PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows How many activations does BIAB have for windows.

Hello everyone there is a question that I ask myself, what will happen if PGMUSIC had to stop its activity, how could we do to use BIAB after 3 computer crashes?
Excuse my english thanks

Two things:
1: It's not possible to contemplate that this might happen. The company has continued to go from strength to strength.

2: If it did happen, I feel sure that they would make some arrangement to provide a workable solution.

Of course, only PG Music could answer the question, but I certainly wouldn't lose any sleep

1: It's not possible to contemplate that this might happen. The company has continued to go from strength to strength.

It's not possible to contemplate that this will not happen. No one knows the real strength of any company Till its gone.


2: If it did happen, I feel sure that they would make some arrangement to provide a workable solution.

Maybe Hopefully,

Cakewalk at one time was a midi only program away back , and they were going strong.

Look what happened to them, and we were all left with no solution.

Players only love you when they are playing.


Just stating it can happen, And nothing is forever.

That's why I wrote:
Every other assumption could only be a guess.

Somewhat OT but @ beatmaster. Cakewalk is still alive and kicking since Bandlab took it over. They even offer it free now and, since any Sonar addins that you had registered with Cakewalk are still honoured by cakewalk by Bandlab you have lost nothing IMHO.

ryclark

Thanks I know Bandlab took it over, Still a bit early to find out why, and what the angle is.

I hope they do have a long term outlook for it, even if we eventually pay for some part of the service.

But what if they didn't take it under their wings, what if it doesn't last ?.

The point of fact is , No Company , either hardware or software are indestructible to every day costs, bills etc, and can hit a hard time when the doors have got to close through no fault of there own.

It would be good in way to say at least, I know I will have the program to keep and use.


After spending/ investing a good bit of cash, that's all I am saying.

I thought I would put in some facts and suggestions on this activation issue which is basically the topic of how best a software company should guarantee they make some money.

I am not sure about laws controlling how companies should charge. These facts suggest otherwise.

FACTS:

Multicharts. I have a life time license for Multicharts. It pays for support and upgrades. It was suppose to be until their gold product but they keep extending it. I use to be on their forum daily and support was fast. It has slowed a bit since I am almost never on there now. I can reinstall as much as I want. I can run two versions on the same machine. I can only run live trading on one machine (it shuts down anything on another machine because it calls home to mamma via the internet constantly). I can run offline on as many machines as I want for as long as I want.

MS-access 64 bit. I bought it outright last year. It has zero support and zero upgrades. I can report bugs. I paid about $150 Canadian. I can format my machine as much as I want and download my copy from their website. I can run it on-line or off-line. However this software only runs on one machine. If I buy a new machine I have to pay the $150 again. Expensive. I might not bother. I am to busy with music :-)

I have some smaller softwares that use a key. Purchase prices in the $50 range. I can install them on multiple machines (no limit). I get zero support and zero upgrades. One of these is my web page programming software.

My web programming. (Xammp, Netbeans debugger, mysql workbench, notepad++). All public license free. unlimited installs. unlimited machines. Great software. Amazing debugger.

OBS studio and MS movie maker. Free. Great combination for creating software tutorials.

OPINIONS:

I do not think it is wise for a software company to restrict installs. People have the right to control their machine to clean it of all the internet junk that tends to get on it or nasty viruses out there thus they for good reason tend to get very annoyed when you try to take this away from them. Software companies are much smarter to follow the path taken for Multicharts and MS-Access 64 bit or something similar such as I describe below.

Here are ideas which make sense to me. The basic idea is to provide a lot of different options to please as many customers as possible yet make money in each situation.

All these options should be controlled by a key and also by user info stored on the software manufacturers file so customers can be identified just like a bank identifies them. Charge by number of machines with 1 desktop and 1 notebook being the starting standard. BIAB has to run off-line in order for my Jams to run. The restaurants and clubs tend to not have internet unlike the coffee shops these days. Within that also charge this way.

