Avid Set To Shift Pro Tools Prices July 1st

A heads up to all you Pro Tools users out there, Avid recently announced via its Facebook page that the company plans to change its prices as soon as July 1st and – major shocker here – most of them won't be going down.

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Guest post from the Bobby Owsinski Production Blog

If you’re a Pro Tools user then you’ll want to read this. Avid announced on its Facebook page that it’s going to change its prices on July 1st. As would be expected, most of the prices are going up, but a few will actually decrease a bit.

Here’s what the company said:

We wanted to give you a heads up on some important changes regarding the pricing of our Creative Software products. We are announcing that we have adjusted several of the prices of these offerings effective July 1, 2019. Some prices have increased, some have stayed the same and some have decreased.

As many of you know, the entire technology industry is going through a major shift from perpetual licenses to a new business model focused on subscription. This directional change is a positive shift for many users that are interested in more flexible and affordable payment options and only paying for those features, functions or services they need to access. Avid is always looking at ways to improve efficiencies in this area and while we have maintained the same pricing since our subscription offers started over 5 years ago, that will be changing. We continue to deliver new innovations, as well as new ways of enabling our customers to do their jobs faster and easier. This includes the recent announcements of the 2019 releases of Media Composer, Pro Tools 2019.x and Sibelius 2019.x.

A major focus of our analysis was on the shift from perpetual to subscription models and as a result we have increased the number and appeal of cross-grade offers for those that are interested in shifting from perpetual to subscription. We have also increased the number of payment options for subscription, including pay up front annually, commit annually but pay monthly and pay as you go, monthly. In addition, we have decided that customers currently subscribing to Media Composer, Pro Tools and Sibelius will not have a price increase, however they must continue to keep their subscription current in order to maintain their existing price.

Please know that Avid understands the impact and implication of price increases and this is not a decision we take lightly or without significant analysis and thought. For those of you that are currently on Perpetual Licenses, the increase ranges from 0-33% on new licenses depending on the product and type of license. As an alternative to renewing at the new pricing, there are incentives for you to cross-grade from your current perpetual license to subscription, like decreased pricing and additional functionality, depending on the product. We would highly recommend that you look at those options as you consider your next renewal.

Although Pro Tools is broken into several packages, the pricing of these packages falls into two basic categories – Perpetual licensing (buy it once) or Rental (subscription). Here’s how those pricing categories will be affected:

There’s also a third group of users who still use an older version of Pro Tools (like yours truly) because it’s solid and works reliably, and will only upgrade if forced to because of operating system or computer hardware changes.

That said, Avid is raising its prices because it can, as most users will reluctantly pay more rather than endure the pain involved in changing to a new DAW. That’s why it hurts a lot more to be a Pro Tools user than just about any other workstation package.