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âSpend you money with companies that care about you. Those that donât, kick them to the kerb.â
This is why I dumped Cubase, even though they back-pedalled rather quickly too. Also why Iâm dumping everthing inMusic. They dont even have the sense to back-pedal.
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Takes you quite a long time to do it though, doesnât it? Youâve been saying for I donât know how long youâre abandoning all things InMusic, disgusted as you seem to be with their policies and their software, yet here you still are, venting the same old rant over and over again, month after month. Itâs getting well past tedious by now, if you donât mind me saying so.
InMusic is InMusic. Thatâs one thing. Way of the world, I suppose. BFD3 is a whole other thing though â great (if imperfect) software worked on by, as far as I can tell, some great people â and that is why weâre here.
Why youâre still here, I really donât know.
__
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Heâs a funny dude. They kicked him out of the Pro Tools forum (DUC) because of his strong opinions on Avidâs business practices. In regards to Waves, he said he uses a couple of their plugins on his voice whilst recording his videos. He should stick to his guns and just dump them altogether.
I know Waves are huge, but I think this blunder may hurt them in the long run. Even with them reversing course a bit, most voices are still saying theyâre done with them. They crossed the line. As the whole thing was unfolding, Solid State Logic swooped in to try and take advantage of Wavesâ mistake. Previously, some of their plugins were only available through their subscription model, but now all of their plugins can be purchased as a perpetual license, subscription or even rent-to-own.
Iâve got a handful or so of Wavesâ plugins that I use in every session. Iâm on older hardware, so Iâve never had a need to pay for their WUP scam. If Waves really wanted to make amends, they would just get rid of charging to update their plugins altogether. How freaking ridiculous is that? McDSP is another who started charging for updates. Itâs like they want to penalize the end-user, just because Apple likes to release new OSâs annually?
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Iâm still here because even at my silly low prices, no-one has bought all the BFD stuff. As soon as itâs all gone Iâll have inMusic delete my account which Iâm sure will please you and your fellow fanboys. If inMusic had done the right thing I would have been gone months ago.
That kind of weak acceptance is why companies like inMusic get away with it. Look at how Cubase and Waves have both had the go back on their subsciption models due to customer backlash. Thatâs what can be achieved when you donât say, âI donât like it, but I guess Iâll have to live with it.â
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If I didnât own all of those expansions already, I would have taken them all for the prices you are selling them at, total bargain, I guess that makes me a fan of BFD3 for sure, but not one of whatâs going on with the licensing, there is a difference.
Itâs not cool to see people so disappointed and wanting to leave, at all.
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Itâs not weak acceptance, Anthony, itâs wise acceptance. (If you have to use Adobe to make some of your living, as I do, you quickly learn a thing or two about wise acceptance.) My desire and need to make music is much greater than my loathing for the corporate inferno that, like an insidious disease, is infesting our world.
The biggest problem I have with your endless fulminations is that, in your anger (which, in essence, I fully sympathize with), you keep targetting BFD and InMusic as if theyâre one and the same evil. I think thatâs wrong and highly unfair. To me, BFD, like so many exciting and creative smaller enterprises, got eaten up up by the huge corporate machinery that rules our world. But itâs very much NOT the same thing. You also canât go attacking, say, TC Electronic for all the well-dressed, politely formulated but insulting and infuriating non-service that MusicTribe (which owns TC) treats its customers to. BFD, as I see it, is a bit like all those other smaller companies with great ideas that got eaten up by Apple and/or Microsoft. BFD is actually somewhat fortunate in that it can, to a degree, still continue doing its thing, whereas most smaller companies that are swallowed by the big fish are usually never heard from again.
I might be wrong, but it wouldnât surprise me if a considerable number of InMusicâs personnel and board of directors donât even know what BFD is, let alone than any one of them has ever worked with it. They just happen to own it. Like they own so many things. As I said: way of the world.
Depressing? Yes, a bit. But again: I wanna make music. And in BFD I have found a brilliant, if imperfect, tool to make music with. I hope, with every fibre of my being, that the dedicated and passionate people behind BFD are somehow allowed â in the middle of whatever corporate dynamic they must seek to survive â to continue work and development on what I consider, by some margin, the best solution for virtual drums hitherto created. BFD, when at its best â granted, it can take some doing to make it give its best â is, in my opinion, without competition.
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Thank you for your considered response. I naturally donât agree with a lot of what you wrote (except Iâm sure youâre right in inMusic employees not even knowing what BFD is), but I wonât dissect it point-by-point. All Iâll say is if users hadnât complained about the 30-day licence refresh it would have stayed at 30-days.
For me 90-days is still ridiculous for a perpetual licence, so thatâs why I and others carried on complaining in the vain hope that inMusic would listen. As I have come to realise what type of corporation inMusic are, I realise you might as well spit in the wind.
I would just like to point out that outside this forum (in other forums and the real world - remember that place?) Iâm not as curmudgeonly as I appear here. If I thought BFD (the idea) was crap I would have dumped it before now. Sadly BFD (the program) is not going in a direction I want to follow - I was an early adopter with BFD1.
But like Cubase and Waves found out, in 2023 there is plenty of competition, and unfortunately BFD is not coming from a place even close to market dominance. In fact most people donât even mention it when asked to compile a list of drum programs in other music forums, so you may feel BFD is without competition, but the truth is outside of this forum barely anyone even knows about BFD anymore, the non-competition are beating BFD hands-down and what inMusic are doing is not going to lead it to a place of dominance.
Anyway, enough from me.
