Bitwig Studio Upgrade Plan Explained

[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back. So it's only two days, two days left until we can finally download
[00:00:06] the beta version of Bitwig Studio 6. And I hope they stay on time with the release schedule,
[00:00:12] but I guess they will because they're actually great developers in my opinion. And it's no
[00:00:16] shilling, it's just a fact. So there will be a stream on Wednesdays, we can talk and
[00:00:25] explore all the features together so you can join the chat. If you want to, we can express
[00:00:30] your hype, you can express your disappointment, or you can just say that you don't like me.
[00:00:35] Okay, if you have a problem with me, if you have a problem with me, just say it to my face, okay.
[00:00:40] So you can do this on Wednesday and there will maybe a test stream tomorrow because I haven't
[00:00:48] streamed in a year. So I have no idea if this, all this stuff here on my screen actually works
[00:00:54] anymore. Probably only on YouTube. If you want to have a stream on Twitch, let me know, but I guess
[00:01:01] most people watch on YouTube anyway, I have higher resolution and the chat is okay and I know all
[00:01:08] the people there. So probably only on YouTube. So you can download the beta version of Bitwig
[00:01:17] 6 if you have an active license or upgrade plan, that's the name of it. And I want to talk about
[00:01:25] this here in this video because I see a lot of confusion sometimes online in forums, people on
[00:01:30] YouTube, Bitwig, they ask questions, if this is included, if that is included, how does it work?
[00:01:35] Is it a subscription? And it's not a subscription. So a subscription for me is something like Adobe
[00:01:42] Photoshop, which means you pay a monthly or yearly fee, and then you can use the software. And if
[00:01:49] you don't pay this fee every month, the software is taken away from you, which is not the case with
[00:01:55] Bitwig. With Bitwig, you pay just one time, one single payment. And then you own the software,
[00:02:04] this current version that you just bought, you own it forever until the end of time,
[00:02:09] until the sun explodes, or until you decide not to make music anymore. So in four years or whatever.
[00:02:15] So that's how it works. But there is an addition, a bonus to that. You get the bonus year of free
[00:02:25] upgrades. And I think this is where the confusion starts for most people. And I want to show you
[00:02:30] this here on the screen. So this is the main page of Bitwig Studio. So you can go over to buy here
[00:02:37] on the top. And we have three versions. We have Bitwig Studio Essentials, we have Bitwig Studio
[00:02:44] Producer, and we have Bitwig Studio, the full, the real version, the main version. That's the,
[00:02:51] if you use that here, right, you're not the Bitwig user. Only Bitwig users use this one here. Okay,
[00:02:57] now, just joking. This is pretty fine here. There is some older stuff called like 16 track or 8
[00:03:06] track. And they are not up to date anymore. 8 track is old version, 16 track is the old version.
[00:03:13] We have only these three here. This is the current model. Bitwig Studio Essentials,
[00:03:18] producer, main version. And in each of these versions, there are different things included,
[00:03:23] right? So here for the full version, we have 144 instruments, audio and note FX and more. And in
[00:03:32] bit with Bitwig Producer, it's only 92. And in Essentials, it's 40. Okay, the question is now,
[00:03:38] what kind of instruments and what kind of effects do I need them? Is it to maybe do I need the full
[00:03:46] version to make my music and so on. So if you ask me, it's not a bad move to actually start with
[00:03:53] a smaller version. Okay, because you can get a feel for Bitwig, how it works, how it looks like,
[00:04:00] how does it work on your PC, on your setup. And if you think you are kind of limited in what you
[00:04:09] have on instruments, then you can upgrade to another version. So from Essentials to producer,
[00:04:15] for instance. But here's the thing, you don't need to pay the full price. I think from if you
[00:04:21] have Essentials and you want to upgrade from Essentials to producer, you only need to pay
[00:04:26] the difference, right? So one of the bugs basically, from here to here, also from here to here, you
[00:04:32] just pay the difference. So it's not like that you lost something or that you pay more than you
[00:04:38] need to be. You can easily start with a smaller version, explore everything. If you feel limited,
[00:04:45] just upgrade to a new version, just pay the difference and then you have it. Okay, I think the
[00:04:50] main difference here between producer and Bitwig Studio full version is the grid actually. So the
[00:04:55] grid is included in here, but only in the read only version. So you can load in presets from
[00:05:02] other people, but you can't change the contents. Okay, if you want to create something inside of
[00:05:09] the grid, you need the full version of Bitwig Studio. I think this is the biggest main difference
[00:05:13] between these two here, besides having lesser devices or so on. You can also extend this here
[00:05:22] and you can see more information. So maybe start with the smaller version first and then you
[00:05:27] walk your way up to the full version if you like what you see and what you hear, of course. So
[00:05:35] that's what I, that's the main thing. You pay this fee, this one price, it's not a fee, it's a
[00:05:43] price. You pay this price 399 your own Bitwig Studio. At this point in time, this current
[00:05:49] version, which is at the moment, Bitwig Studio 5.0 something, 5.2. You own this version forever
[00:05:57] because you just bought it until the end of time. No one can take it away from you. It's always yours.
