I opened up Adobe Creative Cloud and to me it's absolutely mind boggling the amount of software you have access to with a subscription and just how frequently they continue to make major updates to the software. Of course the subscription isn't particularly cheap but I'm fortunate enough to be able to get it at the reduced Student/Educator price. Last year I actually had a couple projects that paid about $500 total so it actually made sense. I'm so accustomed to having access to the software that I don't see not renewing it anytime soon.

Microsoft Office is a tougher sell to me. Not only do I have access to it through work but I picked up an Enterprise version of 2007 that would still cover all my needs if I didn't already have access to the current versions. I was basically just reminded about their subscription because they have released a Money template add-in for Excel that I would think is pretty cool if I didn't already have my own Google Sheets system perfected for me. I'm sure it has some features that would be nice but not worth paying a $100 per year to get a MS Office 365 Personal subscription.

Ah, well I see I am now updated to the latest version of Premiere Pro and I haven't really used Premiere much for about a year so I've got to do a deep dive back into some tutorials. I've free access to Lynda.com from an old library account.

I've had a subscription for Roland Cloud for about 3 years now, even though there have been instances where I haven't even opened FL Studio in months yet I've still paid the monthly Roland fee. Same with Spotify, really, though I do tend to use that weekly at the very least.

I envy people with musical talent.

Subscription based software always felt like extortion to me, especially when proprietary file formats are used. What if you're not using it anymore, but later get an old client back who just wants some small changes done to an old project. With software you bought you can just install it again, do the change and earn quick money. With subscriptions you can either choose to renew the subscription to a product you already had, do the whole work from scratch again or tell the client that you can't do it.

Gotta ask my old collegues if they changed suites, like they said they would or if they bit the bullet and stayed with Adobe.

Same!

@Impi: These days Roland Cloud does let you outright buy the instruments you want to use without any subscribing, but the prices are still quite hefty and at the moment you can't claim more than two instruments for "offline use" (as in, to be used without a subscription) based on the money you've already spent on subscribing. In December 2018 (1.5 years after I first started rolanding) I could claim two instruments for "offline use" but already by that point I was using far more than just those two instruments, so I decided to stick with the monthly fees.

Speaking of virtual instruments, though, the current versions of the Arturia VSTs (no cloud subscriptions needed) don't support presets from earlier versions so if I want to doodle around with a 2011 Nikumuthing again, I have to install a previous version AND even after all these years, the old versions still have a limited number of activations (per installation) so if I run out of activations for the older versions, I might have to pay Arturia again just to be able to reactivate them - OR just not be able to reactivate them ever again since they're outdated and unsupported. Wild stuff.

(Granted that I very rarely feel like revisiting past tracks like that, but still)

I had to update my payment information the last time Adobe renewed but my discount had dropped off supposedly because I had never replied to an email requesting verification of my student/educator status. I did get the discount after contacting customer support. It was about a $262 difference. I've checked several times and I've never found an email requesting verification.