How to get a great price on Ableton Live 7 (full version)

Rekkerd.org is one of my fave music sites. It's run by the ever-prolific Ronnie and features wonderful computer music tools every day, from soft synths to sample kits to hosts you can put all those sounds in… and jam! One of those hosts, which keeps getting namedropped with good reason, is Ableton Live. Currently at version 7, it's gained a lot of fame because of how it allows you to weave disparate sonic sources into one tasty stew, treating sound clips like taffy. It's like the missing link between DJing and production, but with a clean UI and overall design all its own. Recent releases beefed up MIDI support, and here I am, thinking to buy it soon.

by Mark Gutierrez

Rekkerd just mentioned that "Ableton updates Live to v7.0.14", and with that, I should share this:

• Live (the download version) was US$499. There's currently a US$100 discount on Ableton Live 7 until December 31, 2008 which drops it to $399.
• But, if you have a copy of Live Lite, you can drop the price further with an upgrade discount: $299 (down from the usual $349). One of the best ways to get Live Lite, since it's a cut-down version, is to buy some gear you wanted anyway which bundles it. A lot of M-Audio's stuff does — in my case, the Keystation 88es. Verify before you buy, then after you do, register the serial number on Ableton's website, and it'll show you eligible upgrades.
• And then, there are further $50 coupons out there. In my case, I bought a Korg nanoKONTROL and it came with one in the box. (Ableton sure is proficient at marketing themselves.) Combined with that upgrade, it drops the price down to US$250, which is the same as the standard educational version and pretty darn good! Alas, it appears to be a one-time use code, so I can't share it.

2 caveats:

1. The discount isn't as good as "free", because as I mentioned, you need Live Lite + a coupon. Don't go out of your way to get gear you won't use — that's wasteful. But if you were going to get it with bigger plans in mind, this lowered pricing is a boon. Another option is to seek out a copy of Live Lite on eBay, but given that the Ableton holiday deal is supposed to go dead in a week, you don't have much time.
2. This is for the download version. The boxed version — and only the full thing, not the upgrade — includes the Essential Instruments Collection 2. This didn't appeal to me, because I already have more than enough sounds to keep me busy for months thanx to the great value of Kore 2 + Komplete 5 which I ordered for $875 from Nova Musik before 25% Live.com-eBay cashback in effect awhile ago. Sadly, that cashback is expired now, but keep an eye on Wise Bread's Best Deals Aggregator for more specials. Disclosure: I blog for Wise Bread.

Also, there's Ableton Suite, which includes all the soft synths which are tightly integrated with Live. This is somewhat compelling, but I feel it's overpriced compared to many options out there, and I already have synths that rival or outperform Ableton's own. For example, Native Instruments has counterparts to most of them: Kontakt vs. Sampler, FM8 vs. Operator, Massive (and maybe Pro-53) vs. Analog, etc. There's just too much overlap for me to care about.

Anyway, I haven't rang this deal through the registers yet, but I can definitely confirm after registering that the coupon can be applied and the upgrade discount is valid.

If you take advantage of it, let me know what you think!

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