Have a life time license with year by year support as an extra package if they choose to get it. They may eventually decide to drop their yearly support charge. So this is the highest price purchase and gives you zero upgrades. You can install on one machine as much as you want. Maybe keep a copy if their version so they can download it if they have a fire (copy MS-access 64 bit and MultiCharts).

Also have a series of 3 upgrade packages (2 versions back, 1 version back, beta). These get cheaper as the risk of bugs increase. So you pay less than the life time package but you keep having to upgrade at a cost to pay for the programming. Let me repeat you have to upgrade. Maybe there is a package which is more expensive where you have the option to upgrade at a cost but it is not as expensive as the life time package. The upgrade should be a complete reinstall and it can be done after a format of the drive of course.

In all these situations (much like the bank asks additional security questions if you log in on-line on a new machine) keep track of exactly what machine they are using. Limit them to specific machines but allow them to change the machine. Again, whatever the machine is they should be allowed to fully reinstall as often as they like.

So within these parameters the company sets a price for each. A full feature demo with time limit makes sense. I was thinking of upgrading my Comparator software that is very old and freeware. It would have cost me $50.00. They had a restructured feature demo. The very feature I wanted they had restricted. I decided not to spend the $50.00 because I don't trust them and they lost the sale. It was just as easy for me to put up with the missing feature. Trust works both ways.

I have learned about 17 programming languages to varying extents but I do not know any ms-windows programming at all except MS-Access. I gather there is always a way to hack windows. However most do not know how and I am not even the slightest bit close to knowing. I have better ways to spend my time (music and market trading). If a user is getting good value most do not want to steal. I am just amazed at BIAB and I often state that in my emails to my jam group. I don't mind paying for it for this reason. Both it and Realband have way more than I need. I put my final BIAB Video Tutorial on Youtube to reduce the cost of learning for my jam group members that have thought that they might buy BIAB. My guess is 50% have BIAB already. Maybe 1 to 5 might watch my video and buy BIAB. I just put my Website/BIAB video link in the two ads (Kijiji and CraigsList) I run constantly to get new members. So PgMusic gets some free advertising and a basic intro tutorial to help.

Well put Sir

And I hope certain people read this, as I felt I was pursued as a trouble maker and I was only stating my opinion.


This forum needs a big overhaul in some respects.

I do not even see it as being a trouble maker. This is a ridiculous idea. Companies need to listen to the customers or they go out of business. MultiCharts rose to the top fast because they listen. This info is money in the bank for the company. If they think of these opinions as trouble maker stuff they are in big trouble. So far PgMusic is allowing re-installs. So they are listening. Their method seems a bit awkward but at least I can keep running my BIAB until they get back to me about this request number. This is important. I only tried to reactivate because of a bug in BIAB in the first place. I was not reinstalling. Unfortunately I was in a rush to get that video out and I don't remember the original bug.

I had two members lightly suggest maybe using another backing track program. I don't think the others are as good. I will stick with BIAB.

One clarification on my thoughts. If a software matures so there are no new direct features that the user uses one needs to realize that having to upgrade the software to adapt to new operating systems sometimes happens. if this happens this is in fact a new feature. Lets call it a secondary new feature. So this would be an upgrade and those who sign on to beta, 1 back, 2 back need to pay for these upgrades since it takes programming to make this possible. The person with the life time license that does not include upgrade would be out of luck in this case and stuck with the old operating system.

Another point. MultiCharts now costs $1497.00 for a lifetime license. I don't know if they will ever stop the free
upgrades with this license. I paid $6??.00 in 2007 for it. I lucked out I guess :-)
https://www.multicharts.com/purchase/?
Software companies can always put in their agreements an operating system upgrade if they have stopped putting in new direct features and charge for this operating system upgrade. Whether they can realistically hire short term contract programmers to do this I don't know.

