How many users does CbB have?

[David Baay]

After 35 years of not giving a hoot whether my Sequencer/DAW of choice was "Pro" or not, I finally broke down and installed a trial version of that "Pro" DAW to follow up on a claim on the Modartt forum that Pianoteq sounded better in that DAW than in any of several others (CbB not tried, of course). To make a long story short, I found that the "Pro" DAW could not render MIDI through Pianoteq with the remotest semblance of timing accuracy or consistency. Only a couple transients were rendered within a couple milliseconds of their MIDI notes, many were on the order of 10ms late, and one was a full 19ms late.

As my mama used to say, "Pro is as pro does".

Oh, by the way, don't try to run that "Pro" DAW with any ASIO interface that doesn't use even multiples of 64-sample buffers; it can't do it.

 

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

The cynicism in this forum never fails to amaze me.

TBF, though, a large percentage of regular forum participants (as opposed to lurkers) are people who got burned by your old bosses. I'll spot them a bit of FUD, although in their 6 years of driving the bus, BandLab have never shown anything other than exemplary behavior toward the userbase.

Keeping the legacy registration servers lit for a company that went under 6 years ago?

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Why on earth would we or any sane company in our field want to hold users' data hostage?

Something I used to point out way back in 2018 on the old forum when people would suggest that CbB would become a trojan data harvesting app, that BandLab would own all your music, ad nauseum.

Such behavior would ruin a company's reputation forever. A lot of time, money and effort to spend for that result.

2 hours ago, JohnnyV said:

You've got lots of time to finish all your Cakewalk projects before you are locked out. 

I (and many others) have some projects that I wonder whether I'd finish if I had until the heat death of the solar system to do so. ?

There are of course no plans to lock anybody out. BL have said that registered and validated installations of CbB will continue to function. And given their past behavior in regard to how you can still download and install SONAR, I don't expect that to change. CbB will be a legacy app just like SONAR.

I'm certain that if someone contacted Cakewalk support and told them that they lost their BandLab username and password and now their old copy of CbB is in demo mode, whatever, they'll be taken care of. They do that for SONAR.

And given that stuff like SONAR 8.5 still (mostly) works even though there are CbB users were not even born when it was discontinued, it should be decently immune to being broken by Windows updates for a good long while.

I once pointed out that if BandLab vanishes in a puff of smoke, as a last resort, unplug your computer from the internet and set its clock back to whenever CbB was last validated. ?

BTW, re: the original topic, BandLab/Cakewalk are claiming over 2M users in their marketing material for Cakewalk Sonar. As I pointed out back then, they have the means to know this.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Starship Krupa

[Starship Krupa]

On 3/7/2021 at 8:37 AM, Billy86 said:

What spurred my question was wondering why is a DAW like Studio One, a relatively new kid on the block, seemingly  more supported by third-party folks than CbB. Native Instruments is just one example, but there are others I’ve noticed. More users, and therefore a potentially more lucrative pool of buyers of those third-party apps? A behind-the-scenes biz deal with Presonus? Just curious...

I'm surprised that I didn't address this a couple of years ago.

In my varied career (I'm like @bitflipper in that regard ?) I've worked for software companies both tiny and huge.

Hardware/software integration, bundling deals, etc. were invariably the bailiwick of the marketing department. The marketing people would get together and schmooze, do lunch, hang out at NAMM, and either work out concrete deals, or just do what they could to convince their colleagues that mutual support would be beneficial to both companies.

Anyone who's worked in "shrink wrap" (as we used to call it back when software shipped in boxes on CD or DVD ROM's, but it meant "consumer" rather than corporate developed-in-house software) can probably attest to this.

Despite the many benefits of BandLab's stewardship of Cakewalk, this is one area that at least up to this point, doesn't seem to have been covered. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but CbB has always relied on the simple fact that it's free to do its marketing (along with the stalwart advocacy of many YouTubers). I recall one appearance by the team at the 2019 NAMM Show, but there was a long gap between NAMM Shows, and these days, fewer and fewer companies even participate.

As it transitions to payware, along with the revenues I hope comes greater attention to marketing, in this and other areas. I, and probably anyone else who's worked in development for shrink-wrap, used to roll my eyes whenever a marketing person would approach, because they were known for sometimes having unrealistic ideas about what would be possible and desirable.

In retrospect, though, I realize more of what value they actually did bring to the table. They are the "boots on the ground" out there researching what (they think) people want, what new features might be important to add, etc. What they say of course should always be....reviewed, but there's great value in having a dedicated person or staff to do that stuff. Even if the developers are all musicians or whatever, they may not be working in the latest genres, etc.

There have recently on this forum been more requests for better controller integration. This may be due to more younger people adopting the software and wanting to use it with pad controllers and the like. I'm an older people and I want to get more into realtime control, don't have a pad controller yet but I will someday. I need to crack my knuckles and spend some time in the woodshed with Ableton Live and Matrix View. I have one control surface, a Korg nanoKONTROL 2, and it's been an absolute pain in the rear to get it working with Cakewalk, despite the fact that one of the developers uses one in his own studio.

