First, the fair use policy.
This one will probably not be to everyone's liking, but truth be told, probably we have all seen it coming. A stricter fair use policy has gone into effect a couple of days ago, and the reasoning behind that decision goes something like that:
The reason for having units that are free to use is to give our users the chance to learn the workflow and evaluate the sound of our gear in an un-stressful way. It's a fully functional demo version, so to speak. Most of our users were very considerate and have used the free gear for a time slot or two.Usually, that's perfectly enough to process a couple of tracks that they are working on at the moment.
But there have also been a couple of people that simply reserved all the free gear for 5 hours straight. Effectively blocking all others from trying it out. Not exactly fair use.
To mitigate this, we imposed a limit on how much time a single user can reserve on the processors marked as "free" for free, and that's half an hour per day. After that, the booking will cost additional MATs.
To put it another way, longer bookings are still possible on free units, but every slot over half an hour per day is not free anymore.
We hope this means you wont have to wait for a free slot for so long anymore, and most likely still process most of the tracks that you need in a day still free of charge or for pocket change. We think that's pretty fair.
Did you say... subscriptions?!?
Yes! We want to make it up to you for imposing a more strict usage policy. Because a lot of you have shown interest, we're going to be introducing subscriptions very soon, and a part of your subscription plan will also be the amount of extra free slots that you can book on the "free" gear!
The finer details about subscriptions are still being decided upon, but we will bring you the grand news during the weekend, so stay tuned!