What happened
Reason Studios has launched Reason Free, a permanent free version of its Reason Rack plugin with no trial period, expiry date or watermark. It runs as VST3, AU or AAX inside other DAWs and includes 15 devices: the Europa, Kong, ID8 and Monotone instruments, effects including Scream 4, The Echo and the RV7000 MkII reverb, and utilities such as the Combinator, Pulsar and the Spider audio and CV splitters.
Anyone can add free and paid Rack Extensions without buying the full Reason software, and the free version supports up to 16 audio or instrument tracks. It needs a free Reason Studios account. The paid Reason+ subscription, at $169 a year, adds the full DAW and more than 90 instruments and effects.
The interesting bit
For more than twenty years the Rack—virtual hardware you flip around to patch with cables—has been the thing that made Reason Reason. Giving a working slice of it away is a bet that people who learn to patch will want more devices, and the Rack Extension store is where they will find them.
That makes Reason Free a shop window for independent developers as much as for Reason Studios: third-party instruments now reach an audience that never paid for the host. The 16-track limit decides where the free version stops being a DAW; inside another DAW, the rack itself is the product.