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All points taken, but (and itâs only my opinion) none of the others out there, even their latest efforts, come close to what BFD offers in the way of everything really, sound, control etc etc, maybe only their licensing system is better. They really do sound like fake drums to me, all of them.
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To be honest I process drums to buggery and mix with drum machines, so the raw recordings idea isnât that big a selling point to me anymore - Iâm no drummer - and I think many other people are likewise. The problem is as soon as people find out about the licensing system, many who are maybe less fussy about the sound and just want to get on with making music without the worry of the software perhaps not working in 90 days will just cross BFD off their list (if it even made the list in the first place).
InMusic need to be a a bit more honest on their website too as BFD still doesnât mention the 90-day subscription requirement except in some hard to find small print. It should be right there in the âsystem requirementsâ. If theyâre confident in their system they should have the balls to put it up there.
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Totally agree with that. I like to sit and tweak the f out of the drums, itâs very enjoyable to me, Iâm a bit of an all rounder when it comes to playing instruments, my main thing is guitar, but as a teen I started out as a drummer and played semi-professionally in cover and original setups for around 5 years, before I moved over to guitar.
Iâm not Neal Peart (who is lol) but I can keep a solid beat good enough to make it sound acceptable, BFD3 is an absolute god send in my opinion for having complete creative control over the entire drum set up, itâs incredible, when I first discovered it (v1) I was in denial about how cool it was, I harp on about how nothing comes close, I stand by that. I do agree there are other awesome ones out there too, I even have almost all of them, I like to f around and compare between them all, I even have the shittiest ones you can imagine. I know not everybody wants to sit through these processes and most just want simple easy out of the box make me sound good (thatâs debatable) drum software, for me BFD3 does that and then 50 times more. It puts me in the drummers seat, the producer and the engineers seat at at once. I love that.
I totally agree. Even if it isnât in the system requirements section, you shouldnât have to dig through the FAQ to find it. Itâs a very important, almost hidden detail. But I think we can deduce why thatâs the case.
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It states âInternet connection requiredâ. It should say âInternet connection required (put two and two together)â
How about, Internet connection required every 90 days for re-authorization. Because an internet connection isnât actually ârequiredâ to use BFD3, once itâs been authorized.
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I wasnât entirely serious, but the joke didnât come out very good either.
Itâs true that you donât need internet for 90 days after you have authorized. But do you see how ugly it is to formulate this into BFDâs requirements? Instead, âInternet Connectionâ is there. Because, as long as you are online, you probably wonât feel a thing. (Which was a big deal a year ago, even permanently online machines were hit by occasional licensing tantrums.)
We already know all that, no point in discussing this between us.
The point is, and a solution is missing here, for the people that need to work offline.
Pianoteq does offline. You authorize up to three machines. If you deathorize a machine to free up a seat, that machine can never be authorized again. (Without reaching for support etc etc)
Even Steinberg had a similar idea before their 180. Choose to either be permanently online and be able to use the software on up to 3 machines, or to be given a permanent offline license for just a single machine.
Iâm mostly online, so no grief for me anymore. But there are people who consider not being always online top priority. Not going to judge them, but hey, these people are not coming over, no matter how great the product is.
And on topic, I wouldnât subscribe to waves. Iâve got just two plugins in all. Thereâs no way Iâm paying 15 ⏠each time I feel like tweaking some obscure project of mine from way backâŚ
This whole subscription business is based on a big assumption. That your software is a suite, self-contained, that allows the user to create a finished product. Well. This can hold true for Adobe, I donât think a professional minds paying for a subscription. But for plug-ins? Dude, I like 5 out of your 300 plugs, I will buy them, ok? I donât want the rest. And this goes for all of those companies. Iâll grab an eq from here, a compressor from there, a filter from elsewhere. My DAW already has its own plugins, and they work fine, really. Itâs just some color Iâm after, not a workbench upon which all my work will be done. So, why are you pressuring me into buying into a gargantuan collection of stuff I will not use, with the excuse that âitâs cheap for what it offersâ? I want to give you 100 âŹ, buy one or two things and then forget about it and just use them. Not give you 15 each month and be left with crap in the end, when I canât afford it anymore.
Again, different people have different needs. They (waves) could have said âYou know what Georgie, weâre seeing that you have 25 plugins from us, and that youâre always updating them. Why donât you consider giving our subscription a go? Youâll be saving money in the end.â They chose to say: âAll of you bums that have 1 or 2 plug-ins that havenât even benn updated in years, yes you, shoo! Either pay 15 ⏠a month, or be gone. Your broke-ass is tiring us out.â What did they expect would happen then? Even the most gentle of people apologized, grabbed their hats and said goodbye.
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Every manufacturer these days has internet requirement unless they provide a boxed version, so having internet requirement doesnt cover it Iâm afraid. Usually you only need the internet to download and licence it once.
Just put â90-day internet subscription required (no additonal fees)â and that covers the bare bones. You can then asterix off to a lengthier explanation. See, wasnt so difficult to âformulateâ.
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I got you, I was just adding my serious take and simple solution.
I mean, by design youâre supposed to be able to work offline, but Iâve been deauthorized a bunch of times, even just the other day and with a solid internet connection. So, itâs not working as intended and advertising it as such is kind of a lie.
Iâm not sure Iâd be down with this idea. There are plenty of companies like Overloud and Melodyne that let you authorize/deauthorize your machine IDâs with no limitation via a web browser. This is the way.
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No, but itâs not difficult to be put-off by reading it either. 
Thatâs kind of the idea.