Subscription vs. All Time License or Slate Digital’s Plugin Bundle

It seems that more and more companies are switching to alternative purchase plans for their products. As Adobe and Avid for example did it for their production software, there are also smaller companies like Slate Digital who do this now with plugins!

I’m checking often plugin manufacturers websites and think about their prices. It needs time and resources to develop new plugins, test them and set them up. And the guys should be payed for that. But if you need a whole bundle of plugins, you have to dig deep into your pockets. And this means that you have to get enough jobs, to pay off this bundle. It’s an economic question – and depending the situation a subscription can be an interesting option!
I think this is one of the ideas behind new payment methods: adjust the price to your needs. Slate Digital does that with a new concept to sell their plugins. Let me list which features are included.

Annual Bundle ($240/year):

• all Slate Digital Plugins
• all upcoming Slate Digital Plugins
• $99 Coupon
• Free iLok2, if you need one.

If you also need a reverb, Slate Digital has a deal with Relab: for $299 per year you can add Relab’s emulation of the Lexicon 480l and you will get another $99 coupon in addition.

Monthly Bundle ($20/month)

• all Slate Digital Plugins
• all upcoming Slate Digital Plugins
• $99 Coupon, after 12 months
• Free iLok2, if you need one (at least 2 month subscription)

The reverb deal also can be obtained for $25 per month.

It’s good to see, that they’re realizing this new concept by using reliable technology – an iLok. This means that there is no need to install any other software to license to use these plugins. So for example for the East West Composer Cloud a licensing software is necessary to manage the amount of content they’re offering. Slate Digital does not need that.

All in all I think this is really a fair deal and if you like analogue sound, it’s a great option to use it in your digital production suite. Slate Digital offers eqs, saturation devices, enhancers and compressors. I use them with our Universal Audio interfaces and they sound straight good.
What do you think about this kind of payment method? Let me know!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2&v=B6KY2Ffvh3w