Recording - July 2018 - 12

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Whither Pro Tools?
A Chat With Avid's
Jeff Rosica
Jeff Rosica is the CEO of Avid,
whose recent developments in Pro
Tools have extended the platform to
a whole new audience. He was kind
enough to sit down with me for a brief
chat.-MM

Do you think there's such a thing as a 'typical Pro Tools
user' nowadays?

Jeff Rosica: I don't think there is a typical profile; I think our
users run the gamut. They start out as aspiring professionals that
work from their bedrooms or project studios, but we scale all the
way up to huge professional studios and audio post-production
facilities. And then there's the live side-not just recording live
shows but integration with show control and live synchronized
playback as well. We're really proud that Pro Tools is such a
mainstay for these tasks all over the world.
What we have seen recently is a lot of growth in the area of
individual music creators. We've been expanding our music creation
capabilities with a lot of new features in Pro Tools, which have
brought a lot of aspiring artists to the platform for the first time,
while other folks have come back to Pro Tools after doing music
creation elsewhere. It's interesting to see the way we're helping
the journey of the next generation of music makers now.

Do you think there's a particular feature or set of
features that's available now that's driving that
increase in involvement among creators?

For over a year, we've been dropping in a whole list of new
features with creatives in mind. I think that we eventually hit
a tipping point; after a while, there were just so many new
features that people in the creative community started to say,
"Hey, it's time to take another look at Pro Tools for my music
creation needs."
We're just getting started, though... we have a lot of nice surprises in store for the music creation community. Since we've
moved from "one huge upgrade every few years" to a continuous
feed of new features and updates every two to three months,
users will be able to benefit from these new features right away.

What do you think readers need to know about the
free Pro Tools | First DAW?
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RECORDING July 2018

I think that for somebody starting out, being able to use what
is in essence the industry standard that's used by all the top
professionals and successful artists is a great deal. It allows
people to get started with the product on a 'freemium' model.
If you want more features, you don't have to buy the
full license; you have the option of subscriptions. People who
don't have the upfront money to plop down for a full license
can get in at a really affordable monthly price-basically
twenty bucks a month. We're very flexible about how people
use our technology, and that's expanded our audience by
thousands of new users over the past couple of years-we've
recently passed 650,000 downloads of First, and we're
converting about 5% of those into full licenses.

And now even these entry-level folks can
collaborate online?

We now allow collaboration at two levels. Since last fall, Pro
Tools users have been able invite users of Pro Tools | First into
cloud collaborations. A non-user can install Pro Tools | First
for free, and you can invite them to collaborate with you and
add content to your project. Now, however, we've added a
monthly subscription for collaboration capability without any
commitment to the full product. For $4.99 a month, even Pro
Tools | First users can initiate collaborations with other users
at any level.
The idea was not only to get folks into working with Pro
Tools users, but also to simply allow online collaboration in
an affordable way! For five bucks a month, your band can
share ideas and write songs online together. At first, people
said, "Well, I'll just use Dropbox," but now they see that having
online sharing as a seamless part of the DAW workflow offers
huge advantages.

Are there particular applications you see as rising in
importance, like virtual reality content or games?

In the realm of virtual reality and new immersive experiences,
we've worked closely with Dolby Labs to integrate the Dolby
Atmos capability very tightly inside Pro Tools, so it's easy to
develop for Atmos within existing projects. Another example
is the plug-in we developed for Facebook Live, so you can
develop 360º audio within Pro Tools as you work with your
video. We're going to keep following the trends and giving
users the tools they need to stay up to date with the latest in
these emerging platforms.

We'll wrap up with this: If there was one thing about
the Avid Pro Tools environment that you wish more
people knew about to get them interested in what you
have to offer, what would that be?

Everyone knows that Pro Tools is the industry standard in
professional audio, but I don't think a lot of people realize
how incredibly accessible it is now. "Oh, I'd love to have Pro
Tools, but I can't afford it." Between First, and our subscriptions,
and our license prices-which are a lot lower than people
might think-I think a lot of people are surprised to learn,
"Wow, I can have Pro Tools!"

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2018