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Is Cakewalk gaining users/popularity with Bandlab?


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2 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

well i haven't seen any "i'm moving to cakewalk from X" posts in forums, unlike all the "i'm moving from cakewalk to X" posts after the shutdown, possibly due to lack of marketing?

There is nothing like a Marketing campaign for now... I wonder if it's because Bandlab is still preparing a new Cakewalk website or if It's due to Cakewalk not being a priority for them, time will tell. Nevertheless, It is also a reality that some people are switching to Cakewalk from different DAW, here an example:

 

Edited by Feral State Sound
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On 5/11/2019 at 4:41 AM, msmcleod said:

I got the Samplitude Pro Suite X3 way back, because it also came with Sound Forge Pro 11.... and it's one of the reasons I didn't upgrade to the Pro X4 Suite.

SoundForge is now at version 13, and they're still selling the Samplitude Pro X4 Suite with SF v 11.

I do use SoundForge, but I hardly use Samplitude - it's a good DAW, but I've got CbB set up more or less how I want it, and it's one of the few DAW's that support the Mackie C4.

Besides Magix isn't that consumer friendly and seems to have boneheaded marketing.

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On 5/11/2019 at 10:16 PM, Tezza said:

This whole popularity thing is also driven by genre and "what's happening now". At the moment Electronic music (in the box) production is driving the industry, the concept is, anyone can become a star overnight if you just buy Ableton Live suite and sit down at a computer. You don't need to know anything about music at all, just move your mouse, twiddle dials, press buttons and you will become a millionaire star DJ overnight.

The majority of young people buy DAW's with these high hopes and then after having them for 2 weeks to 3 months, they find out how complex the whole process really is, they then move on to something else, just using their DAW as a hobby occasionally or not at all. We can call them "EM newbies". Some of these have some success at electronic music production where they may become semi or fully professional with their songs. We can call these "EM artists".

The others might be engineers who want a DAW to record others in their home studio etc, they might be making money from a studio or have hopes to, we can call these "Engineers". The last group would be singer/musician songwriters who can play instruments and or sing and want to mainly record their own instruments and songs. We can call these "musician songwriters".

The DAW market is driven mainly by EM newbies and EM artists. Musician/songwriters are probably next and then engineers in terms of popularity.

DAW's try to cover all of these different needs in one DAW but it doesn't work really. The EM people are going to get Ableton, Bitwig or  Fruity Loops etc, they may try Studio One or Mixcraft. The Musician/Songwriters are likely to get Cubase or Studio One or Protools/Logic. The Engineers will get Protools Studio one or Logic.

The question is where does Cakewalk fit in here, my view is that it fits mainly in the musician/songwriter category and it does that category better than any other DAW.

Everything is there to produce your songs easily and to support hardware instruments. However, there are only a certain amount of musician/songwriters.

It can also fit in the engineer category.

Studio One tries to get a bite of every cherry and probably has some success at that. I think that Cakewalk should go after the Musician/Songwriter category mainly, it may not be the most popular category but seems to be more relevant to Cakewalk than the other categories.

 

 Some of those FL, Live, and Reason  EDM users who went for the Cubase crossgrade will probably revert back because of the workflow is designed for those genres.  Usually the complaints when other DAWs have a new version is they are geared towards EDM users.   For Mac users Logic is taking a bite out of the EDM market.

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3 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

well i haven't seen any "i'm moving to cakewalk from X" posts in forums, unlike all the "i'm moving from cakewalk to X" posts after the shutdown, possibly due to lack of marketing?

 I guess business wise why would you spend money on marketing something that is free?   We have no idea how many people downloaded Bandlab.

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1 hour ago, kitekrazy said:

 I guess business wise why would you spend money on marketing something that is free?   We have no idea how many people downloaded Bandlab.

because they want you in their ecosystem, pro-channel add-ons etc, integration with the online thingy, etc... but yeah we have no idea who and how many have downloaded, athough bl really do have an idea, and probably can connect users to google, facebook, snapchat, etc...

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I'm not sure people are switching to Cakewalk as much as starting with Cakewalk,  or adding Cakewalk to their repertoire. At some seminars, I've talked with Pro Tools users on Windows who are intrigued by Cakewalk, and because it's free, they're going to download it and check it out. Time will tell whether they stop using Pro Tools, use both, or decide to stick with Pro Tools. The biggest issue is that they can't use their Pro Tools plug-ins in Cakewalk, so the cost of getting new plug-ins offsets Cakewalk being free. 

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On 5/12/2019 at 11:47 PM, Craig Anderton said:

This tribal talk about DAWs is silly.

