Just got email from DJ with a new offer $250/500 one time fee for life. It is hard to figure out if the deal covers th same stuff what foinding members paid $250 lub 10/mth plus $1 per download. What is the level of satisfaction of founding members?

At least it's a onetime price rather than a subscription.That's OK if you're a heavy user of their software graphics packages. I do think the one time price is better than the subscription.

I'm generally only interested in their gear though. Apparently gear sale prices are now members only as well. It's just not worth it to me.

It's that "one-time fee" for the privilege of being able to spend $1 per every piece of media you get.

Digital Juice has an interesting business model whereby early adopters are often rewarded and along the way, there are cherries to be picked as well. NO ONE in their right mind buys DJ stuff at retail unless they absolutely NEED it before it goes on sale. I've spent thousands over the years. Some of it I actually use, but less and less every year.

They have their devout, their fanboys and customers whom they've either benefited or who feel screwed over because they "missed" a deal.

Some folks used to brag about owning ALL the DJ stuff when I frequented the forums there back in the day. I bought what I thought I could use (and still would today if the right product and price coincided with my needs).

Well, the original deal of this revamped Digital Juice was a $250 membership fee (which came with $500 of merchandise) plus a $10 per month subscription that dropped the cost of every graphics item they sell to $1 per item. For those who took that deal, they next offered that for a $99 one time fee you could waive forever the $1 per item. Now they are offering the $500 feature to forever waive the $10 monthly subscription.

There are other perks for certain members also, like free shipping on gear, etc. Now that the initial signup is over, the initial membership fee is higher and they do not guarantee that the $10 per month won't go up in the future. And, everything, including items you bought several years back, is available for on-demand download so no more shuffling stacks of DVDs.

If you really like their products and make heavy use of that type of thing, it is a good deal. And with this big infusion of cash they have obviously hired a lot of staff, because they are churning out new product at a high rate.

I'm just curious to see how things go after several months and this big cash intake dwindles down to the $10 per month/$1 per item level. I did become a member and took the deal to waive the $1 fee, but balked at the lifetime membership.

I wonder how this will affect gear sales. I've only bought gear when they had sales. IMHO the gear is a bit overpriced compared to similar gear from competitors. Since it seems gear sale prices are only to members I can't see that being very profitable. I might be interested in their new MiniBurst 504 LED light but certainly not at $649. I might consider it at their sale price of $399 which is competitive with iKan's equivalent.

I am in the same boat as you David. I no longer pay the $1 fee but still pay the monthly. The lifetime fee kind of pissed me off, they should have offered this right along to the founding members. But they needed to drain us of a few hundred first.

Never purchased gear from them, but I use a lot of their graphics and music.

One correction to my earlier info - the lifetime fee is $500 to get everything they offer, there is also a $250 lifetime offer that doesn't include their more complex offerings, like AE and Motion Templates, etc.

Now, today comes yet another offer - if you are a certain level of member (which I am), you now have the option to pay the $10 per month subscription as $99 per year instead. So that does save $20 per year. I should probably do that, but am frankly a bit tired of the continuous new deals that require more upfront cost. I think I'll pass for now and see how much I use it over the next few months.

One other thing about the Gear products - again, if you are a Platinum level member like me, you get any Gear purchases with lifetime free shipping. That's pretty good as well, as depending on the gear, the shipping cost often made certain things not as great a bargain as they sounded.

Interesting David,

I am also a Platinum member and have not received the lifetime offer but received the $99 offer starting mid last week.

They are starting to turn into a bit of a cash drain for what we get in return.

I am trying to understand the $500 deal- are they offering all their digital products for life for one time payment of $500 or do you still have to pay $1 every time? Are those all the future products or just certain categories or just the products they produced so far?
Also I heard some horror stories about their new Juicer or its' equivalent not working and terrible support. I have a small collection of DJ legacy products and I only found use for some of them. However there must be something I am missing in $500 deal - its to good to be true especially comparing to founding members.

