwares & VSTi softwares can be downloaded directly from the manufacturer these days…a good step…it wasn’t that long ago the idea was seen as absurd! BUT…just THINK about THAT for a bit… you are DOWNLOADING music software, they’ve NOW cut out MILLIONS of dollars in production costs for themselves by comparison to mass producing disks, boxes, wrapping etc, etc…How much LESS is Steinberg CHARGING you for all they are SAVING? I don’t know about you, but when I take it up the Ol dirt spot, I like a little kiss.

There’s no doubt in my mind, that Software companies can LEARN from the movie industry & DVD market. Give the product to the masses, at such a good price, that EVERYONE who has ANY interest or curiosity in DAW recording will want to buy a copy of the latest Cubase…even Logic users! :laughing: Instead of the demographic that is prone to downloading ‘pirated’ copies, out of curiosity or interest in trying a different DAW (the ‘try before you buy’ crowd…or the ‘Try & try Again’ crowd) …if the price was much more reasonable, they’d ‘BUY before they TRY’ :exclamation:

Maybe software companies should do what is done with the “Guns For Cash” … where people turn in their guns, illegal or legal…they get CASH for it, and ‘No Questions Asked’! But with software, you can turn in your downloaded/pirated software and, and least get a great discount for the software…with ‘No Questions Asked’ :exclamation: :bulb: :exclamation:

DAWDAMN! I’m such a visionary! :mrgreen:

@ Tom - “poking the bear” :smiley:

:laughing:

But really, think about this…isn’t that what makers of DAW softwares, including our Steinmasters are doing? But with every new regurgitation, they throw in some new vegetables, like corn… or even ‘carrots’

:wink:

You could compare Steinberg to Adobe and what they started doing. Software in the clouds, monthly or yearly subscriptions. I don’t like that model.

On the other hand you could compare ITunes store to Netflix or a subscription music services…

Though you obviously can’t compare everything to other things…you can apply the logic of one thing to another thing.

Kevin Spacy was making comparisons of NetFlix to the ‘Music Industry’ … I took it as downloading mp3 songs & such vs downloading movies, not recording software of course.

I was simply applying the ‘logic’ not exactly making ‘comparisons’ between NetFlix to DAW software…Steinberg, Cakewalk, whatever you like. The downloading of movies vs the downloading of DAW software…in each case you can ‘continually’ watch/use either of the said ‘obtained’ goods. You can like it, or not, and then delete what you don’t like, keep what you like. …this can be ‘compared’. You can also buy what you ‘like’ in either case…though with DAW software, it has the edge of more likely to BUY in the end…I think anyway. Several Cubasers in the past have even confessed doing this…of course they were flamed to death with spears! lol

But again, applying the ‘logic’ of NetFlix & mp3 downloading, to NetFlix & DAW software…is 1st and foremost, the PRICING, then supply & demand. Now I have no idea of any statistics, but I would venture to GUESS that if the price of DAW software came way down, there would be far ‘more sales’ made, and venture to guess that there would be far less code cracking attempts, and venture to guess, far less downloading of said cracked DAW softwares. I would also venture to guess that these ‘extra sales’ would make up for such losses due to piracy :exclamation:

As an example of sorts… Anyone remember what a 40" flat panel TV cost about 15 years ago? Somewhere in the area of $10,000!!! :open_mouth: You can go to Wal-Mart now and buy a 55" flat panel TV for around $600 or so!!! Now, just how many big panel TV’s did people have in their homes when the price was $10,000 …NOT MANY! Going in homes for a living for many years, EVERYONE has BIG TV’s now…several of them in a single home!
With the ABOVE …it’s getting to the point now where almost EVERYONE is a ‘Music Producer’!!! Even my nephews, cousins, etc, etc are all budding music producers…guess what, they’re not even MUSICIANS!!! Oh, and guess WHAT they’re using??? Apple Garage Band… and things like that. I just read last night that Cubase 7 is actually INCLUDING their Sequel stuff for the budding music producers & pimple faced teenagers, and losers lol…Steinbergs answer to Garage Band I guess. Now it’s obvious to me that Steinberg see’s at SOME of the potential of their demographic, but not ALL :bulb: Though, they and others are STILL holding onto the ‘Build it and they will come’ & ‘keep the price high/inflated and they will have a better/higher perceived value’. BOTH may be valid of course… to some degree anyway.

As an aside, and keeping in mind of what someone said in another thread, that ‘warez collectors’ prolly don’t spend much time actually USING downloaded software, but are far more busy ‘accumulating’ more of it. Have any of ‘you’ known someone like this? :bulb:

The first flat panel was created in the 60’s. Get yer fax wight! :laughing: