In this segment of the free Ableton Live 12 music production class, J. Anthony Allen explains how to acquire Ableton Live. He starts by describing the free 30‑day trial, noting that it provides full functionality but loses saving ability after expiration. He then outlines purchase routes: buying a physical boxed version from retailers or, more conveniently, purchasing directly from Ableton’s website via a prompt inside the trial. Allen emphasizes that the direct purchase offers the best price unless the user qualifies for a student/educational discount, which can halve the retail cost with no functional limitations. He warns that Ableton’s policy on educational licenses may have changed, so he advises students to contact him first for documentation and verification before attempting to buy the discounted version. The segment ends with a transition to installation instructions.
Chapters
Okay, where and how to buy Ableton? So first of all, Ableton Live comes with a free trial. You can get it right here. You're going to download the full version of the software. If you hit that little button, this is going to give you a full version and it's going to work for 30 days. Sometimes they change that, but you. Usually it's 30 days and you'll be able to do everything. You'll be able to follow along in this class, make tracks, save tracks, export tracks. It's awesome. After 30 days, you're going to lose the ability to save things. So you can still poke around and work on stuff, but you're not going to be able to save anything you're doing. So that's kind of a big drawback. But use that free trial, right? Get 30 days out of it. Make sure this is for you. Make sure this is the thing you want to do. Now after those 30 days, You can buy Live from various retailers. And if you want a version that's in a box than like a physical box, then that's a good way to do it. But if you don't care about having like a version in a box, and I've never bought a version of Live in a box ever. I've never bought software in a box, I don't think, at least not in a long time, then if you don't care about that, then just buy it from the Ableton website. Go right here and you can actually do it right from within Live if you have the free trial. If you're working on the free trial, when you open it, it's going to pop up a little window that says your trial expires in so many days. Click here to authorize this version and then it's going to take you to the page to buy it. And that's buying it just directly from Ableton. You're never going to find it cheaper than that. That's always going to be the best price. Unless. Unless you are a student somewhere, anywhere there is quite a significant student discount. So if you are in college and high school studying around various places, you can qualify for the student price, which you know. And the price of that changes quite a bit, but it's roughly half of the retail price. It's pretty significant. And there's no drawbacks to the educational price. There's not an educational version that can't be updated like that was a popular thing at some point in other applications I've worked with, but that's not how Ableton works. You're just getting a break on the price. You're getting a full version. It can be updated. Everything works the same. So it's a very good deal. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, well, I'm a student. I'm taking this class, right? That may or may not work. In the past, Ableton has let us do that, where you can buy an educational license and then get a letter from me to prove that you are enrolled in some classes that has worked in the past. I've heard that they're not going to allow that to happen anymore. So what I would suggest you do is if you're interested in the educational price, which you totally should be because it's significant and you're about to buy it, shoot me a message on this platform and just say, I want to get the educational price. Is that possible? And I will let you know. If it is possible, I can provide you with the documentation that Ableton will need to show that you're a student. And if they've stopped authorizing people to do that, then I will let you know that too. But just shoot me a quick message and I will be happy to get you that information. But don't buy the educational version until you do that, because if I can't authorize it, then you're out of luck. So talk to me before you buy it if you want the educational version. Okay, let's move on and talk about installation.
