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Cakewalk by Bandlab is still valuable


Deric Love

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Can anyone explain why cakewalk is still free.  I was just exploring other DAWS, and only a few has the full function as cakewalk.  What Pro-tool, fruity loop etc. offers for free is not enough for me to settle with them at this stage of the game for me.  I need a full loaded DAW as cakewalk to do a hold song/album.  If I was to invest in another DAW, and expect the same amount of functionality as Cakewalk, I would have to spend at least $600 dollar.  The only thing that I would improve, which is minute, is the sound quality via the pro-channel, for its module.  I only use third party plugins, anyway.  I just need a DAW to edit, mix, master etc., which cakewalk does.  

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BandLab is a music conglomerate with music stores, instrument manufacturers, social music platform, magazine, music hardware and likely other music related things I've overlooked.  BandLab has shown an interest in anything related to music.

BandLab saw an opportunity to obtain a mature and full featured DAW for pennies on the dollar of what it would cost to create a similar product from scratch.   Along with the intellectual property BandLab was able to retain some of the team, the old website and the Cakewalk name.  Finally, Bandlab gained instant name recognition from the Cakewalk audience.

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Deric, If it makes you feel better...Cakewalk used to cost $500.    So it's still within your budget, but it was always worth the money.  I used to be religously anti-Mac and Sonar was the best choice for full on production and mastering .  The built in pro channel is a great starting point and inserting plugins couldn't be easier....

So far as "How is it free" the cynical part of me has to say "If something on the internet is free, then YOU are the product" .   Then again, If the BandLab assistant isn't actively running it seems very well behaved and CbB runs without it running as a background service unlike, say, Adobe Creative Cloud which definitely is NOT free but constantly runs a licensing service to operate. .  If Cakewalk needs to sell my usage data down the road to some advertising company to try to get me to look at ads for Guitar Center, hey, why not?  I don't think Zuckerberg is getting that data for free, anyway, and if he's buying it I hope BandLab gets top dollar for it.  The social/collaboration thing could have legs if they can can hit some adoption and usage inflection point, and it's a hell of a lot more functional than, say, Instagram.  

My big concern would be that if the company goes does a Gibson suddenly, then ultimately the activation servers could be shut off. By the model, you'd have a short period of time to finish anything in flight and then transition to another platform,  If it happens, we'll deal with it but I think the best way to make sure there is always a Cakewalk is to use Cakewalk and BandLab, and tell your friends about it. 

Edited by StudioNSFW
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FWIW,  history tells us that no software tool can be guaranteed to last forever. I just was remembering what happened with Logic for PC. If anything, Cakewalk has proved to be very hard to kill, and it is now better than ever,

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On 4/1/2020 at 7:12 PM, Jim Fogle said:

BandLab is a music conglomerate with music stores, instrument manufacturers, social music platform, magazine, music hardware and likely other music related things I've overlooked.  BandLab has shown an interest in anything related to music.

BandLab saw an opportunity to obtain a mature and full featured DAW for pennies on the dollar of what it would cost to create a similar product from scratch.   Along with the intellectual property BandLab was able to retain some of the team, the old website and the Cakewalk name.  Finally, Bandlab gained instant name recognition from the Cakewalk audience.

I'm surprised they haven't put it on their Music Tech DVDs.  I what the user base is in Asia where there's a lot of piracy. 

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