Change of Leadership at NI - Full Version of Kontakt required?

[Mánibranðr Studios]

9 hours ago, paulo said:

There is no compulsion to buy anything that NI sell. Nobody really  "needs" it and if the asking price becomes too much for the current marketplace at any given time they will either have to act accordingly or get used to not selling anything. In this sense, consumers already have all the power if only they would collectively use it. I thought you were smart enough to know full well that I am not talking here about people who are having difficulties making ends meet. This is a software forum and as such the discussion is about very non-essential items, but since you bring up the subject of those who are barely getting by then I would think that the cost of having some sample libraries isn't even close to being one of the things that keep them awake at night. Is anyone really thinking........hmmm, what to do, what to do...........I really like the look of Komplete Ultimate, but I can't afford to get that AND feed the kids.................what should I do,? It's all so confusing.

You're barking up the wrong tree there, because even if you may be right about it being non-essential. That doesn't mean that anti-consumerism shouldn't be pushed back against, and well, souring deals in the middle of a pandemic-induced economic recession is just not a smart idea.

[jesse g]

10 hours ago, paulo said:

I really like the look of Komplete Ultimate, but I can't afford to get that AND feed the kids.................what should I do,? It's all so confusing.

Well, I will feed the kids, but  I may put the wife up for auction if she can sell for the  Full Komplete CE bundle 😁😵🤪

[bitflipper]

The effects of a bad economy are not applied evenly. Premium ice cream, for example, always does well during recessions. I might not be able to afford new tires for my car, but dammit I can still enjoy some ice cream and I'm gonna splurge on the good stuff.

Music software similarly falls under the category of inexpensive luxuries. I can't afford a new synthesizer, but a sample library remains in reach. It just won't be the full VSL suite. 

Sure, we could conceivably get to a point where collecting Kontakt libraries is no longer feasible due to NI's greed and/or mismanagement. But if that happens, another platform will appear to fill the void. Remember, Kontakt wasn't the first sampler, just the most popular. It could fade away. Remember when WordStar, Lotus 123, DBase and CP/M ruled their respective markets?

[TW5011]

On 8/19/2020 at 11:14 AM, Reid Rosefelt said:

I suspect this is about the 59 million that NI took from the "Private Equity" company EMH.

I doubt that EMH  put any of their own money in, they just borrowed it.  In the deal, they paid themselves millions out of what they borrowed.   And some people at NI got rich too.  So now they have to pay for the fees everybody got for the deal, and now they have interest payments.  Now they are deep, deep  in the hole for the money they borrowed. You were doing fine with your business but now you have to pay all that  back.   These companies usually strip the companies down to the bone in order to make them more "profitable".

I think there are a few examples where Private Equity deals worked out t to the advantage of the companies because they used the infusion of capital to their advantage.  But there are much more examples of where the companies closed.  ...

 

This is what I suspect, too.  Obviously don't know for sure, but private equity firms have a history of strangling companies to take money for themselves and leaving destruction in their wake.  This has happened to many American retailers, such as Toys R Us (I know it's popular to say Amazon and/or online shopping was their downfall, but the numbers say otherwise).  Guitar Center is struggling to avoid bankruptcy after this happened to them (they almost defaulted this summer but managed to extend their debt two more years).  Here's an example of how it works:

https://theweek.com/articles/761124/how-vulture-capitalists-ate-toys-r

https://newrepublic.com/article/145813/cause-consequences-retail-apocalypse

Often the company is bought with debt financing, then they must pay back that debt.  Then "fees" are paid to the new owners for improving the business, usually hundreds of millions, then real estate is sold off and rented to the companies (as the article above says, Sears/Kmart had to pay $200 million in rent on properties they once owned, and the owner spent $6 billion to reward shareholders).  Expenses are cut, often cheapening the quality of product/services and massive layoffs happen (to save money).  The company is made to look good financially (if you don't read the balance sheet closely), sold off, then the company struggles with mountains of debt, while the private equity firm made millions by destroying a company and the livelihood of the employees.

To be fair, not all private equity firms are evil.  Some actually help a business and I hope that's the case here.  But there's a number of bad ones out there.

All that said, another possibility is that NI just got too big for its internal vision and strategy and leadership experience.  This happens to a lot of corporations (which I witnessed at  a local company that grew into a billion-dollar IT corporation).  There are "growing pains" to deal with, and it can cause problems with software development and creative vision.

I'm not too worried about NI, since the IP they have is really valuable in this industry.  If it did end in bankruptcy, someone would want to buy the IP.  They have a good business model and many good products and valuable branding.  Someone would want to keep it going.

[Starise]

The whole thing is going to be pretty simple for me. I look for the best solutions for my music creation needs. I already have pretty much anything I need to do what I need to do. Anything else is an excuse to buy something that I think might fit something I'm doing better. I often buy on the "might" line of thinking only to find out it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. 

I guess Komplete is a value to some IF you have a need  for those libraries. Others are buying libraries like Metropolis that cost more than Komplete on sale from NI. 

I seem to be finding alternatives lately that fill all my gaps nicely. I mean, I really like the new acoustic guitar in the most recent Komplete . I realized the acoustic guitars in ST4MAX are pretty nice....so no real need to update Komplete based only on that. That's the way things have gone for me the last few years and the reason why I can't yet justify updating Komplete. I'll probably do it on a sale eventually if the scale for some reason would tip the other direction. Most anything you would need tough can often be bought 3rd party for less and often it sounds as good or better. Many of the sounds included in Komplete weren't developed by NI. Just sayin'

At that point it just becomes more about updating the Kontakt shell so I can keep playing my 3rd party stuff. 

I am guilty of becoming Kontakt dependent when in many cases I could have used something else that would have been just as stable and worked just as well. I am seeing that more and more lately. 

Edited August 23, 2020 by Starise