Should Steinberg have the motto of NetFlix?

Steinberg Lounge
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I posted this bit in another thread, but I thought it was interesting enough to post a thread dedicated to it.

Tonight I heard an interview with actor/singer Kevin Spacy, in which he was plugging a series that he’s acting in that plays exclusively on NetFlix. He was talking about the success of NetFlix, and it’s been reported that the traffic on NetFlix takes up a major portion of internet traffic…something like 65%-75%?

Kevin said “NetFlix does NOT make the same mistakes as the music industry has” … “Their motto is to give the customer what they want, when they want, and for a very fair price, and then they will not steal it”. NetFlix has taken on something like 10 billion new users this past year alone! Apparently this motto has earned them the lions share of their market.

If Steinbergs products (and other DAW companies) were still of the same quality, and took on the motto at the very successful NetFlix by selling their software at a much more affordable price, do you think there would be far less piracy, and the need to invest so much their dongle? …which they of course pass this onto consumers.

If Steinberg took on thios motto, would they just turn into another Twelve Tone Systems Cakewalk? :slight_smile: Is Steinbergs real motto … “give them what they want, at a higher price than they’d like, but they will ‘perceive the value’ of our products as higher”

:bulb:

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I would say that a good motto would be something like…
Give the customer what they want, when they want it, at a price they are willing to pay for it and make sure they are not able to steal it.
The music industry did not really make any mistake about the price. The problem was that they had no way to prevent people from stealing the music. This artificially drove down the “fair” price of the music because people simply chose to steal it rather than buy it.

You can only determine a “fair” price when stealing is not an option.

3

There’s still plenty of movies being pirated too.
I think the advantage of Netflix is the immediate access. If you want to download a movie you fire up your torrent and have to wait for a good couple of hours depending on how popular the movie is. With Netflix you can watch it straight away. If you watch movies often then the €8,- monthly is worth for the convenience alone.

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There are approximately 7.182 Billion people on Earth. Mr. Spacey’s assertion that NetFlix added 10 billion new users “this past year alone” is truly remarkable. At that rate, in a few years the entire surface of the planet will be stacked 100 deep with new NetFlix users.

Famous people sure are smart! Al Gore, who owns mines, taught us that the temperature of the Earth (just below the surface) is millions of degrees, which makes it nearly as hot as the Sun. He was awarded a Nobel Prize.

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That of course is a good motto too. I have nothing against copy protection, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the performance of the program…others in the past have claimed so, how valid that is I don’t know :question: I haven’t noticed, my uses are very basic, and don’t hit things very hard I guess.

Honestly I haven’t followed the music industry and the issues as a whole over the years. I have however heard many things over the years. I don’t know if ‘piracy’ is solely to blame for the music industries problems. I CAN say that the PRICE of going to concerts is nearly a cost prohibitive proportions. We were thinking about going to a concert a few weeks ago…at near $200 per ticket, though I could actually afford it without losing my house or anything, but I just said ‘forget THAT crap’ … I have far more important & things of absolute necessity things to spend my money on…so we were concert-less, and the artist has two less audience members. Now had the tickets been like $50.00 each we would have went. Question is, how many OTHERS were of the same mind-set as us? Would the concert have brought in, 5 thousand, 10 thousand more people had the tickets been less expensive? I for one, will not spend $200 per ticket to see damn $#%&@%* JESUS! …if he really existed that is :unamused:

But…according to the interview with Kevin Spacy, he was claiming that at least by NetFlix’s motto, of having a fair price itself is the reason for less piracy, and success of the company. People will pay a super reasonable price, rather than bother stealing it, and I PERSONALLY I fully AGREE! For ourselves, and THIS is the sole reason why the BlockBuster movie rental business has FAILED…BlockBusters motto was … “Give the customer what they want, when they want it, charge a fair price (For US and our BlockBuster company that is!) and if the customer brings back our movies 10 minutes late, we’ll stick it to up right up the stink hole” … “and we’ll also make them pay for our ridiculous expenses!” I know, I’ve done work in a blockBuster building, their lighting control systems alone were over the top complicated and ridiculously expenses. Though we could very well AFFORD to rent a movie at BlockBuster, we REFUSED to rent their movies at some point on principle! Instead we began renting ALL our movies at RedBox, for just $1.00 per movie!!! Wew NEVER have rented SO many movies before in our lives! No need to download/steal movies as such a ridiculously low price…hell it’s not even worth getting on the computer by price comparison! So, before BlockBusters demise (good riddance you MoFo’s) RedBox got ALL our business…and without a single doubt, with RedBoxe’s low, low price I’d have to say that we spent FAR more money overall at RedBox than at BlockBuster, even though BlockBusters rates were MANY times more expensive PER movie!

