Maybe or maybe not. I would say in general most of us here are not fans of subscription services. Those of use who have sold software and tried subscription services are very aware of the hate received by many of those paying for the subscriptions. I assure you that Ableton management is extremely aware of the general unfavorable opinion users have of subscription software. This rent-to-own model is an attempt to provide a quality product to as many users as possible and still manage to operate a going concern. Almost no one gets into the creative software space with the intention of gouging their users. There are much better outlets for people with those intentions.

Now, if Ableton ends up being acquired by a private equity firm, you may very well see a shift in their pricing model where extracting revenue from customers at the expense of product quality becomes primary.

If you have worked with any of the people currently, or formerly, running Ableton, you will know that they worked hard to regain their financial independence from their outside investors and I doubt becoming a predatory software subscription service is on their roadmap.

It also wouldn’t work because I can just keep using the current version indefinitely.

There is very little reason to upgrade to the latest versions IMO