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Why did Cakewalk get free?


Aloe Duke

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On 11/3/2020 at 11:12 AM, Strantrickt said:

Sorry my bad English 

Hi Strantrickt . . .

WHY DID CAKEWALK GET FREE ?  . . . here's the story

Father acquired wealth through palm oils . . . Son decides to invest some wealth in online music endeavors. Some music store chains in Asia, an online collaboration software. He also astutely noticed a major established Digital Audio Workstation software was floating adrift due to the Gibson Corp's need for downsizing, and thought it would make a great compliment to his online music collaboration effort, for those who needed something more. The idea to make it free was a modern online technology business model decision to attract attention to the brand, making it stand out from the competitors. The actual cost to develop and improve this DAW software further was minimal compared to the notable benefits of making the overall brand more omnipresent on the current online music technology scene., especially with the inevitable changes in how music is now delivered and created, and then passed along to the consumer / listener, with consideration to the demise of the established music industry practices of the past 5 decades, due to shifting music economics as the result of technology advancement, and the shift to a social media dominance, and global widespread use of the personal computer, and mobility advancements.

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@noynekker  so in the condensed version. Meng, the wealthy son, brought it for marketing purposes :D   Also should be mentions that Meng's passion is music and is trying to make a business out of it.  His company in Asia is like  Sweetwater in the USA.   

Funny thing some of us want Bandlab to come up with some products to sell from the Cakewalk bundle they got from Gibson.  Especially things like Z3ta+2 which could use a refresh and sold with new content. I still use my copy!

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1 hour ago, InstrEd said:

so in the condensed version. Meng, the wealthy son, brought it for marketing purposes

This is, of course, speculation based on the past 3 years of observing the course that Cakewalk development has taken. Speculate is all we can do, 'cause we're not Meng and we're not BandLab employees. If I had billions to mess with, I would probably want to do some things that I thought were just cool things to do, even knowing that they'd not directly make me money. Paul Allen rescued the Cinerama Theater in Seattle just because he thought it was cool and didn't want to see it go dark.

3 years ago there was a great deal of speculation about BandLab's motives for picking up the Cakewalk Inc. IP. My best guesses were that they wanted to add functionality to develop it into an offline front-end to their existing platform and to promote brand awareness.

Time seems to point more to the latter than the former (so far, anyway), and as far as I can tell, Cakewalk has earned its keep in that regard. After all, most of the regulars on this (and the old SONAR support forums) had never heard of BandLab 3 years ago. And we're people who spend time at other forums, and online in general. It would be interesting to check search engine queries to see how searches on BandLab have increased, what kind of bump they got 3 years ago.

We've not only learned about BandLab's other DAW's and online platform, but the more curious among us have poked around and found out more about the company and its many other brands. It's now apparent to me that just giving people a tool that encourages us to make music is good for their business(es).

Whatever, what's most important is that the program has improved from SONAR and continues to improve. Even if development stopped completely, it's a great program that would continue to be great, and a capable and useful tool for some time to come.

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Outside the US,  companies are less slaves to the idea that every product has to turn X% profit in order to justify its continued existence or be killed off. They are more likely to allow more profitable parts of the business subsidize other, less profitable ones that still fill a real need.

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There's lots of great free music recording stuff around. My collection of free or /and cheap/ stuff probably outnumbers the $$ paid for now.

I come from the dark days of Bit Torrent and boy I would never go back there again. Why would you when there are so many legit ways to make music without spending a fortune .  I've always had " payed " versions of Cakewalk going back to the FREE version I got with a Roland Sound Canvas. Then you get free stuff when you buy an Audio interface. I got Sonar X1 that way ( hated it) 

KVR was a source of many freebies and now I find Plug in Boutique a great source. If you stayed tuned to music forums people will post recommended freebie all the time. Just here last week I learned about iK Multimedia's freebies. https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/index.php?R=INIT&FV=free-software-related-products&CV=Other Filter&PSEL=freesoftware    Check it out 5 great VST's for free!  

Plug in Boutique always has a free giveaway if you by something. So I buy an $8 VST instrument and get isotope Elements for free. https://www.pluginboutique.com/articles/1662?gclid=CjwKCAiAqJn9BRB0EiwAJ1SztYbWtYJL1oWMT32EgPViIDTJHKoMgVFIlMAN88TP1kwO6E3HpLziohoCgy8QAvD_BwE

My main bass is Ample P bass lite Free. https://www.pluginboutique.com/categories/64-Virtual-Instrument?free=true

So it makes perfect sense to me that my favourite DAW is now free. I don't look at it that way because originally I invested probably over $500 in various versions. I tend to buy the basic versions of my software, I Have Cubase and Wave Lab Elements versions as example. When I first bought Sonar it was the Studio versions. I even owned Home Studio which at the time was only $30CAN.  They would offer upgrade deals all the time and if you waited it out you saved a lot of money. So now it's free to everyone and if anyone wants to complain or think this is all wrong think again.  

 

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On 11/8/2020 at 7:28 AM, John Vere said:

There's lots of great free music recording stuff around. My collection of free or /and cheap/ stuff probably outnumbers the $$ paid for now.

I come from the dark days of Bit Torrent and boy I would never go back there again. Why would you when there are so many legit ways to make music without spending a fortune .  I've always had " payed " versions of Cakewalk going back to the FREE version I got with a Roland Sound Canvas. Then you get free stuff when you buy an Audio interface. I got Sonar X1 that way ( hated it) 

KVR was a source of many freebies and now I find Plug in Boutique a great source. If you stayed tuned to music forums people will post recommended freebie all the time. Just here last week I learned about iK Multimedia's freebies. https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/index.php?R=INIT&FV=free-software-related-products&CV=Other Filter&PSEL=freesoftware    Check it out 5 great VST's for free!  

Plug in Boutique always has a free giveaway if you by something. So I buy an $8 VST instrument and get isotope Elements for free. https://www.pluginboutique.com/articles/1662?gclid=CjwKCAiAqJn9BRB0EiwAJ1SztYbWtYJL1oWMT32EgPViIDTJHKoMgVFIlMAN88TP1kwO6E3HpLziohoCgy8QAvD_BwE

My main bass is Ample P bass lite Free. https://www.pluginboutique.com/categories/64-Virtual-Instrument?free=true

So it makes perfect sense to me that my favourite DAW is now free. I don't look at it that way because originally I invested probably over $500 in various versions. I tend to buy the basic versions of my software, I Have Cubase and Wave Lab Elements versions as example. When I first bought Sonar it was the Studio versions. I even owned Home Studio which at the time was only $30CAN.  They would offer upgrade deals all the time and if you waited it out you saved a lot of money. So now it's free to everyone and if anyone wants to complain or think this is all wrong think again.  

 

Cakewalk is best daw. 

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Since we're on that subject... there's no way that any, I mean any, kind of sampler could integrate with the DAW at the level of a sampler track, no matter how simple or sophisticated it is, it will always need to be loaded first before we can proceed with working on the sample, taking extra resources and getting somehow in the way every time we reach for the next sample. Here's perfect opportunity for the DAW to reach out to the user.

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