Andrew,

I agree they are not clear on the $500 for life. And I have asked by email with no response.

As for Juicer not working, that has not been the case with me. Also support has been swift with positive results.

Well, the original "Founding Members" of which I was one, got a lot of perks. For the $250 fee you got $250 worth of their existing content, plus $250 from their new store. There were other perks, including locking in the price of the $10 per month subscription for at least a couple of years, free shipping, more download capability, etc.

It's complicated. One way to look at it is that I had to buy $250 worth of content but then got that much more free. So yes, that second $250 is now sort of redundant, since I now get everything for free by just paying the $10 subscription. But, I could have already gotten that second batch of content back in the summer and been using it - I just didn't. I was waiting until more of the new content was posted.

For years I used LOTS of DJ products, but have now sort of evolved my editing style so that I don't really use a lot of animated backgrounds, showy transitions, etc. But, they also started adding overlay products that can be used for a stylized look or for subtle backgrounds. I've used some of their Motion templates (carefully chosen to avoid the ones that I don't need or like) to add some motion graphics polish to title sequences, etc. In fact, their AE and Motion templates require more than just a beginning knowledge of those programs to use, so they are adding soon their own software that lets you add your text and do simple tweaks to the templates even if you don't have AE or Motion or don't know how to tweak them other than typing in your own text.

So, I don't use as much of their product as I once did, and I find that lots of it does not suit my style. But, I still use it enough that I was willing to pay the upfront cost and grab a bunch of products that I liked. And, I can now pick 1 item from a volume, instead of buying a bunch of stuff that I hated just to get a couple of things I might use.

I also like that I can retire my stack of DVDs, because everything I've ever bought from them is now online and I can grab it as needed. And those of us that were early joiners did see some teething problems with the new system, but the speed is better now. My biggest complaint is that I personally find the interface design of the new site difficult to understand and navigate.

So, the new setup is a great deal if you like and plan to use a fair amount of their material. I do like that I can drop the subscription later if I wish, and most of the items I've gotten will still work.

Andrew, they have several options. You get a bunch of free stuff for joining and paying the upfront fee. Then you pay $10 per month and $1 per item. However, there are now options where for a one time fee of $99 they waive the $1 per item for life, and for $249 or $499 they also waive the $10 per month for life. I did the $99 option but not the full membership.

Here's the link to details of the new lifetime membership and what you get for free if you do the $249 or $499. Remember, once a member, for $10 per month and $1 per item you get access to everything.

:: Digital Juice (http://www.digitaljuice.com/?utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=DJ%20Content%20List%20for%20Gear%20Subscribers%20(AutoSync)&utm_campaign=20141013%20-%20Monday%20-%2010AM%20Baby%20Pilot)

You get a bunch of free stuff for joining and paying the upfront fee. Then you pay $10 per month and $1 per item. However, there are now options where for a one time fee of $99 they waive the $1 per item for life, and for $249 or $499 they also waive the $10 per month for life. I did the $99 option but not the full membership.

Here's the link to details of the new lifetime membership and what you get for free if you do the $249 or $499. Remember, once a member, for $10 per month and $1 per item you get access to everything.


It kills me how complicated the pricing seems.

Combined with the terrible website setup... the convoluted pricing is the icing on the cake. I passed.

This offer has a faint smell of desperation, IMO. It's similar to joining a gym that charges a large membership fee except there's no protection if the business folds.

The other thing I don't like is that it may stifle production of new products. I love DJ's stuff that I purchased in the past, but this move raises a red flag for me.

With this infusion of cash they are putting out new product (although a lot of it doesn't fit my needs) at record pace. However, once the initial cash infusion settles down, I don't see how they can keep this pace.

Yes, a $500 investment would require a huge love for their products and a huge faith in the longevity of the company. They have been around quite a while, but that was too much of a stretch for me.

Agree David,

I am just going to keep at $10 month and by the time I would have spent $500 I am sure there will be cheaper options.

I'm curious, how are their "music" offerings?

