Korg is making the upgrade from K to K2 impossible

Anukis · Post by **Anukis** » Thu Dec 11, 2014 3:13 pm

So my Kronos was never destroyed by me or stolen. It was "their" fault yet after asking repeatedly for my licenses to be transferred to my new kronos the answer was "no".

You heard about someone now who's situation does not exist in theory. Yet I still bit my lip and bought another 2 Kronos' sold them and bought another Kronos X88 but swore never ever to deal with 3rd party developers nor buy anything related to Korg software releases unless they are free.

GregC · Post by **GregC** » Thu Dec 11, 2014 3:22 pm

Anukis wrote:
SanderXpander wrote:My gut feeling is that Korg would actually not leave you hanging if your Kronos got destroyed or stolen, but that they'd rather review it on a case by case basis. I've never actually heard of anyone who wanted to move his license to a different board and was denied. Going by the nature of this forum I bet we'd have heard about it. So this seems, so far, to be a problem that exists in theory, apart from that we'd like it to be EASIER.

That said, I think this is an unfriendly policy that is ultimately costing them money.
Bought a brand new Kronos first shipment into the country. Bought 3 libraries. 2 months later Kronos has dies and was replaced under warranty. All my libraries?? Gone... My $750 investment wasted down the toilet. They did nothing.

I would not be happy losing that amount of money.

Did you ask the service center or distributor to make your plea ?

Sweat · Post by **Sweat** » Thu Dec 11, 2014 4:35 pm

GregC wrote:I will dare to be the contrarian here. I have demo'd many of the sample libs and have not been thoroughly impressed enough to drop $149 or $199 or $249.

I don't gig or record as a pro so I don't have specific sound needs from the sample libs.

But if the price is $49 or lets say under $100, that kind of purchase is ok with me as long as I see some entertainment value. Given that, if I buy the Kronos 2 and have 2 sample libs that were inexpensive on my 1st gen Kronos, I am not going to be very upset that I cannot move them over.

It would be nice , of course, but I know the deal if I was buying the Kronos 2. That if I had to have a duplicate sample libs, I would have to fork some $$ over.

So I see it as total cost of ownership. Since I don't expect Korg to change their policy just for me.

I see KApro just announced reduced prices. Many under $100 which are closer to being reasonable.
A cost of $250 is what I expected to pay for the convenience of the hardware expansion cards, that I could bring on a flight to install on backline boards, then remove. If I have to download a library for use on the instrument that I will use only once for session or gig, a price under $100 is getting a little closer to being fair for me.

GregC · Post by **GregC** » Thu Dec 11, 2014 4:52 pm

Sweat wrote:
GregC wrote:I will dare to be the contrarian here. I have demo'd many of the sample libs and have not been thoroughly impressed enough to drop $149 or $199 or $249.

I don't gig or record as a pro so I don't have specific sound needs from the sample libs.

But if the price is $49 or lets say under $100, that kind of purchase is ok with me as long as I see some entertainment value. Given that, if I buy the Kronos 2 and have 2 sample libs that were inexpensive on my 1st gen Kronos, I am not going to be very upset that I cannot move them over.

It would be nice , of course, but I know the deal if I was buying the Kronos 2. That if I had to have a duplicate sample libs, I would have to fork some $$ over.

So I see it as total cost of ownership. Since I don't expect Korg to change their policy just for me.
I see KApro just announced reduced prices. Many under $100 which are closer to being reasonable.
A cost of $250 is what I expected to pay for the convenience of the hardware expansion cards, that I could bring on a flight to install on backline boards, then remove. If I have to download a library for use on the instrument that I will use only once for session or gig, a price under $100 is getting a little closer to being fair for me.

Same here- I use to really enjoy Rolands many expansion boards and was use to +$250 per board. But Roland stopped making them and I suspect they could not make any $ on them.

I think the future has arrived. I honestly think an $100 or less price will really stimulate sample lib sales. Your rationale makes good sense to me

meatballfulton · Post by **meatballfulton** » Thu Dec 11, 2014 7:34 pm

I had been thinking of buying a Kronos but as soon as I found out about the licensing I decided to forget about it.

I understand piracy concerns but punishing your paying customers is just stupid. I will not buy products that do not allow easy license transfers.

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 12:54 am

I'm sorry to hear that Anukis, thank you for sharing. That's very disappointing, I really expected Korg to take care of warranty transfers at least.
EDIT: just for our info - were these Korg libraries or someone else's? You mention 3rd party developers? And considering it was a warranty repair I'm assuming you went through the service center?

Anukis · Post by **Anukis** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 9:53 am

Its ok I got over it. I still love korg and buy all their gear but it is the way it is. Cant do much. These things happen. It was the first Kronos so I think the distributers themselves were new to all this software license policy.

Anukis · Post by **Anukis** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 10:00 am

Yes one was Karo and the rest were Korg. From memory Legendry strings and the Austrian Grand and the Karo one was a symphonic library. They were $249 a pop I think.

ryokorgjapan · Post by **ryokorgjapan** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 11:26 am

Anukis wrote:Its ok I got over it. I still love korg and buy all their gear but it is the way it is. Cant do much. These things happen. It was the first Kronos so I think the distributers themselves were new to all this software license policy.

You should not give up.
Just talk to official service center with your credit card recipt of your Kronos and EXs licenses.

kronoSphere · Post by **kronoSphere** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 12:12 pm

As far as I am concerned ( I have bought the Synphonic Library fromKaro) I continue to think that those kind of licences could be easily be transfered from one Kronos to another... ...if these companies would want it : they could do it

Francois · Post by **Francois** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 1:28 pm

Perhaps a solution would be to specify whether you want to authorise the bank on your hard drive, as is the case now, or on a USB key via a stamp file. Should you authorise a USB key, you could use it with Kronos A and Kronos B by simply plugging the key and selecting "USB authorisation" when you go to Global.

That way, you do not force people who don't want the hassle of a USB dongle to have one (i.e. they use the same authorisation method as exists now), but those who have two Kronos could use the bank they have purchased with both machines.

The solution also works well for people selling their Kronos. Since a bank is linked to a machine, either you sell your Kronos and the buyer keeps the bank installed on the hard drive or the key, or you sell the Kronos but keep the key to use with a Kronos 2, for example. In any case, this system means you cannot use the bank on both your new Kronos and the one you sold.

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 2:36 pm

That's exactly the way Waves does it (and a few others). It's very convenient. You can also move the license between flash drive, hard drive and the cloud with an internet based licensing utility.

Of course, to be fair, Waves is also some of the most popular warezed software.

kronoSphere · Post by **kronoSphere** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 3:01 pm

I just remember that years ago, Photoshop and Steinberg had voluntarily left unprotected some of their softwares with a marketing perspective in mind : That their softwares will be recognized by the most people in the world. And it's a fact that the professionnal users always pay their licences.

keez · Post by **keez** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 5:20 pm

Similar to meatballfulton above, the licensing issue did stop me from spending money on addition Korg stuff. I have bought a Kronos, but I would like to purchase additional sounds and also an additional Kronos. This way I could have one Kronos at home, and one at the studio. Unfortunately, this would require purchasing all the sounds twice.

For this reason, I have not purchased an additional Kronos, OR any sound sets. Korg have missed out twice there.

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 5:31 pm

kronoSphere wrote:I just remember that years ago, Photoshop and Steinberg had voluntarily left unprotected some of their softwares with a marketing perspective in mind : That their softwares will be recognized by the most people in the world. And it's a fact that the professionnal users always pay their licences.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here, but that is definitely not a fact.