It’s not a subscription. And Ableton is still offering their existing “buy now” licenses and upgrades. But if you don’t want to pay for the flagship Ableton Live Suite all at once, you now have the option of a rent-to-own plan. That could be a way for more folks to take advantage of Suite features like full Max for Live support. Here’s how it works.
The “subscription” model is being roundly rejected by a lot of musicians for a good reason: as we’ve learned with (cough) Adobe subscriptions and the like, you have to keep paying to retain access to the software. Rent-to-own is different in that you gradually pay off a license you can keep.
This is only on the top-of-range Suite edition, not other versions of Live 12. But for US$31.21/mo, you get full access to Live 12 Suite and 71+ GB of sounds, Max for Live, all the instruments and effects and extras. After 24 months, you own the full license. (Educational licenses can use the same plan, but you’ve paid off in 12 months.) You can also think of this like a financing plan without the finance check. The math works out the same in other currencies, like Euros.
That’s the same amount you would spend if you buy all at once, so probably most people will prefer the rent-to-own option, unless you want to write off the full $749 cost for tax purposes.
31.21 may sound like a weird number, but I like to believe Ableton’s accountants have been sending us secret messages:
Reminder of the differences in editions; there’s a lot in Suite. Highlights include:
- Max for Live (the big one)
- Extra content (everything from Glitch and Wash to Drum Booth)
- Dillon Bastan’s Inpsired by Nature (gets its own bullet point because I love it so much)
- Spectral Blur, Spectral Resonator, Spectral Time
- Roar distortion
- Hybrid, Convolution Reverbs
- Echo, Gated Delay, Re-Enveloper
- Cabinet, Amp, Color Limiter, Pedal
- Robert Henke’s PitchLoop89 and Granulator III
- Bass, Operator, Poli, Sampler (!), Wavetable (!), and Meld (!) instruments
- MIDI Tools, Performance, and Sequencer Packs (ton of stuff in there)
- Surround Panner
It’s so much that I just noticed a couple I really hadn’t played around with. I’m sure you’d rather have product news from Ableton today, but I’d forgotten how much is in there, and that’s even before you get into Max for Live. So we absolutely have enough to play with.
Some important things to consider:
- You can pause and restart any time.
- You can pay off the full balance any time. (Again, you’d probably do that to deduct the cost from your taxes, which you absolutely should be doing.)
- You own the license when you’re done with payments.
- If an upgrade comes along, you can add that. Basically, Ableton says you’ll just tack on some additional monthly payments to upgrade.
If you miss payments or pause, Live reverts at the end of the billing cycle to a limited mode, which means you can open, but you can’t save. That’s good, as it does mean you don’t lose access to your projects; you can still open and play them in a live performance, for instance. Updated: I confirmed this with Ableton.
More:
Rent-to-own Ableton Live explanation
Ableton rent to own [Shop]
I assume this is all part of Ableton’s plan to introduce their new phone hardware, Ableton Dial. (Actually if they did that and it had only a simple SIM card, mobile send/receive, FM radio, a copy of Ableton Note, and absolutely no notifications or access to social media or anything else except maybe our stupid banking app, we’d probably buy it.)
I’m just excited because this means educational and professional users will have easier access to tools created in Max for Live, especially. For a quick reminder of some of that:
The European pricing (24,96 a month) is also part of a deep numerological code.