It occurred to me that BIAB will never really run out of features because they keep putting in new real tracks and this is a bottomless pit. That is primarily why I went from 2012 to 2016 in 4 years (to get the full set of real tracks). It had a few new useful features but that was not the reason for purchase. Two group members who have BIAB complained about my midi tracks :-)

I have been thinking about my prior post. This is the systems analysis part of me that can't help it :-)

So lets take MultiCharts as a base. When I purchase it I get a number that identifies myself to TS-Support (the MultiCharts people). So when I am online trading MultiCharts calls home to mamma often and lets me trade on that machine. If I buy a new machine such as my notebook and install MultiCharts on that machine I have to use that number so the TS-support database for my account knows it is me installing MultiCharts on that machine. These machines also have this number somehow on my machines for offline use. So to give a true story one day I was trading the futures which runs overnight. I left the house with my notebook after supper and forgot to turn the desktop trading machine off and MultiCharts was still running. I got to my FAV coffee shop and started up multicharts to do some offline research work on the market. However there was an internet connection and I automatically connected. The notebook MultiCharts called home to mamma and asked me if I wanted to kill MultiCharts on the desktop back home. I said yes. So it wrote out the files back home to store its day of collecting data and shut it down then allowed me to run multicharts on the notebook at the coffee shop (I think there was a tiny overlap since I did not need to wait).

So that is very cool and it protects TS-Support as well as making me very happy (another reason they have risen to the top so fast). However I could have fired up MultiCharts off-line (where there is no internet at a coffee shop) and it has no way to call home to mamma. What MultiCharts does it is allows this in the agreement. I can work to do research but I obviously can't trade since all trading is done on the internet. They know I will not research forever without wanting to trade live eventually.

So this could be applied to BIAB and RealBand in the same way. The difference would be the call home to Mamma would be maybe once a month only and save PgMusic a boat load of work. It might go like this.

Pg-Music supplies the same type of number to identify me on the machine and for calls home to Mamma. If I am trying BIAB without such a number obtained when I pay for it BIAB runs for the standard 30 days and then stops so it can no longer run on that machine unless I reformat and do it all over again (few will want to do that). Few will want to return an image because sometimes that fails (had that happen twice actually).

So if at the end of the 30 days I buy BIAB I get my number. This allows me to install on 2 machines (the PgMusic database is designed to allow me unlimited machines if I want to waste my money this way but I don't). However if I am running off line it keeps track of this and allows me to run off line only for maybe a week or a month. When I run on-line it calls home to mamma and updates this time to bump it ahead so I can run off-line for another week or month or whatever. This is all automatic (no one at PgMusic need do anything). With this setup I can format and install on my two machines as much as I want. I just have to reinstall with my number so when BIAB calls home to mamma it knows who I am. So back home on the database for my account at PG-Music the record of my account knows the identification for my two machines. If one of my machines fries and I buy a new machine it is a very simple process that occurs to identify this new machine with PgMusic that takes place almost exactly like MultiCharts uses. The call home to mamma detects my number calling in but on a different machine. It asks me if I want to remove that old machine from my account and use this new machine. I say yes because I know that old machine went in the trash can or maybe I have decided to use it as a backup machine only like I have done a few times (I don't care if backups run a bit slow). So I say yes and I am happily running BIAB on my new desk top machine and on my notebook machine without having to bother the people at PgMusic nor wait for emails which is so old tech. If I tried to run BIAB on that old machine it would stop me or ask me to pay more money maybe or maybe just say you are not licensed to run on this machine and give a 30 day trial (PgMusic can decide how they want to handle this). Because I only have to call in to extend my off-line use maybe once a month or once a week I am good to go with my Jam group where there is typically no internet at the jam. However if I was to be jamming every week and did not call in to Mamma during the proper time frame I would not be able to run my BIAB for the jam. It is up to me to remember to call in to mamma to extend my off-line use. No problem. At least PgMusic personnel do not need to get involved (I am sure they have better things to do).

So that takes care of unlimited re-formats and switching to a new machine which we all have the right to do and avoids some clients getting annoyed with PgMusic as well (I have a reminder in my database reminder system telling me that PgMusic wants me to email them if I switch to a new machine so they are obviously okay with this but again it is email and old tech). Now purchases plans and what PgMusic decides to charge could be modeled off what I described in my last two posts (beta testers getting the best rates and those who do not need the latest and greatest with few bug hassles being happy to pay more and with some even buying a very expensive life time license that allows them to if they wish get 2 or 3 versions back upgrades).

To there you go. I do not have the expertise to program it but the MultiCharts programmers sure do. I have not heard of any stories of people ripping off MultiCharts via hacking.

So here is my theory as to why the MultiCharts people prefer their customers to buy a life time license over the others (it is a theory but it makes perfect sense). MultiCharts was started by two traders who were also computer science majors and great programmers as well. I suspect they are very good at trading and want the money up front so they can trade it and get great rates of return on their trading skills (making way more money than they would make in the bank). I upgrade to the current release however (they have no 2 or 3 back). So that is another theory. Maybe they want me on that latest release to test for them. Having said that I do not need to upgrade. I have upgraded maybe 3 times but normally because of a reformat or a new machine. If I can I try to go in a few months after the release comes out (after the initial bugs have been fixed).

So no this is not bad for PgMusic to read. People do not need to get all upset thinking I am attacking PgMusic. It is an idea that could save them labor costs and complaints. It is possible money in the bank for them if they choose to act on it saving labor costs in the long run. Sadly I can not help more than this. I have no idea how to program it :-)

I've always felt very strongly this way about the updates, and all the more so after upgrading to 2019. I think there are enough folks on here that seem to care primarily about the RTs such that BiaB has simply gotten complacent--which is a shame--because it's probably one of the main reason that, among the plethora of music and instrument-related forums I frequent, I last saw BiaB mentioned in 2015 or something. The program just gets more and more dated and hobbled, but instead of fixing the damn thing, they keep piling on more RTs like a deli owner that keeps adding more mayo to the tuna that went off two days ago and needs to be replaced.

This makes sense actually. I think one thing that could be done here is to make it easier to send in dumps and problem reports and to really emphasize they want this info in this forum. BIAB stopped the count in on me not too long ago not once but twice. I had to do a system reset to fix it each time. I didn't report it. If they emphasized they want to know about this I might have pointed it out. The crash that caused me to restart BIAB then get that "You need to activate" error is another example. If I knew they were begging for being told about these errors I might have thought to screen capture it and send it in. Not only that the MutliCharts bug tracker and feature request system would help. The MultiCharts people worked really hard to rise to the top and from what I can see stay there. MutliCharts is maybe 15 years old. Part of doing this would be trying hard to find new energy for the company. Being 64 and comparing my drive and energy to when I was 22 is what I am talking about (no comparison). It reminds me of my dentist. He just semi-retired and his son is taking over the office with his loving dad's guidance. It also reminds me of two 3rd party programs for searching for strings in MS-access to help with programming. They were both good. The owners got old and sick. They did not sell their products. They are gone and do not work on the latest releases. What is strange is Microsoft does not have this feature built in. Lets hope BIAB stays with us.

Here are three screen shots displaying just how intense the MultiCharts people are about rising to the top and staying at the top regarding having the best software in their category. I was the one who suggested they have a bug tracker software way back in 2007 when I first registered. Not sure if they listened to me or thought of it themselves.

The first image shows that when you post on a forum they direct your attention to when to use the bug tracker. It is the yellow strip at the top. It contains a link to the bug tracker and a link to help on it.

The second image is the first page that appears when you click the link to go to the bug tracker. Feature requests and bugs are entered. The downside is I think they get overloaded. Regardless they want to sift through it and prioritize based upon their own judgement. They extract from it to create their own to-do list you might call it. If we submit a request we get an email indicating it's status has changed. So if they put in a feature we requested we are made aware of it (I think - I can't remember this happening - it should).

The third image is an example of the detail screen (in this case a feature request). You can see there is a place where we can vote. I just noticed my example has 65 votes. Wow. I have never seen one that high. One of my entries got 15 if I remember correctly. I think they put it in.

Regarding voting I suggested they give us the option to sign up to have emails with the subject line of any new items entered in the bug tracker emailed to us. Otherwise we are not aware aware of them and end up not voting when we might. They never put this in :-) Maybe they figured no one would want this many emails or maybe they are just too busy. Maybe the 65 vote suggests people do in fact scan this bug tracker list regularly unlike myself who does not.

I used to upgrade the full package with all the bells and whistles every year, then when the price started going higher I'd sit out a year or two. Was just about to upgrade and while looking into one of the issue, came across this "Activation" issue. Funny, after reading this thread I found out that Cakewalk has essentially gone out of business.

Casual PC users are the majority of the public, most have moved on to their "smart" phones. Long, long time ago I was burned - for the LAST time - buying software from a company which required their continuity in order for me to use MY software. Software which requires me to keep an install code around somewhere is really annoying while it serves no effective purpose compating the pirate junkees.

Anyone who really uses a PC, likely has at least half a dozen in various stages, with laptops, file servers, etc. You have to periodically reinstall your OS, because there is no way around it, the OS itself ain't the most robust bowl of spagetti code.

Let's face it: The guys who created BandInTheBox are extremely talented and made a great product. But they're getting up there in age. Continuity is not something I'm going to bet more of my money on. Linux programs are getting better and better.

I'll keep my old versions of BIAB around, or maybe just the most recent, if I can find which USB drive has it.

Yeah, it was fun to read about the new features. But in most cases I've just stayed with the old stuff.

I don't want to get involved with any software which makes me find a pair of reading glasses, requires an internet connection, bosses me around like I'm a pledge in some corporation.

The activation that they've put in is likely beaten already, already "free" versions in the far East. Management should think, if your (loyal) customers don't have the time to put up with hacked bootleg versions of your software, why would they have the time to put up with Activation? When (not if) your hard drive crashes or you have to otherwise bite the bullet and upgrade your machine, I don't want ANY EXTRA WORK TO GET BACK UP AND RUNNING. Nothing!

I'm at the point where I'll keep an old laptop set up for just one project. I don't mess with software which makes me buy 10 licenses when I only use one.

I had a similar rant back on the Cakewalk forum. They were a "well behaived" software company like pgMusic was, simple install. But they went down the dark path, first an install code, then eventually activation, and all of the headaches for users that necessarily goes with it. So I dropped Cakewalk, never missed it. Vegas Pro (a few versions ago) is doing it for me for now. When my Vegas Pro goes belly up, I'll choose one of the many free and maturing Linux video editing apps.

pgmusic had a great run. I'll still use the software from time to time. I'm "off the wagon".

Just my opinion, to each his or her own. I made the mistake of going back to read the posts on Cakewalk's forum after my 'goodbye'. Oh, the fanboys were brutal.

Such is life. Good luck to pgMusic and everyone here, especially those who've been very helpfull

- Dave

Hi SeaMus,

Recent posts in this thread are mostly people making suggestions, and there are some good ideas here, but the activation in Band-in-a-Box hasn't changed. BB doesn't require an internet connection to function, once you are activated on a PC you are activated. If you are having a problem or question about activation, please get in touch with us and we can fix it.

@SeaMus. It's understandable to be concerned when the process isn't perhaps fully understood, however I feel you are being much more concerned than there is reason to be.

The registration process is easy and simply and reliable. Every BiaB customer uses it. Are there pages of problems being reported? No.

Once registered, you can use the program without issue, no look-up to PG Music, no Internet connection, nothing.

If you have an image backup of your hard drive, and it crashes, just restore from the image. There is nothing else to do. BiaB will be there, and it will be registered OK.

And think of the great new features esp. RealTracks that are available with the later releases.