Now take Steinberg… just HOW LOW would they have to sell their software where people would NOT bother to crack to code, or NOT bother to download a cracked version? I’m betting if their prices were a lot lower, they would sell TENS OF HOUSANDS of more Steinberg software copies, as in my BlockBuster VS RedBox example! But instead, they keep their prices HIGH and have far less actual BUYERS. :bulb:

In my own case, I’m a hobby musician/recordist. I and others I know personally, simply don’t need to spend $500-$600 to upgrade …and I’m talking JUST Cubase…HOWEVER…if the price of say Cubase 7, prolly soon to be version 8 were say, under $200…I couldn’t resist and might buy it anyway for the hell of it. It certainly wouldn’t be the 1st time I bought software I never ended up using…like WaveLab! :unamused: Another reason holding me back is, if Steinberg also made it possible to run Cubase 7 or 8 on a Win XP 32 system, where I wouldn’t have to upgrade anything ELSE, I would be considering it even more. So if I had to buy Cubase 7/8 AND trash ALL my hardware & other software…it would be more tempting. For a hobby, all those expenses are just not worth it for me personally. My buddy who uses Cubase feels the same way…and he has more income to blow than me.

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No, well…I probably miss-quoted Kevin Spacy on that figure! :smiley: :laughing: :mrgreen: I guess I should have found a link of what he said exactly! But I was lazy last night, and I saw him talking on TV last night.

The POINT remains the same and I’m pretty sure I got, and am conveying the gist of what he was saying.

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Blockbuster didn’t fail because of their late fees. They were just made obsolete by DVDs in vending machines and internet streaming….
Steinberg COULD (of course) sell more copies by lowering their price but then they make less profit per sale. The correct price is the one that maximizes profit. If the price is too high then there are not as many sales if the price is too low then there is not enough profit per sale. This is how the correct price is determined.

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No, I didn’t mean BlockBuster LATE fee’s were ‘alone’ responsible for their demise. Overall, yes…the vending machines like the popular RedBox DVD’s for 5 times lower the price, as well as the RedBox late fee’s are $1.00 per day…as opposed to BlockBusters laate fee’s of $5.00 per day. At the end of the day, it was the PRICE differences that made the difference…the same with NetFlix, which I know people who use NetFlix, and would never go to BlockBuster again (before they went away).


Your description of setting of price does make good sense, but just how accurate that is simply can’t be known by regular people, let alone CEO’s of major companies. I for one will not go by what any company CLAIMS the set prices of ANYTHING is. Another example is SafeWay grocery store vs Wal-Mart stores for certain foods…we can pay $5.99 for Nestlie French Vanilla Coffee creamer at Safeway, yet we BUY it at Wal-Mart for only $2.99… and they have their highly complicated SET PRICES by so called experts! :unamused:

Now, I bet if Wal-Mart sold copies of Cubase, and were ALLOWED to sell it at a price THEY wanted…as opposed to what they’d be FORCED to … for the fair competition BS, they’d sell it for an unheard of low price.

With this I simply don’t believe that if Steinberg lowered their prices, they’d lose money, but would actually make more overall. But then again, they have their existing user base of incessant upgraders, and I’m betting these people make up for a major share of their income, and you can only get so much out of these people…on the other hand, you have newcomers, and people who do NOT keep upgrading…it’s THESE people that I would guess that could bring in more buyers & upgraders if the prices were lowered. As I keep saying, if say Cubase 8 was super cheap, I would probably buy it…it would be a 1st upgrade in more than a decade! But at $500-$600 or so, I will definitely NOT, Though I can afford it without fear of death, it’s simply not good money spent for a handful of hours per month I actually spend on music…Not because I don’t WANT to, I just don’t have the luxury of spending that much time on it.

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It’s not valid to compare Steinberg with Netflix. You pay a subscription for Netflix and your money’s gone, and if you stop paying your subscription your content is also gone, and you have nothing at all.

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Thank-you!

There is no comparison here to Steinberg. Pandora or similar, maybe. Artists get peanuts from pandora, what about netflix-exclusive actors? I bet they make a little more than peanuts!

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True dat my bro’s …Steinberg cannot be completely compared to NetFlix…but that was never the POINT to compare really…what I’m hearing, is talk on the defensive of Steinberg & excuses. Jumping JaHEAsus what LOYALTY here! Next, I’ll be strung up like the good Ol’ days of old, and put at the back of the bus like my forefathers, or worse drug on a dirt road by Yahoo’s! :laughing:

The POINT that I our very lovely & sexy Kevin Spacy was trying to make, was to say that the music industry failed to deliver in the current market & world we live in, but NetFlix delivers…much like RedBox delivers. And NOW that consumers can download JUST the one song at a time that THEY want at any given time, instead of buying an artists crappy CD where there one or two songs you can even stand to listen to, THAT is DELIVERY of what is wanted in this day & age my jungle buddies!..like years ago when I bought the Fire Fall album…which fits my ‘alternative’ lifestyle…as boy bands & Justin Bieber do. It doesn’t really matter if the product is something you consume ONCE or you can keep consuming it time after time…and if you’re a fly, you can actually regurgitate your meal after you eat it, and then eat it again :smiley:

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Oh! Now I see! You ARE talking about the current state of the music industry after all!

