It's official: CbB will not continue for long.

[Craig Anderton]

The concept of having a free trial so you can check out a program, and then paying for it if you like it, is not exactly new. The only difference here is that the free trial lasted a really long time

[Larry Jones]

4 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Bottom line is Cakewalk by Bandlab's final release will be out very soon, and won't be going away in the near future

I thought the final version of Cakewalk by Bandlab will be around only until it needs reactivation, which will be six months. Isn't that what @Noel Borthwick has said?

[msmcleod]

25 minutes ago, Larry Jones said:

I thought the final version of Cakewalk by Bandlab will be around only until it needs reactivation, which will be six months. Isn't that what @Noel Borthwick has said?

The current 2022.11 version of CbB will only work until it needs re-activating - this is due to a change in the activation back-end server.

There are no immediate plans to prevent re-activation of the final 2023.09 version of CbB. Part of the reason for the delay in releasing 2023.09 is because we needed the new activation server to work with both Sonar (a paid product) and CbB... but it will stop re-activating at some point in the future. 

I could be wrong, but personally I don't see this happening in as early as six months time. However, it's not my decision.

[SirWillyDS12]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

The current 2022.11 version of CbB will only work until it needs re-activating - this is due to a change in the activation back-end server.

There are no immediate plans to prevent re-activation of the final 2023.09 version of CbB. Part of the reason for the delay in releasing 2023.09 is because we needed the new activation server to work with both Sonar (a paid product) and CbB... but it will stop re-activating at some point in the future. 

I could be wrong, but personally I don't see this happening in as early as six months time. However, it's not my decision.

So when asked this very question about stopping re-activation of CbB by user Misha on June 6th Jesse Jost replied...

"That's effectively what's happening and I can assure you we have no interest pulling the rug out from CbB users."

and on the new Sonar webpage under FAQ's it states...

Will Cakewalk by BandLab be discontinued?

Yes, eventually. We will continue providing community support and maintenance for Cakewalk by BandLab until Cakewalk Sonar becomes publicly available. At some point after the release of Sonar, Cakewalk by BandLab will no longer be supported. Note that existing Cakewalk by BandLab users will be able to continue using the software after the release of Cakewalk Sonar. In the meantime, Cakewalk by BandLab continues to be available here.

But by what you are stating here, that re-activation of CbB will cease in the future, the above statements are not true and you will be pulling the rug out from CbB users.

[User 905133]

3 hours ago, SirWillyDS12 said:

So when asked this very question about stopping re-activation of CbB by user Misha on June 6th Jesse Jost replied...

"That's effectively what's happening and I can assure you we have no interest pulling the rug out from CbB users."

and on the new Sonar webpage under FAQ's it states...

Will Cakewalk by BandLab be discontinued?

Yes, eventually. We will continue providing community support and maintenance for Cakewalk by BandLab until Cakewalk Sonar becomes publicly available. At some point after the release of Sonar, Cakewalk by BandLab will no longer be supported. Note that existing Cakewalk by BandLab users will be able to continue using the software after the release of Cakewalk Sonar. In the meantime, Cakewalk by BandLab continues to be available here.

But by what you are stating here, that re-activation of CbB will cease in the future, the above statements are not true and you will be pulling the rug out from CbB users.

Not at all the way I read it.  It means that you will be responsible for keeping the rug clean on your own.  If you, or MS, or a plug-in maker changes something, the team will no longer try to patch it for you and roll that into a new version for everyone.

I could be wrong, but they are not pulling the rug out.  The last time I checked all my versions of SONAR still worked. All of those have been discontinued.

UPDATE: I stand corrected.  Based on the latest information it does seem like CbB 2023.09 (1) will indeed need to be reactivated and (2) at some point (undetermined as of now) CbB will no longer function at all.

So far as I can see at the moment, it is unclear if owners of pre-SONAR Platinum licenses will be able to install and use those products.  

Edited September 18, 2023 by User 905133
To add an UPDATE based on recent posts

[John Vere]

3 hours ago, msmcleod said:

but it will stop re-activating at some point in the future. 

I could be wrong, but personally I don't see this happening in as early as six months time. However, it's not my decision.

I'm not sure why people are not understanding this. Sure Jesse didn't exactly say that it would be Forever. It only said 

 

1 hour ago, SirWillyDS12 said:

existing Cakewalk by BandLab users will be able to continue using the software after the release of Cakewalk Sonar

Which is absolutely what will happen. Do you see the word Forever in that statement?  I don't. I just see the word After.  After and forever have different meanings. 

I had to take down the video I made which was only created using information like these little tidbits we have been finding scattered all over the place. And it's awfully kind of Noel, Mark, Jesse and Jon to share even these tidbits because they really don't have to.

Anybody who took the time to read this would not be freaking out. Yet the same questions are still being asked. That's why I made the video. It answered most of those questions.

They said my information was inaccurate and false? The title of this thread is false then yet no one here has pointed that out!  I was only repeating what I had read here on this forum. 

But they all want to continue to believe that CbB is going to see a  final update and will be unlocked forever. There's that word again. Like Mark just said, no set time limit has been planed. But CbB will eventually be history and we will move forward, not backwards with Sonar ( or Next) 

Edited September 17, 2023 by JohnnyV

[Larry Jones]

1 hour ago, JohnnyV said:

Do you see the word Forever in that statement?  I don't. I just see the word After.  After and forever have different meanings. 

I was kind of hoping it would be "forever," but not really expecting it.🙃 Piecing together the various snippets of vague comments from staff, and with the knowledge that they are going to be releasing a DAW that is very similar to CbB (so why would they compete with themselves with a free alternative to their new DAWs?), as well as that thing about the mandatory six-month reactivation, I am operating on the theory that I will have to retire CbB (the final free version) within six months or so of the Sonar/Next release. This is conjecture on my part, but I have to think about a future without CbB, and figure out how I want to continue making music.

All that said, I think it would have been better (for my emotional well-being) if Bandlab had not made their big announcement such a long time in advance of actual product readiness. I would have posted here on a Friday (and sent out a few press releases) "We have fabulous new products you can buy right now, and you have six months to use the old free product." Those six months could have been like the past six months, only with real products to review and discuss, instead of this fever swamp of speculations, unanswerable questions, teasers and confusion.

And I say this notwithstanding Mark's statement that there are "no immediate plans" to prevent reactivation. This is not the same as saying "we'll support reactivation as long as the user base wants."

3 hours ago, msmcleod said:

There are no immediate plans to prevent re-activation of the final 2023.09 version of CbB. Part of the reason for the delay in releasing 2023.09 is because we needed the new activation server to work with both Sonar (a paid product) and CbB... but it will stop re-activating at some point in the future.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Larry Jones

[SirWillyDS12]

I was simply pointing out what was already stated when asked about this...

but it will stop re-activating at some point in the future

 

Here are the entire comments...

Misha

Question for Noel.  Please.

Current version expires every few months. When final built is released, what happens in a few months? It gets deactivated and dies in de-activated state?

Can users purchase current version,  if they don't like new versions for any reason, so Bandlab doesn't de-activate Cakewalk by Bandlab  when it wants to?

----

What worries me the most, is that it seems intention is to forcefully take  away current version from folks " at some point" by simply de-activating it and never activating it again...   I have 2 decades of projects in Cake, and that would be a major disappointment.  A honest thing would be to give existing users permanent activation to current version  and then try to seduce them with new, better product(s)

I don't mind Cakewalk becoming a paid software. Obviously not subscription.  If  it will be  subscription only, I will among first to catch a train to another DAW  Hopefully that is not the case.

Response...

Jesse Jost

That's effectively what's happening and I can assure you we have no interest pulling the rug out from CbB users. Please understand that we cannot comment on specifics at this time, as pricing details and options are not yet available. In the meantime, we appreciate your perseverance - stay tuned!

[Lord Tim]

So basically what they're saying is that nobody is going to go "lol CbB doesn't work anymore from today and there's no app you can move to, surprise!!" at you.

It sounds like CbB will give everyone a pretty decent lead time while they decide if they want to move to Sonar or not, and if the choice is "not" then they won't wake up one day with no time to sign off on old projects or migrate them to other DAWs or whatever.

Nobody knows what's happening with price or what the new product line is going to look like yet, so it's fair there's trepidation about it, but my gut is telling me that after the dust settles, going forward Sonar will make the most sense, at least for those of us invested in this ecosystem.

[Kevin Walsh]

This news is a lot easier to swallow than when Gibson announced that they were shutting Cakewalk down. That was a real problem to deal with, hard decisions had to be made. No matter what happens here, we will have options, not problems.

[Byron Dickens]

3 hours ago, JohnnyV said:

I'm not sure why people are not understanding this.

Because English is hard.

[AB7]

I do not know how anything can last forever in its currect state when operating systems will obviously be changed from time to time.  Eventually, the Cwb version will be problematic as it will no longer be updated. Therefore, it makes sense to have a version of Cakewalk that will be updated as needed.  For me, that is Cakewalk Sonar.

I suspect this will all be for the good.  

[Lord Tim]

1 hour ago, Kevin Walsh said:

This news is a lot easier to swallow than when Gibson announced that they were shutting Cakewalk down. That was a real problem to deal with, hard decisions had to be made. No matter what happens here, we will have options, not problems.

