Ableton has announced that Live 12 Suite, the top-tier version of its flagship DAW, is now available on a rent-to-own plan, placing the software within reach of music-makers on a limited budget.
Live 12 Suite is priced at £539/€599/$749. The rent-to-own plan spreads the cost of the DAW over 24 monthly payments of £22.46/€24.96/$31.21, with no extra charges, and the remaining balance can be paid off at any time. (An educational license for Live 12 Suite, which is 50% cheaper, can also be paid off in 12 monthly payments.)
Ableton's rent-to-own plan can be paused at any time with no penalty, and users will be able to access the software until the end of the current billing cycle. You can then pick up where you left off and resume the plan at any time. Users have the option of extending their rent-to-own plan to cover the cost of an upgrade when a new version of Live is released.
You won't need to be online constantly to use Live with a rent-to-own plan, but Live will periodically verify that the plan is active. Users can use Live offline for up to 3 days between verification checks – if you stay offline longer than that, saving and exporting will be disabled until you verify.
Currently, Ableton's rent-to-own plan is only available for Live 12 Suite. The DAW is available in three editions (Intro, Standard and Suite) with Suite at the top end, bundled with 20 software instruments, 58 audio effects and 71GB of presets, samples and loops.
Rent-to-own plans are a popular alternative to the increasingly prevalent subscription model. Unlike a subscription, once all payments in the plan have been made, a customer owns their Live 12 license in full, in perpetuity.
Ableton recently released Live 12.2, bringing AI-powered stem separation and integration with sample platform Splice to the DAW for the first time. In our review, we described Live 12 Suite as "the best update we've seen in over a decade".
To purchase Ableton Live 12 Suite on a rent-to-own plan, head to Ableton's online store.
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