Thanks, Craig. As long as I've been on the internet, this "tribal talk" about software has come and gone. Every so often some guy will get all opinionated and full of himself, and type a bunch of BS that doesn't doesn't really inform, but mainly says "Look how much I think I know, and how smugly I put forth my ideas." It's kind of like the weather, isn't it?🙃

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To OP's question

Is Cakewalk gaining users/popularity with Bandlab?

Its hard to say unless Bandlab provies some data regarding how many new downloads of CbB happened through Bandlab. Anyway one thing we can do is keep track of the num of youtube views for cakewalk tutorials num of facebook likes for Cakewalk page etc etc.  I once did a count on the fanbase of various DAW's facebook pages. This count I did post Sonar's doom by Gibson on Dec 2017. If someone is curious enough he can check how much of change has happened in the fan count of these pages. I'm curious to know but lazy to check. 


This is the facebook fanbase of these official facebook pages on Dec 3 2017.

Cakewalk Soft 143k
Presonus 218k
Pro Tools 140K
Avid 185K
Steinberg 203K
Ableton 622k
Ableton Live 253k



 

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2 hours ago, Sonarman said:


This is the facebook fanbase of these official facebook pages on Dec 3 2017.

Cakewalk Soft 143k
Presonus 218k
Pro Tools 140K
Avid 185K
Steinberg 203K
Ableton 622k
Ableton Live 253k



 

Interesting, I don't understand the Pro Tools and Avid being separate, they should be the same? since Pro Tools is owned by Avid. Avid don't run any other DAW as far as I know.

These figures are pretty much what I would expect, almost uncannily backs up my argument, EM crew going ballistic, followed by Musicians/Songwriters, followed by Engineers. Definitely would be worth chasing up to find if there is any difference now with CbB. I am not on Facebook so cannot do.

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On 5/15/2019 at 10:20 AM, Feral State Sound said:

There is nothing like a Marketing campaign for now... I wonder if it's because Bandlab is still preparing a new Cakewalk website or if It's due to Cakewalk not being a priority for them, time will tell. Nevertheless, It is also a reality that some people are switching to Cakewalk from different DAW, here an example:

 

You guys are funny.... Why would anyone put out a massive not to mention expensive marketing blitz for something they are giving away for free? Cakewalk has ALWAYS been HUGELY POPULAR. A Veritable household name ever since Cakewalk DOS started being bundled with Windows for Workgroups 3.1 to Windows 95 computers. And then came the big break thru the bundled trial version of Cakewalk Pro Audio with Windows 98. Well maybe they should have called it Pro MIDI, Pro Audio was a bit exaggerated, more of an oxymoron, being the early Baker's heads where in the right places, me thinks they over estimated the brutal new power standards of the 400 m/Hz Pentium 3 with a whopping 16 megs of RAM could do. Cakewalk Pro Audio was utterly abysmal at handling audio. and while E magic Logic users blew Cakewalk users off as "Cute" Cubase users ridiculed Cakewalk users,  Pro Tools on the Mac was they only real player for audio. But by the time Intel Pentium 4 And AMD released the Athlon CPU came around and SONAR 4 was released, everything changed, the world of affordable reliable DAWs turned upside down and inside out.

SONAR HAS WON SO MANY AWARDS they haven't had to market it for decades, and so popular and reasonably priced it was barely to NEVER mentioned by sales reps working for commission at any music retail stores until it was asked for and requested by a customer.

 And far as I can see, and I've been watching, the only other DAW that has kept up with new cutting edge development and innovation in DAW technology and may have only recently stepped past SONAR since, would be (at least in my opinion) Presonus Studio ONE with their newest release of version 4, has comping features I really wish were added to Cakewalk I really like and am impressed with. But certainly not enough to jump ship.

 And then I happen to stumble upon this post and became rather festinated and mildly confused. The guy seems to know what he's talking about, I noticed he almost instantly recognized the amazingly realistically authentic similarities between ProChannel's PC 76 U-Type Compressor sounds and responds to that of a hardware Neve 1176, A novice would never pick up on that,  proving to me he knows his way around some very fine vintage recording gear and modern plugin tech and has made quite impressive progress in the learning curve for a first time trial of a new unfamiliar DAW.

 And his opinion that Cakewalk sounds better then Studio One while working in it kind of struck me. I always thought sessions I've worked in with Studio One sounded a tad harsh and brittle to my ear, but I always chalked that difference off to working in a different studio room, different monitors using a Presonus audio interface.

 It most certainly didn't sound anything close to bad, just "different" from Cakewalk does thru my Focusrite.

