License

How Downstage is licensed, how to add your license, and what happens without one.

A Downstage license belongs to one computer — the Mac that runs Ableton — and covers every iPad and phone connected to it. There is nothing to activate on the devices.

Add your license

1. On the Mac, open Backstage › License.
2. Under This computer there is a code like CNRQJ-CUETM-85PP2-DRXVT. Press Copy and send it to support@downstageapp.com.
3. We send back a license: one long line starting DS1.
4. Paste it into the box on the same tab and press Add license.

The tab then reads Licensed to followed by your name and, if it has one, an end date. That is all; there is nothing to restart.

A license can only be added on the Mac itself, not from an iPad.

It never needs the internet

The license is checked on your computer. Nothing is sent anywhere to check it, when you add it or afterwards. A laptop that has not seen the internet in a month works exactly the same as one that has. That is deliberate: a venue with no signal is a normal place to be.

It never interrupts a show

• The license is looked at when Downstage starts, and when you paste one in. Never in between. A show that is running stays running, whatever the date does at midnight.
• A license that has expired keeps working for 14 days, with a warning, so you find out between gigs rather than at one.
• From 14 days before it expires, the warnings chip tells you how many days are left.

Without a license: the trial

With no license, every feature works for 15 minutes from the moment Downstage starts. Then the controls stop responding until you quit and reopen it, which gives another 15 minutes.

That is long enough to try everything with your own set, and not long enough to play a gig.

When a trial runs out:

• Live is not touched. If something is playing, it keeps playing.
• Stop still works. You are never left unable to stop your own playback.
• The show screen and the menu bar say what has happened and where to add a license.

A new or repaired Mac

The code identifies the computer, so a license does not move by itself. If you replace your Mac, or it comes back from repair with a new logic board, the code changes and the app says the license is for a different computer. Send us the new code and we will issue the license again.

Reinstalling Downstage, updating it, or renaming the Mac does not change the code.

About the code

The code is a scrambled fingerprint of your Mac's hardware identifier. It lets a license be tied to that machine, and tells us nothing else: not the serial number, not who you are, not what is on the computer.