Yeah, that was rubbish. Pretty much zero notice at all.

Still annoyed about this 5 years later 😒

[John Vere]

I wasn’t upset then because this was different. Splat didn’t time out. As a matter of fact the install from 2017 is still the same one on my computer. I think it still opens. I have no reason to use it but the software is still installed.
At the time it was a little upsetting but I personally hadn’t invested much more than $350 in the software and it seemed I could probably use it for at least another 5-6 years. I installed it on 4 other machines which some of those are still functional Probably could have made it to my 75 birthday.  

And I’m not upset at all now because nothing is really going to change. I just had a 5 year break from paying for updates. Cool. 

[Pathfinder]

The other difference no one mentioned in the last page or 2 anyway is that Activation must be thru the internet. That is a change. BUT, I will always have the internet until the day I die. So?
I would have no problem staying on win10x64 for a long time if that's what it took to keep using this latest CWB.

I have PAID for versions of Win11x64 but they sit in a small safe. 

as stated though, I will NOT SUBSCRIBE to ANYTHING. I have what i need for a long time and for years now I always upgrade and use Reaper, kind of like a failsafe. I have Studio one also. Early version. Doesn't appeal to me too much.
So, PLEASE, let us BUY Sonar, not subscribe to Sonar. Just my thoughts. After 30 years i would really love to stick around.

In the old days I hung out on the forums alot. Kind of lost that, for me, with the CWB forums. So special reason, just wasn't the same for me. Not in a bad way, just different. 
Well, Lets Go Sonar++++++ at a competitive price point and all will be Good in CW land 🙂 
 

Edited September 18, 2023 by Pathfinder

[Lord Tim]

2 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

as stated though, I will NOT SUBSCRIBE to ANYTHING. I have what i need for a long time and for years now I always upgrade and use Reaper, kind of like a failsafe. I have Studio one also. Early version. Doesn't appeal to me too much.
So, PLEASE, let us BUY Sonar, not subscribe to Sonar. Just my thoughts. After 30 years i would really love to stick around.

 

Just doing a hypothetical:

If Sonar was released each year with a new version costing (pulling a random figure out of the air here) $200, and that $200 would get you each new version (eg: Sonar 2023, Sonar 2024, etc.) plus any updates to that version, does that sound like something that would work for you?

So in other words, you buy a version of Sonar and you get updates for the life of that version until you buy the next version, and the cycle repeats.

That's kind of what the old Gibson model was in a lot of ways:

(Explaining to anyone unfamiliar to it) It was "membership" which basically was a rent-to-own model which basically went like this - you could either buy a yearly membership which got you 12 months worth of use of the app + any updates and once that 12 months ends, the program doesn't expire on you like a regular subscription would do, but you just don't get any more updates to it, more or less like buying a yearly version outright. But this also had the addition of not having to pay that $200 lump sum if you don't want, but spreading those payments over a year instead, and so long as you kept up the payments for that year, at the end you got a program that didn't stop working like a regular subscription would do.

So buying a yearly upgrade of an app outright is really not a lot different to getting that kind of 12-months in advance membership, but just with the added advantage if someone doesn't have the money up front, they have a payment plan option to help make owning the software easier.

Now, to be clear, I have no idea if this is what the model will be going forward - again, none of us know this until there's an official announcement, me included - but if it's something like this then it's kind of got all of the benefits of an outright purchase with the flexibility of a subscription but without any of the "hello we're Adobe!" downsides.

[Conteloto]

The "SUBSCRIBE way", many software tools work taht way today, can be translated as "You buy a software but that software never is going to be yours"

[Will.]

On 9/18/2023 at 12:21 AM, JohnnyV said:

 After and forever

I'm pitching this to Spielberg or Michael Bay. 🤣 This sounds like a movie title.

ET: After and Forever 🤣

Transformers: After and Forever. 🤣 Sounds more like a love story of the robots. 

I cant anymore! Oh! My poor stomach! 🤣🤣 

Is this the end for Cakewalk by Bandlab? What new adventures lies ahead for Sonar and Next? Its a love and hate user entanglement! Stay tuned for CbB: The After and Forever movie. 🤣🤣 Out in cinemas worldwide. 

Let me go make some coffee! 🤣

Edited September 19, 2023 by Will.

[David Baay]

18 hours ago, JohnnyV said:

Jesse didn't exactly say that it would be Forever.

Exactly. Having the rug pulled out from under you implies your ***** is hitting the floor before you know what's happening. That's not the case at all here. All indications are that everyone will have plenty of time to make decisions about what they are or aren't willing to pay for and act accordingly over what clearly will be a matter of months. More like having the rug wear out under you. ;^)

[InstrEd]

😆