[00:06:04] You can always open this up in five or 10 years and you can use it. It's yours. But when you pay
[00:06:12] one of these packages here, I think only the biggest one, maybe this is in here, circle membership,
[00:06:20] no, it's not, it's not written here. So when you pay, when you buy one of these packages,
[00:06:27] you get also on top of that, that's the bonus 12 months of free upgrades. Okay. So when you buy
[00:06:36] one package today, if you buy this today from this day on until next year, the same day,
[00:06:43] everything that will released in this time span is yours. Okay. You can download, you can use forever.
[00:06:53] It's, it's just yours. It's part of this payment here, basically that you own everything that's
[00:07:00] released in the next year. That's what you get always when you buy one package. Okay. So we can
[00:07:08] also click on that here and it says here all Bitwig Studio and Bitwig Studio Essentials and
[00:07:15] Producers. So every package includes that. Licenses include a 12 month upgrade plan. This means that
[00:07:22] any new version released within 12 months of your registration will be available to you free of
[00:07:29] charge. Okay. Here is a black on white or black on gray. So everything that's released is yours.
[00:07:37] And then that's maybe when the confusion starts here for some people. When your upgrade plan expires,
[00:07:44] when this year is over, your license will continue to work with the latest version of Bitwig Studio
[00:07:50] that you received. Okay. So I have here, I have here a thing, right? We are today, August. So you
[00:08:00] paid us today, 399. And then this year is your upgrade plan, your free upgrade plan. So everything
[00:08:10] that releases here in September, October, November, December, next year, January, February, March, May,
[00:08:16] June, July, August, everything that releases in this timeframe is yours. Okay. And then, of course,
[00:08:25] at some point in August, at the same day in August, your upgrade plan stops working. It's not longer
[00:08:32] active. If this is the case, you can still use everything that you owned or downloaded or was
[00:08:41] released in this timeframe here, you can still use this until the end of time. It's no problem.
[00:08:46] The only thing that you don't get is new versions that release here in this timeframe, right here.
[00:08:52] So when there's your Bitwig 7 coming out or Bitwig 8 or whatever, you can't download, you can't use.
[00:09:00] So then the question is, what do I need to do to actually get these new versions, these upgrades,
[00:09:09] right? So all you have to do is instead of, instead of buying this whole package again,
[00:09:17] you don't need to do this, you already owned the license in the past. So the only thing you need to
[00:09:23] do is to buy another upgrade plan. Okay. One upgrade plan is basically another 12 months. So another
[00:09:34] year, which means in this case here, you basically start the whole thing, you say, oh, everything
[00:09:41] that's coming out is something I like, I want to have. So I buy the upgrade plan, right? Another
[00:09:49] year. And this one costs not 3.99. I think at the moment it's around 1.69 or something. So 1.69 euros.
[00:09:58] And then of course, again, you can use all the new software that's released in here and also the
[00:10:05] old stuff. So it's not a subscription. It's basically just that you have all your upgrades
[00:10:13] covered, everything that's released in this new timeframe, you can download for free and you
[00:10:19] don't need to pay the full 3.99 price again, just pay a smaller fee. And then you have another year
[00:10:28] of free upgrades. So this is in my opinion, pretty cool way of actually working with licenses, in
[00:10:37] my opinion. But maybe you think here at this point, I don't know what kind of features are coming in
[00:10:45] the future. I have no idea. I'm missing something heavily inside of Bitwig Studio. And I don't know
[00:10:52] if it's actually releasing within this one year, right? So what you can do now is instead of buying
[00:11:00] this upgrade plan here at this point, you just wait it out. You say, oh, just wait it out and see
[00:11:06] what they come up with, what they release. And then I buy the upgrade plan, okay? So you can delay
[00:11:13] this upgrade plan to a later point in time. You can say, I just wait it out. So here release is
[00:11:18] maybe Bitwig 7. And everything is in there what you ever dreamed of having in Bitwig Studio. You
[00:11:25] say, this is exactly what I want. And then you say, okay, now I pay the upgrade plan here,
[00:11:33] I get a new license for another year, okay? And then you get all the features also in here
[00:11:39] that you have not covered with anything. You get this for free on top. So which means you
[00:11:47] can delay this here maybe for another year and say, I just wait it out for one year.
[00:11:51] And then, I don't know, three versions are releasing in here, maybe Bitwig 8,
[00:11:59] Bitwig 9 comes up, Bitwig 9.5. And then you say, okay, I like what I see in the last three years.
