I’m also not sure at all that it is profitable. It’s after all a very small market.
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To make money with it you will have to sell the technology. (??)
Apple buys Audirvana and together with the knowledge and technology of Primephonic there will be a very nice Apple Classic Max app.
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I posted this suggestion to Damien3 in May, when I thought he was Damien Plisson, telling him to try to sell his technology to Apple in order to make it improve the sound of its products.
A win/win for everybody.
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That’s a nice thought from you. It’s highly unlikely that Apple would be interested though.
Apple often buys small companies when they are interested in their technology.
I won’t bet money on it. But it fits nicely in the list of other purchases.
You can always hope and dream, right?
“As a classical-only startup, we can not reach the majority of global classical listeners, especially those that listen to many other music genres as well,” the company said. “We therefore concluded that in order to achieve our mission, we need to partner with a leading streaming service that encompasses all music genres and also shares our love for classical music.”
Apple seems to be serious about the classical music market, and they want to release a player for it.
For classical music, they must provide a good player, otherwise nobody will listen to it. Classical music playback is not like pop, rock or rap… It requires a very good sound rendering.
I don’t know. In the past they certainly didn’t show much interest in audiophile level reproduction. Who knows, with Apple lossless, things might change. I still feel it’s more likely they’ll just improve the capabilities of Apple Music rather then going with completely new, let alone acquired player.
In their press release, they did not speak about sound. They only said that the player will have library and metadata management that are adapted to classical music, as well as access to bios, reviews, and things like that.
But if the player will not sound good, they will not have customers for their streaming. With a bad player, it’s painful to listen to classical music. And people who listen to this genre are sensitive to this point.
Helmuth, Graf von Moltke is reported as saying that there is no plan that withstands the contact with the enemy. That does not mean it is unnecessary to make plans.
If anything, when they go wrong, you know you have made contact with the enemy!
So, an Audirvana roadmap could be useful, as obtaining from their customers a feedback on the roadmap could help streamline the Audirvana’s future by rooting out unnecessary or undesirable developments, helping focus on what makes customer tick.
If anything, I am quite convinced that if Audirvana had been more open about their plans about Studio months before its release, and had sought to engage with this forum’s users, a number of mistakes would have been avoided.
It has been a great distraction both for the developer and the customers and still seems to be the case.
Or it would lead to endless discussions what should be implemented first and where the priorities should be.
Have you ever heard of focus groups?
I mean not fan clubs …
Certainly, moving the software from the software cottage industry to a mainstream company (Apple, Amazon, Spotify, etc,) will ensure the appropriate development resources are put in place along with an attempt to make the software appeal to a broader mass including a palatable price (to the masses). One thing I find about most mainstream software is that bugs get fixed quickly.
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I heard… not much good I’m afraid.
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In my experience, software companies review and prioritize bugs quickly, but they don’t always actually address them as fast as you might like. They have to take into account the impact, which includes the severity of the issue and the number of users affected. If only you and 2 other users are experiencing what they consider to be a minor inconvenience with the software, it could take a rather long time to get it corrected.
That’s just been my experience though, and I’m sure it can be different for others.
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For those not comfortable with the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, I have a question for you to consider. When I was first getting into computers and software (early to mid 90’s), there was a software distribution and licensing model called “Shareware”. This was before the internet was widely used by the general public, so the best way to get this software was to log into bulletin board systems (BBS).
With the most popular software using this model, the license model often used was to pay for the current version and get 1 or 2 years of upgrades and patches. After that, you would have to pay again to renew the support / upgrade cycle license, but you could use the current version you had (unsupported) for as long as you wanted. This model was what I would consider the early version of SaaS, and it provided some (if not most) of the same incentives for the software creators to keep innovating and fixing bugs to pull people back into the paid support license fees.
And finally the question: Would you consider this model better than the current SaaS model?
I’m asking this more out of curiosity than anything else, so thanks to anyone who replies.
What matters is firstly the combined cost. If a year or two of subscription costs as much as the purchase of a lifetime license, subscription is a waste of money for the customer.
In addition, once he stops paying, his software stops to function, and he is left with nothing, no matter how much he spent on subscription to the software.
That’s why nobody likes to subscribe to software. This business model is unfair for the customer and very risky for the developer.
The reasoning may be completely different if the subscribed software is to be used in a professional context. In this case, whatever the business model, productivity prevails.
You made a few assumptions regarding risk in your reply, but I think I understand what you’re saying here. But since you brought up risk, let’s address that.
The ultimate risk for any software effort / project is that the funding to support that project dries up. The “lifetime” license model generally only works for larger companies that have more than one product to sell, so they can offset costs using profits from products that have high volume sales to support the “value add” products. This model can (and has in many cases) diminish smaller companies and independent developers ability to actually turn their product into something that can truly support them.
This is s weak argument. For audiophiles, Audirvana is as important as the air they breathe. Far more than Adobe CC for creative professionals.
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Shareware still exists.
TuneBrowser is a shareware player. You can download its full-featured version for free, keep it and use it. You are only restricted to a library of 500 tracks. You have to buy a license in order to remove this restriction.