I don't think the makers of software costing hundreds or thousands of dollars per unit are the target audience of the article.
> Even the cut-down licenses seem absurdly expensive if your price anchor for software is $0.99.
If your price anchor for software is $0.99, you're not going to be able to afford any software that's worth more than $0.99. The music software you refer to is certainly worth more than that. I agree that it shouldn't have to cost $30,000 for a serious composer to have the tools they need; but I don't think it should cost $0.99 either. There is a lot of value in that software.
> It's a really difficult problem
I think a big part of the problem is that much software, like the music software you refer to, has a very small market. Yes, "very small" is a relative term, but what I'm comparing it to is, for example, the market for Microsoft Office. The main buyers in that market are large corporations and organizations, that buy thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of copies every few years. That's why Microsoft can afford to give heavy discounts to many other buyers, like students: those buyers are just a trickle anyway compared to their main revenue stream, and giving the discounts is probably a net win anyway once you factor in PR and lock-in (after all, the large corporations buying Office know that everybody learns how to use it in school).
There is no counterpart to those huge corporate buyers in markets like the one for music software. So the makers of software that sells in those markets simply can't afford to offer the kinds of pricing tiers that Microsoft can; they would go out of business.
> Even the cut-down licenses seem absurdly expensive if your price anchor for software is $0.99.
If your price anchor for software is $0.99, you're not going to be able to afford any software that's worth more than $0.99. The music software you refer to is certainly worth more than that. I agree that it shouldn't have to cost $30,000 for a serious composer to have the tools they need; but I don't think it should cost $0.99 either. There is a lot of value in that software.
> It's a really difficult problem
I think a big part of the problem is that much software, like the music software you refer to, has a very small market. Yes, "very small" is a relative term, but what I'm comparing it to is, for example, the market for Microsoft Office. The main buyers in that market are large corporations and organizations, that buy thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of copies every few years. That's why Microsoft can afford to give heavy discounts to many other buyers, like students: those buyers are just a trickle anyway compared to their main revenue stream, and giving the discounts is probably a net win anyway once you factor in PR and lock-in (after all, the large corporations buying Office know that everybody learns how to use it in school).
There is no counterpart to those huge corporate buyers in markets like the one for music software. So the makers of software that sells in those markets simply can't afford to offer the kinds of pricing tiers that Microsoft can; they would go out of business.