 

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(Yahooie, the return of Steev! Master of hyperbole, and I mean that with all due respect and affection. I'm glad you're back, my man, 'cause a friend of mine is looking to buy a computer for DAW use and I need yer experteez)

As for whether BandLab know how many users of Cakewalk there are, yes they do, rather accurately thanks to BandLab Assistant. Cakewalk isn't just downloaded, people have to register and activate it, and then re-activate it at least once every 6 months. So they know exactly how many people are actually installing it and then continuing to use it.

Months ago during one of our silly discussions about the licensing model, I came to the realization that Cakewalk is really licensed under a free subscription. The subscription requires that the user contact BandLab's licensing servers via the Assistant at least once every 6 months for a re-activation.

As for market share and positioning, the features that we have seen get attention now that the program is known as Cakewalk seem oriented toward audio recording, don't they? With the change in stretching and pitch algorithms, the work on Melodyne integration? BandLab's other DAW's, the iOS, Android, and web-based ones kind of have the loop-y thing covered, so maybe Cakewalk development is going to be focused more on audio features for a while.

This would suit me, as audio recording is where I'm at right now.

Although it might amuse you, @Craig Anderton, to know that I'm 58 and have been doing songwriting, playing, and audio recording for most of my musical career, playing in bands and solo, for 35 years or so. But I've been getting more and more interested in composing and producing electronic music, whether introducing elements of it into my other stuff a la LCD Soundsystem, Postal Service, and Air, or going full on a la Daft Punk and Perfume. So I'm heading the opposite direction from the kids you know, learning how to sidechain my kick drum and set up TAL Vocoder.

Fortunately, my other DAW is Mixcraft Pro Studio. The only problem is that Cakewalk's playback engine has spoiled me. It just sounds so. Freaking. Good.

And the console view in Mixcraft is....well, I won't say it because I like those guys, but I will say I find it mostly unusable and leave it at that.

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11 hours ago, Tezza said:

Interesting, I don't understand the Pro Tools and Avid being separate, they should be the same? since Pro Tools is owned by Avid. Avid don't run any other DAW as far as I know.

These figures are pretty much what I would expect, almost uncannily backs up my argument, EM crew going ballistic, followed by Musicians/Songwriters, followed by Engineers. Definitely would be worth chasing up to find if there is any difference now with CbB. I am not on Facebook so cannot do.

I believe this has changed some since this info was collected. In addition, How many DAWS have reinvented their name so often? I think this has served to fork off some of the feeds on social media meaning we aren't seeing all Cakewalk users. Meng was wise to keep "Cakewalk" since this is probably the most common denominator between the different itinerations of the program. Since I've been using the software we've had different versions of Pro i.e. Pro 8, pro 9 etc.Then we went to  Sonar  and  the "X" designations. After that Gibson came up with "Platinum". Changing things up this often means search engines don't necessarily give an accurate history of the program popularity in numbers. 

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8 hours ago, Steev said:

You guys are funny.... Why would anyone put out a massive not to mention expensive marketing blitz for something they are giving away for free?

how does anyone know they're giving it away for free? do bandlab want to increase their userbase? for example

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13 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

The only problem is that Cakewalk's playback engine has spoiled me. It just sounds so. Freaking. Good.

This is what I found also, Studio One sounded digital to me whereas Cakewalk sounds clearer, beefier, deeper and more analog and that's before you even start using the stock plugins. When I use the plugins it gets even better whereas the Studio One plugins for me didn't sound as good, they added an almost plastiky sound to my stuff. My VST instruments and the amp sims sound better too, again, clearer, more depth and presence.

I have 100% confidence that if what I am creating in Cakewalk doesn't sound good, then the fault lies elsewhere. This is important because you can put a link in the audio creation chain to rest and then move on. Since getting Cakewalk I've upgraded my electric guitar from a Fender Squire to a MIM standard. Now it sits in nicely quality wise with the other instruments, so nice that I can also put that little annoying problem to bed. On the weekend I am upgrading my Acoustic to a better model with a B-Band system. I notice these upgrades in quality easily in Cakewalk.

Shouldn't really talk too much about this though, it only results in DAW wars, the "it's all in your mind" brigade and the null police coming after you. So I will just say that for me, I really like the Cakewalk sound engine a lot for my music. Perhaps other DAW's might suit other peoples needs.

On another thread, someone asked me why I switched from Studio One to Cakewalk, that is a really long topic to answer, don't know when I will reply to that one but I think there are lessons in there for Cakewalks marketing department because they seem to miss a lot of unique features that Cakewalk has on the Cakewalk advertising splash page.

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