I'd be willing to swing $249 if I can get lots of great royalty free and constantly updated music offerings for projects. I could also see some benefit to backgrounds and textures etc.

Based on the email it's a one-time fee of $249 and download everything free after that.

Since I'm primarily interested in their gear and it seems gear sales are now only to members, I think they'll lose a lot of outside sales as their gear is otherwise much more expensive than competing products.

Given how hard they're pushing memberships and changing the deals and extending the deadlines, it does seem they are in an insecure situation.

That said, their lifetime membership would be attractive if one uses their software a lot. If not, it drives away the a la carte sales.

B&H carries most of the Digital Juice gear. Membership not required. :)

I find music selection to be such a personal thing I hesitate to comment. And, as a retired music teacher, arranger, orchestrator, etc. my taste is maybe different than others - I find 90% of all royalty-free music selections overly cheesy and synthetic sounding. I liked some of the DJ music offerings a few years back, but am not a fan of their recent offerings. They may fit the needs/style of others though.

B&H carries most of the Digital Juice gear. Membership not required. :)

While their prices are lower than Digital Juice gear list prices they're much higher than the sale prices. B&H doesn't carry the MinBurst 504 which DJ lists as $649 (way overprices IMHO) but had been on sale to the public (non members) only once at $399. B&H has an iKan 508 which is similar at $449.

BTW this is a pattern with most of DJ hardware. They have extremely high list prices compared to competing products but good sales prices. If their sales are only to members they're seriously hurting hardware sales. I can't help but think they're pushing membership deals so hard because the numbers haven't been what they hoped for. The membership deals are good if you use their software frequently. I generally spend under $100 a year on their software. They seemed to have stopped third party software sales as well.

I'm not a fan of their subscription model and I've not offered them any of my money since they implemented it.

I don't want to wish failure on anyone. I would like to see them adjust their policy though.

And all I want is to buy their hardware when they have sales, without have to subscribe or become a member. Mind you, this is hardware, not their various software elements.

B&H doesn't require me to pay $500 at the door to by gear.

About the only places I know that require a membership to shop their discounts are Costco and the like.

So, for example, if I want the DJ Miniburst 504 my options are pay $649 or $899 (membership plus sale price and it still isn't only sale most of the time!). In fact you become a member and you still don't get the discount until they have their narrow sale period.

I can't help but think they haven't really thought this through. Given the frequent changes in their membership offerings, it's really looking like that's the case. It's a shame because they do have some useful things and if you're a heavy user of their software, I can certainly see the value.

Well, to be fair, the membership fee comes with a slew of heavily discounted product. So you get far more than just the ability to buy stuff. About B&H - I'll be curious to see if they are allowed to continue selling DJ items once they've sold what they have already in inventory. Again, that's just me guessing.

So, like it or not, successful or not, their plan is to not sell to you unless you're a member. It's like B&H saying you have to be a member to buy anything, but for that required $250 membership fee upfront you get $500 worth of products.

So, if you really want and use their products, you're already ahead on the membership alone. And, they've invested a lot in an online system for downloading everything on demand, etc.

They are not really changing the memberships, just gradually adding a somewhat confusing array of "lifetime" options to remove the per-item and monthly costs.

As I think I've said, they've taken in a lot of funds this year, but it will be interesting to see how it goes once they're mainly relying on the $10 per month. Can they sustain this?

And, unless you pay for a lifetime membership (I have not) they do not guarantee that these prices won't ever go up.

Unlike their software, they don't come out with new hardware every month. It's more like maybe one item every year. In addition, it's not like members get a constant discount on their hardware. If's full price for everyone, member or not, unless they have a sale for a few days. If membership got you a permanent discount on hardware there'd be some value but that's not the case.

I have bought a lot of DJ gear in the last few years. Good stuff mostly...
Now that they want a subscription, I have not (and will not) buy anything from them again.
Adobe was bad enough (and I still haven't gone with their subscription pricing), now I have to pay every month just to be able to buy their stuff? Nope.