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

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The movie industry learned from the music industry fall that began with file sharing. Apple finished the grave with it’s depreciation of the value ($$) of music. That hurt more than the major labels. It hurt every artist.

Have fun poking the bear…

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what’s funny is I canceled NetFlix about 2 years ago as it has nothing worth watching. It’s basically the worlds largest collection of unwatchable movies.

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Put your damn glasses on and read some sub-titles! :laughing:

I do tend to agree though!

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I did a free 30 day trial and never actually watched ANY of the free content. Seriously, not a SINGLE movie or show.

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I watch a couple of movies per month, it’s worth the monthly fee for me.

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Even so, it is still leaps-and-bounds ahead of network television, quality wise. I can force myself to watch even the worst NetFlix, but I can’t watch network television.

There are some really good NetFlix titles too. Stuff you can’t find anywhere else; not even the cut-out bins. :wink:

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Aloha guys,

Just to chime in.

To me Netflix is about consumption and Steinberg is about creation.

my 2cents
{‘-’}

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Honestly I’ve never used NetFlix myself :slight_smile: We use RedBox quite often!..I’d say about 1 to 2 DVD’s per week. We are NOT movie critics, and I can enjoy most movies for what they are. Some are absolutely fantastic, sure some suck donky balls. Lately my sister has been loaning us her movies…she owns well over 300 movies, maybe 400. With RedBox (or NetFlix), along with friends and/or family sharing movies with you, there’s little need to steal a movie by way of download these days. Besides, you can always rent, and copy it…that’s only HALF stealing :smiley: :laughing:
As for the major networks, I disagree…and to not like it is probably more so a mind set of again, that ‘perceived’ value thing… we use an antenna for FREE TV here and we get a LOT of stations…it’s as clear as cable & satellite… did I mention FREE? We have several TV shows that we watch on the networks faithfully, that we highly enjoy…“24” …“Grimm” … “Under The Dome” … “Hannibal” … “Super Natural” and others. There’s the PBS stations that take the place of Discovery Channel & History type channels. There’s channels that play classic movies only, channels that play classic TV shows etc. Many times we get caught up on watching great stuff on FREE TV, that we have to hold off on watching DVD’s…or we’ll just record what’s on TV & then watch it later…to record something off TV…is THAT stealing too? Oh, well.

Back on topic…about Steinberg having a motto similar to NetFlix, but more ‘applying the logic’. To me, it seems that their motto is to “keep price inflated for perceived value” and “milk the customer for all their worth” … Just me I guess. For example…Take the cost of OWNING a DVD Movie…how much does THAT cost you to buy the LATEST movie that came out on DVD when it was just playing at the theater weeks before??? Oh, maybe $19.00? Now how much did the movie cost to MAKE? I’d guess MILLIONS more than the cost to develop, or should I say, change/alter Cubase into a so called ‘New Version’ to keep selling to you. Sure, it’s there’s a ‘Supply & Demand’ factor here…and Wal-Mart (like DVD movies) isn’t selling copies of Cubase by the millions.

Steinberg can not only take a hint from the motto/mind set of NetFlix, but also from RedBox, as well as from Wal-Mart…oh you laugh now, but how long ago was it that you thought it absurd that having a RedBox DVD vending machine at a grocery store, or at a McDonald’s fast food joint? At least DAW softwares & VSTi softwares can be downloaded directly from the manufacturer these days…a good step…it wasn’t that long ago the idea was seen as absurd! BUT…just THINK about THAT for a bit… you are DOWNLOADING music software, they’ve NOW cut out MILLIONS of dollars in production costs for themselves by comparison to mass producing disks, boxes, wrapping etc, etc…How much LESS is Steinberg CHARGING you for all they are SAVING? I don’t know about you, but when I take it up the Ol dirt spot, I like a little kiss.

There’s no doubt in my mind, that Software companies can LEARN from the movie industry & DVD market. Give the product to the masses, at such a good price, that EVERYONE who has ANY interest or curiosity in DAW recording will want to buy a copy of the latest Cubase…even Logic users! :laughing: Instead of the demographic that is prone to downloading ‘pirated’ copies, out of curiosity or interest in trying a different DAW (the ‘try before you buy’ crowd…or the ‘Try & try Again’ crowd) …if the price was much more reasonable, they’d ‘BUY before they TRY’ :exclamation:

Maybe software companies should do what is done with the “Guns For Cash” … where people turn in their guns, illegal or legal…they get CASH for it, and ‘No Questions Asked’! But with software, you can turn in your downloaded/pirated software and, and least get a great discount for the software…with ‘No Questions Asked’ :exclamation: :bulb: :exclamation:

DAWDAMN! I’m such a visionary! :mrgreen:

@ Tom - “poking the bear” :smiley: