I sympathize with your opinion on the prices and I really appreciate how FL Studio has managed their lifetime upgrades. When you look at the monthly amortized cost of the $600 spent on Ableton, it is right in the range of monthly audio and video streaming services and way less than a monthly phone plan that a lot of use are paying for. I wouldn't say they are gouging their users, and if they are like any other small software company, they are probably on the knife edge of profitability any given quarter.

The cost of audio (or any) software has been something people have been complaining about for decades. When I started in the audio software industry, the prices (amazingly!) were just as high or higher as the prices today. Some of this cost was due to physically creating boxes, manuals, storage media and paying to get the product into sales channels. Viewed historically, you might see that you are getting a much better deal today with Ableton for $300 than Opcode Studio Vision 1.0 in 1990 for $995. In 1990, you had to call into Opcode for support and there was no online community for support and information sharing.

It is real conundrum running a company that sells creative tools; the very users you want to bring in as new customers might be the ones that are the most resistant, or unable, to paying the full price. The industry has tried to come up with various ways to assist the people, including the $79 version of Ableton that you are not a fan of.

When you are actually deriving your income from the use of the product, the pricing becomes less of an issue and I clearly remember Warner Brothers buying dozens of copies of our software to support a Danny Elfman project because he was using our software. I also remember struggling composers begging for education pricing or even free copies of the software at our booth at the NAMM trade show.

FL Studio is not unprofessional noob software by any means. Ultimately, a talented singer, songwriter, composer, DJ, etc. will use any means they have on hand to be creative.