As a side note, me and my wife were betting on when they would actually pull the plug on the founding member deal - weeks and weeks of "THIS IS THE LAST DAY!" emails...

Seems all their marketing I receive is now for one time payment for lifetime membership. That might be OK for software but it's horrible for hardware especially since their sale items are of limited time frame and quantity. It makes very little sense to join for hardware sales.

I have to say I'm very concerned about the future of Digital Juice. These lifetime subscriptions and other 'deals' they have don't make a lot of sense to me - other companies that do this type of scheme tend to need the operating cash in the short term and worry about the long term implications later (if they survive that long).

Their current Juicer program is in perpetual Beta. It does what I need most of the time but often doesn't redraw the screen and other little annoyances. It works, but barely.

It just feels like they need to focus on a couple of specific markets and really make great products there, then push to other markets. I really want them to succeed. I just don't see how they can when they are basically giving away the farm to get some quick cash.

Overall I've been very happy with their products and have used them a lot. I've spent several thousand dollars on them over the years. But this latest business model doesn't appear to be sustainable. Once my 'free' 250 pieces are done, I will likely cancel the subscription and move on. There's plenty of good stuff out there nowadays on envato or other such sites.

It does seem like their current model is designed to raise some up front capital in a hurry. They dumped their monthly subscription model very quickly.

Their current Juicer program is in perpetual Beta. It does what I need most of the time but often doesn't redraw the screen and other little annoyances. It works, but barely.

I've often (and still...) had problems with Juicer working correctly and the version I'm still running on the edit bay to access my 100+ legacy DJ products has a terrible memory leak that crashes the system if I don't restart the system after importing content.

I was once a VERY regular purchaser but a combination of my business needs changing and the ever-changing landscape at DJ made a move away for me inevitable.

I have to say I'm very concerned about the future of Digital Juice. These lifetime subscriptions and other 'deals' they have don't make a lot of sense to me - other companies that do this type of scheme tend to need the operating cash in the short term and worry about the long term implications later (if they survive that long).

...

Me too. This could prove to be a brilliant move on DJ's part, but it has a bad smell to it IMO. I remember when the health club industry was unregulated and a lot of people got burned by plans that seem similar to this.

Very few of us need DJ products on a regular basis. Instead needs are usually project-based. This business model seems contrary to the needs of the typical user.

I know the last post in this thread was about 5 months ago, but I wanted to see if anyone's opinions have changed with the new lifetime subscription model.

I have been to their site and need some AE templates for a project. It seems that the ONLY way to get them is with the Pro lifetime package. So, $499 and I'm in. The web site is sooooo bad too. It won't even let you look at the entire library without signing up for a package. And the Juicer is nowhere to be found. I believe that it's all web site driven now.

After reading the Agreement Terms, all sentences sound great until you get to the second to last at the bottom:

I understand that if I go over the allotted 15 GB in downloads and re-downloads per month, I can purchase more download bandwidth for $1.99 per 5 GB. I understand that all content I download will be counted against this allotment.

Wait a minute. So, I am supposed to pay $499 for a lifetime package and then use the web site to create videos in my chosen format and then download the large video? Then, if it's over 15 GB I have to pay MORE? Video takes up a LOT of space and it seems like I would be going over 15 GB pretty quickly. I like to work with uncompressed assets and then compress for the final publish medium.

Then, finally, they add this statement:

I understand that there will be additional membership levels and access to Digital Juice creative applications and plugins that I can choose to add later to my membership at an additional cost but I’m under no obligation to do so.

So, even though the Pro Pilot Member may get everything that they offer now, once new products are added, other memberships may be required in order to access those new offerings.

This just doesn't feel right. I would LOVE to use their products, but they make it very difficult for me to commit.

So, even though the Pro Pilot Member may get everything that they offer now, once new products are added, other memberships may be required in order to access those new offerings.

The fact that their Pro Pilot Member program has been going on for ever (and their main landing page still sports the "Introductory pricing ends today. Just a few hours left!" banner) makes me think it's to be avoided.