But music software is a HUGE pain in the ass to purchase. Pro Tools, for example, is tied to a dongle. It's 2016, and that's still the security method they choose to use. Lose the dongle? You're fucked. It's unfathomably frustrating.
I can't think of a single popular commercial DAW that's worse to use. Pretty much the only people I see use it are all aspiring rappers. I guess it has hip hop cred.
Tangentially, I can't think of a single piece of Avid software that isn't a flaming piece of shit.
Full disclosure: I used to have to support Avid.
If you're just producing electronic music, want VSTs, and/or just using a few live tracks, then yeah; you're probably far better off using something else.
In a professional setting (recording, mixing, mastering label-released albums), I've seen PT used far less than Cubase.
I see it used less than Logic, even.
Pro Tools is shit, I agree, but because of Avid's dominance in the film/TV worlds, Pro Tools is the "professional" choice for audio in support of these industries. I imagine that most music houses have moved on to the Apple or Steinberg offerings. Personally, I've always really liked Steinberg's products, especially WaveLab and Cubase.
As bad as Pro Tools is, don't even get me started on Ableton Live. It's like someone just barely made it out of their first Code Academy lesson alive, and then attempted to reverse engineer Nuendo. Utterly horrifying application development standards over at Ableton.
That's pretty much all I've seen anyone (professional) recording instruments use going on 10 years now.
https://torrentfreak.com/ilok2-drm-system-appears-to-have-be...
Dongles are understandably thought of as a bit of a pain by many musicians, and I'm sure many developers understand that they'll lose customers by requiring one.
Getting all my (legitimately purchased) plugins back onto the system is an absolute nightmare.
I've started paring my setup down to just Ableton and a handful of plugins for this reason.