Jeroen van Eekeres:

But I do know that they, as a key customer, have a technical account manager within Avid.

A technical account manager is not the same as phoning Avid for daily support Jereon. They handle purchase and fullfillment. I have worked at the BBC many times mainly out of Media City in Manchester. It maybe construed that this could justify the support contract in of itself but as a major purchasing customer it is not normal to have to pay the seller until your purchased contract starts, i.e. you are paying for ongoing technical support not sales support. And as I say such institutions do have first class engineers.

Mercer:

A technical account manager is not the same as phoning Avid for daily support Jereon. They handle purchase and fullfillment.

Euh... I'm not in a position to get into a who does what at Avid. This forum does not allow that. But a technical account manager is a technical account manager and not sales.

Jeroen van Eekeres:

Euh... I'm not in a position to get into a who does what at Avid. This forum does not allow that. But a technical account manager is a technical account manager and not sales.

Oh I'm sorry - I thought you were talking about the BBC. I was meaning that I don't know of anyone there from Andy Quested down who might have to call upon individual perpetual licence support, as in, my 'pc and Avid doesn't work'. Though I am sure they are in consultation with Avid at a higher level, like most major large enterprise users throughout the world. My point was that me here, as a lesser mortal has only had to call upon it 3 times in 5 years - I don't need paid support and so I am paying for 12 months upgrades and to keep my dongle from dying, which is fine normally.

Mercer:

I am sure they are in consultation with Avid at a higher level, like most major large enterprise users throughout the world.

Correct. The big boys do have some extra privileges. 

Well I'm obviously late to the party, since I was jobless I went on holidays and I was totally unaware of the pricing changes. I find it a little unfair to raise the price twice in the last few years, but this is a take it or leave it situation, no way the customers can change that, what I find a little disturbing is the short notice (12 days) during the summer holidays, when not everyone is regularly checking the email. Not begging for extending that timeframe, but still complaining!

As for the new pricing itself I have to agree with whoever said that I'd be happy to pay even more than this annual fee if only the software was better improved, while I do not understand why rental is cheaper than perpetual, since the product is essentially the same.

As for backward compatibility, thanks Avid, we need that, the day You'll drop it one of the major points to stick to MC will fade away, but mantaining three releases is too much, and perhaps it's the reason why Avid raised the price, other than collecting cash for the stock holders, as usual.

luca.mg:

Well I'm obviously late to the party

FYI: Videoguys still has Renewals at the old price (added bonus: their old price was cheaper than Avid's old price). And again, you can buy multiple one-year plans, and they will extend your support plan cumulatively.

luca.mg:

what I find a little disturbing is the short notice (12 days) during the summer holidays

Thanks a lot Job for pointing that out, I just bought myself a couple of renewals for my two seats, originally due in november. Don't know how to proceed from now on (always purchased via the Avid online store or a local reseller, last two years with Avid Italia) but I'll surely find that out. After the lockdown let's hope to make the most out of these licenses!

Your reseller sends you a code, which you can easily and quickly redeem/activate in My Products under your Avid account. Make sure you switch the Auto-Renew function to off, otherwise you won't see the options to manually renew. You can turn Auto-Renewal back on afterwards.

Thank You again Job, I do not want to further hijack the thread, whenever I'll get the code I'll open a new thread if I'll find myself in troubles. Regards, Luca

>>I understand Avid, as a business, are trying to move all new customers going forward to a subscription, because it's more profitable for them and the proof is that it is cheaper than perpetual<<

HUH?  Cheaper?!?!  Facts, logical reasoning - I know that is not a "thing" for all those born after 2000, but - come on!

EX: I have owned Media Composer licenses since it first appeared on the WIndows Platform (obviously before you and the majority of AVID managers were born).  In fact, I had an Avid Xpress license and even an Avid Impact (I think that is what it's first Windows video editor was called) license.  I have even been a stockholder in the company for decades.  In those 30+ years I have paid in excess of $27,000 to the company in purchase, upgrade and support fees, yet I have utilized less - FAR fewer - than 20 hours of support time.  But I am willing, in my retirement when I use MC perhaps 2 hours per YEAR to pay $299 to maintain a company whose product I believe in (despite inept, incompetent, unimaginative management).  Yet I have not used any support personell hours for YEARS.  My "support contract" payments are pure profit. 

