Avid has announced that aspiring creative people around the globe have now downloaded copies of its free First editions of Pro Tools, Media Composer, and and Sibelius more than 3 million times.

Avid First tools were created to give new generations of artists essential experience and a career foothold by learning on simplified versions of the same tools that professionals use every day to create the most popular films, television and music enjoyed by people everywhere.

Since the introduction of Avid’s freemium offerings in 2015, First downloads have accelerated year over year, with 1 million added during the last year alone. With cloud-enabled First tools, users can create songs, music scores, videos, movies and other professional-grade content.

First tools users seeking to further their creative capabilities and advance their careers can upgrade to more powerful versions of Avid creative tools on affordable paid subscription plans. Overall, the consistent conversion rates of free software downloads to paid software subscriptions for Avid’s First tools family are helping to drive the company’s robust subscription growth in the large and growing creative tools market.

“The Avid First tools continue to rise in popularity because they put a massive amount of creative capacity into the hands of aspiring artists and creative professionals, giving them entry-level versions of the industry’s leading creative tools for free—with an easy upgrade path to fully featured versions through affordable subscription plans,” said Jeff Rosica, Chief Executive Officer, Avid.

“We’re thrilled that we’ve set a new record with 1 million additional downloads achieved in less than a year. Besides helping millions of aspiring content creators learn their craft, the continued success and accelerated popularity of Avid’s First freemium software strategy has also proven to be an important contributor to the growth of our subscription business.”

All Avid First tools can be downloaded immediately for free at Avid.