[00:12:07] There wasn't really nice, really nice update schedule. I like all the features. And then
[00:12:14] you can do the same thing. You just buy another upgrade plan because you already owned this version
[00:12:20] here, okay? This is always 169. You get all this stuff in here also and all the stuff that releases
[00:12:27] in the future. So in my opinion, it's a pretty dope model. And it's not a subscription. So it's
[00:12:37] just you can say, I just wait it out. I don't like what I see or I don't know what's coming up in the
[00:12:42] future as features. I just wait it out. And then you delay this purchase here until you feel happy.
[00:12:49] So this is my opinion, the best way of dealing with these upgrade plans instead of buying
[00:12:54] beforehand and then being disappointed what's coming out in the future. Just wait it out until
[00:13:00] your feature arrives, what you actually want. And then you buy it. And then you get all these
[00:13:06] additional features on top. For me, of course, I have trust in Bitwig. So I always basically
[00:13:13] do this. And I bought the last two versions with my own money, even though I can or I could just
[00:13:22] ask them to get the license for free. But some people get me fired for it right when I say,
[00:13:28] "Oh, Bitwig is actually really nice." Yeah, you say a lot of things because you get it for free,
[00:13:33] right? So no, the last versions or upgrade plans here I bought for myself just to have a good
[00:13:40] feeling doing videos and saying good things or bad things about Bitwig. So yeah, this is how
[00:13:49] it works actually. I hope I got this right, but that's how I see it. So it's a pretty dope upgrade
[00:13:56] plan, upgrade update license thing, right? Another thing is that if you own one license,
[00:14:05] if you just buy it one time, let me go back here for a moment.
[00:14:11] Yeah, if you, let me shortly, what do I want to say, IS. When you just bought one version,
[00:14:25] it's not only one license for one PC, you get basically three licenses. So you can run
[00:14:33] this on multiple PCs at the same time. So I have one Bitwig Studio license and I have it running
[00:14:40] on my Windows PC, on my Linux PC and on my very old Mac, which is also a big plus in my opinion
[00:14:48] that Bitwig Studio runs on every platform. And you can also have one license and you can run it on
[00:14:54] multiple PCs at the same time. It's not like that you have to close down one version if you want
[00:14:59] to use it on another PC or vice versa. So if you have one household and you want to buy this,
[00:15:05] maybe for your daughter or your son or maybe you have a wife and you want to make music together
[00:15:11] or whatever, you can do this. Or if you have a laptop, right? And you want to open up the laptop
[00:15:16] and you have a draft there and you want to copy it over to your PC and you want to play it on your
[00:15:22] laptop at the same time than on your PC, you can do this. So one license basically runs on
[00:15:30] three PCs at the same time if you want to. And there's a management tool here in the back end,
[00:15:36] if you log in, I can't show you this because there are all my serial numbers in there. So if you buy
[00:15:43] this or if you go into the profile thing here, you can manage basically these PCs and you can
[00:15:51] just delete one PC and activate it on another PC. So it's very straightforward, very easy.
[00:15:59] That's what I want to tell you. I hope this is everything is clear. So yeah, I see a lot of
[00:16:08] confusion sometimes in Reddit, on Reddit, on different forums. People asking this,
[00:16:13] they think it's a subscription and also back in the day when they introduced this kind of thing,
[00:16:18] people were confused and I thought, oh, does actually they want to go to subscription to this
[00:16:23] Adobe model, but it's not the case. It's just, it's very easy. You buy one thing, you own it
[00:16:30] forever, and then you have this license plan, which is just a cheap way of keeping yourself
[00:16:35] up to date with new versions. And you can also decide if you want to update now or in the future
[00:16:41] without any cons. It's only pros basically for you. I know FL Studio has something like a live
[00:16:49] long license. I don't know how they do this. I guess they also sell additional plug-ins or
[00:16:57] VST things or tools on top of that, but I have no idea how they finance this stuff.
[00:17:06] But this is a pretty dope thing to do. In my opinion, it works. And
[00:17:10] I want to explain this in this video. Also, something on top of that with the beta,
[00:17:17] if you have this kind of time frame, and you have a beta version inside of this time frame,
[00:17:24] right? When the beta hits, usually the release version of this of Bitwig 6, for instance, right,
[00:17:32] comes out two months, three months later, right? And it could be that the beta release is inside
[00:17:39] of your license time frame, but the release is outside. You still get the beta, you still get
[00:17:47] the full version of Bitwig 6, even though the beta is only inside of the time frame and release
[00:17:54] version is not, you still get the full version. So if you have your license or your upgrade plan
[00:18:01] is currently active, but it's ending maybe next week or tomorrow, tomorrow, it's bad. But maybe
[00:18:09] one day later on Thursday, so beta hits on Wednesday, your upgrade plan ends on Thursday.
[00:18:17] So you still get the full version of Bitwig Studio 6, which is nice. Okay. So that's what
[00:18:24] I want to say in this video. I hope everything is clear. I hope I made no mistake. Please,
[00:18:30] say in the comments if I was wrong, then I delete this video immediately.
[00:18:34] I'm hyped for Wednesday. It will be nice. Lots of people will be happy, probably. Bye.
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