If you take one thing away from reading this article, it should be this: you don't need to do anything right now!
You will continue to receive free updates to the software, with access to all the features you paid for, along with bug fixes and enhancements to those features. If you purchased Capo directly (via FastSpring, and not the Mac App Store), please read this post.
While other companies may require all their existing paid customers to subscribe in order to get future updates, we instead decided that none of our existing customers should require a subscription! Slowly, we hope to earn each one of your subscriptions by continuing to deliver great updates to the features you have, and by introducing exciting, subscriber-only features that (we hope) will be difficult for you to pass up.
Here are some examples of what you will continue to get:
- When we make chord detection faster, or give it new capabilities, you get that for free
- If Capo adds support for a new Apple device or technology (things like Touch Bar, or 3D touch/haptics), you get that for free
- If the UI in Capo is re-styled for any reason (like Dark Mode for macOS), you get that for free
- And, of course, as we fix bugs in the software, you get that as well! For. Free.
Effectively, by purchasing Capo or Capo touch while it was a paid-up-front app, you have earned yourself a lifetime subscription to access Capo's original feature set. It's our way of saying thanks, and showing our appreciation for your support during Capo's first decade of existence!
Now, what you will not get:
In the version 4 update, we introduced the first set of features that are not available unless you subscribe. Specifically, the all-new Structure and Chords song views require an active subscription for you to access them.
But we have a proposal for you…
Because your early support is valued
Whenever you are presented with the option to subscribe, you will get access to a discounted rate. Forever. That's right—your early support will continue to pay off, year after year!
Try before you buy
When we introduced our first subscriber-only features in version 4, we wanted to make it easy for you to try them out before you decide to take the leap.
At any point that you activate one of the new features, we will prompt you to enter trial mode. By choosing to proceed, we will temporarily switch Capo to operate like the Free Edition, where you won't be able to save edits to your projects. You can freely experiment with the new features, make changes to the beat grid, check out the chords song view, and so on.
When you're done evaluating, you can close the project to leave trial mode and get back to using Capo as before. Do this as many times as you'd like, for as long as you'd like. If you don't see any features that are worth paying for, then no sweat! We'll continue to add more cool stuff to the list of subscriber-only features, hoping that we'll earn your subscription in a future update.
What if you subscribe, then later decide to cancel?
In that case, your copy of Capo will not revert to the Free Edition. Instead, your copy of Capo will return to the feature set you originally paid for, including all the improvements and bug fixes we have made along the way.
If you purchased from us directly
There is a small wrinkle in this transition, and it involves our direct-sale customers. That is, the people that purchased and downloaded Capo from us directly will no longer find a download link on the website. (This is not entirely true. Read here for further information about that.)
The version of Capo that you download from the Mac App Store should already be unlocked when you download it. Capo can find your stored license information from the direct-sale version that you have installed.
We put a bit more information about this on our post about downloads.
Any Questions?
We totally get that this might be confusing, and some of you might be left with questions or concerns about these changes.
Just know that we spent a very long time on the design of this transition. We created a transition plan that (we hope!) will be as smooth as possible for the people that already paid us for our products. In fact, we have tested this model with Capo touch first—just to make sure that it could technically work. (Spoiler alert: it did!)
With that out of the way, feel free to send us your questions and comments to support@supermegaultragroovy.com. We'd love to hear from you!