Simply out of a charitable wish for the company and MC to survive I am willing to "donate" my $299 per year to the company.  But I WILL NOT submit to the punitive "support contract" renewal at the new rate.  It will be cheaper for me to move to a different "professional" editing platform "perma-license" application like Lightworks or Resolve.

Avid management wants to hide behind the lie the "users prefer subscriptions" but that is a complete fantasy.  Companies that have a huge market dominance can force subscription licencing on users if they have a significant market share and can tolerate the loss of individual and small business users who can't justify the ROI or maintenance of a license for an application they use infrequently.  (EX: Adobe Lightroom and the flight of "pro" photography users to Luminar, ON1 Photo RAW, ACDSee Photo Studio, Affinity Photo, DXO, Darktable...)  AVID does NOT have such a presence in the AV editing space.  Their attempts to "convert" perma-license holders to subscription-based users will only accelerate the company's decline / death. (Don’t bother challenging this factual trend – I’ve been an AVID product user and SHAREHOLDER since the late ‘80’s –I have the facts and numbers.)

The calculation that they can "convert" perma-license users to subscription based users AT A NET PROFIT  is pure speculations and fantasy.  It will be a net loss to the company and will reflect itself in a further decline in AVID share price.

@wmcole - on the face of it, it would seem that Avid is trying to encourage customers to adopt a subscription license by penalizing those holding a perpetual license. Do you agree?

It would also appear that the cost for a subscription is less than the new increased cost to renew support for a perpetual license. Is this not true?

I agree with most of your post following 'EX:' other than the fact that I can't read minds so I can't know for certain what Avid management wants (but I do agree that Avid management has a long history of missteps).

Is it fair to say that it is likely that Avid management would like everyone to adopt a subscription license because it will secure for Avid a more predicable revenue stream?

Your point is that forcing users to adopt a subscription model through a perceived hostile act of coercion may have the opposite result, driving previously loyal but perhaps infrequent users away, encouraging them to look elsewhere for their infrequent NLE needs...

Do you agree?

Seems I hadn't posted the following in this thread yet:

Job ter Burg:

I worked out the cost of the various ways to get MC. Not accepting any liability or responsibility for anyone's purchasing decisions. Just sharing a sheet that helped me figure out the differences.

Here's the sheet: http://www.terburg.com/EVEN/MC2021pricinglongterm.pdf

wmcole:

Simply out of a charitable wish for the company and MC to survive I am willing to "donate" my $299 per year to the company. But I WILL NOT submit to the punitive "support contract" renewal at the new rate.  It will be cheaper for me to move to a different "professional" editing platform "perma-license" application like Lightworks or Resolve.

I understand your sentiment and agree with what you're saying but that's a strange notion towards a commercial company, in my book. There are some who suggest we owe our careers to Avid, yet I started on fim and then worked a lot on video, way before Avid existed. And if it wasn't Avid it would have been something else.

We have grown to love Avid as a reliable, rock steady tool that does earn us a good living, yet the first sign of real jitters seems to be happening, in the almost the 1st time in the 30 years I have been using it. The industry will move on from any mainstay, there are some big names in the wake.

No, I am prepared to support Avid loyally as a paying customer, not as a charity, but it is a two way street. I am sure after all though that Avid is far too big a brand to fall by the way - constructive feedback, even if it is negative, as customers, is our right and is ultimately supportive IMV.

Another increase, really? €535.50 Sorry Avid but I'm out! 2021 was the last time I renewed my support thing...

Its interesting that MC ultimate yearly subscription is now around the same cost as the whole Adobe suite of tools including Premiere and after effects.

Only going the STD MC route gives you a cheaper yearly route. And thats less than the perpetual subscription route now.

Its more expensive to hold onto a dongle which will drive users who don't need to run older versions of MC towards subscription.