For any who might question whether "official" support by the hardware company is that important, it would be good to know that both Cakewalk and  the other company have your back if you have issues. I don't worry about this with plug-ins, because the companies I spend money with either state CbB compatibility or are reputable and established enough that if anything goes wrong, either the Cakewalk engineers or the plug-in developer will fix it pronto.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Starship Krupa

[Bass Guitar]

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I once pointed out that if BandLab vanishes in a puff of smoke, as a last resort, unplug your computer from the internet and set its clock back to whenever CbB was last validated. ?

That's interesting you mentioned this. I remember back in like 200? do this to run some software I had demoed and it timed out. My son taught me that one, he was like 20 at the time. He also introduced me the the torrents and lots of free versions of Sonar abounded in those days. But I kinda wonder if the developers don't already know about that trick and now the time outs are "phone home" related? 

 

[Larioso]

23 hours ago, mettelus said:

I do like the "2 years later..." tag above the exhumation! The semi-hidden, necro-thread alert.

Cakewalk remains in a very unique position in that people who have onboarded with CbB (i.e., no access to a prior product) will "eventually" be put into a position where their work can be held hostage based on current pathing.

These threads have become interesting to me more from there psychological perspective; specifically who is chiming in, what they are saying, and what is their motivations.

You have two rather good options if really having  to move to another host

- midi, just select all project, and save as and choose midi file type

- will open in any daw and at least midi is there, tracks positions, tempo the lot

- OMF if mostly audio stuff and can be opened at least in Cubase

- StudioOne is AAF as I recall.

- Reaper and Samplitude do EDL

 

And then there is https://aatranslator.com.au that do many direct conversions.

 

So hardly hostage...I get by with 7 year old Sonar code....I prefer Sonar to any mentioned above....

[Craig Anderton]

21 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

The bigger question to ask is why anyone who cared about their music in any capacity would not want to pay a reasonable fee to support the development of a product they use.

Noel, my bigger question is why people don't understand that you can't go into a supermarket and say "I should get my groceries for free because some guy on an internet forum says I should work for free."

Call me crazy, but making more resources available for the new Sonar can only result in it continuing to improve. In any event, whatever it ends up costing, it beats spending $245 for a reel of 2" tape on which you can record 22 minutes of music at 30 ips.

[user 905133]

On 3/7/2021 at 2:40 PM, User 905133 said:

On 3/7/2021 at 11:12 AM, Noel Borthwick said:

 Were adding deeper BandLab integration however so we will continue to grow as more people learn about Cakewalk.

Very glad to hear this!!!  I am not up to speed with using Bandlab-the-App, but I see great potential for the integration.  Hope all the Cakewalk tutorial makers are keeping tabs on the possibilities for using Cakewalk and Bandlab together!  I'm already fantasizing a personal Workspace (or other feature) that would allow me use Cakewalk and Bandlab assuming the deeper integration might translate into GUI elements and underlying functionality.  (Yeah, I know its an extremely long-shot, but if you can make it happen, it might turn into a quantum leap.)

. . . .

[Two Years Later]  

On 9/11/2023 at 2:48 PM, JohnnyV said:

As I said in my update I'm bumping this old thread and then I liked a bunch of you so you can read what you were thinking 2 years ago.  

On 9/11/2023 at 3:45 PM, mettelus said:

I do like the "2 years later..." tag above the exhumation! The semi-hidden, necro-thread alert.

Cakewalk remains in a very unique position in that people who have onboarded with CbB (i.e., no access to a prior product) will "eventually" be put into a position where their work can be held hostage based on current pathing.

These threads have become interesting to me more from there psychological perspective; specifically who is chiming in, what they are saying, and what is their motivations. [emphasis added]

I chimed in on this thread over two years ago. I thought what I was saying and my motivation were clearly laid out.

You seem to be implying that there is something underneath what people who chimed in were saying. Not sure what you are looking for based on your interest in a "psychological perspective," but I would be happy to elaborate on what I meant, my state of mind, my reasoning for the post, etc. two plus years ago.

Edited September 12, 2023 by User 905133
added a missing word: "were"

[msmcleod]

On 9/12/2023 at 4:14 AM, Starship Krupa said:

...I have one control surface, a Korg nanoKONTROL 2, and it's been an absolute pain in the rear to get it working with Cakewalk, despite the fact that one of the developers uses one in his own studio.

In my experience, the Korg nanoKONTROL 2 / nanoKONTROL Studio are by far the easiest to integrate with Cakewalk - as long as you're using it in Mackie/SONAR mode that is.

It's pretty simple to set up... just follow the steps in the nanoKONTROL 2 manual:

SONAR
1. While pressing and holding down the SET MARKER and REC
buttons, connect the USB cable from your computer to the
nanoKONTROL2.
2. Open the “MIDI device” window in SONAR, then select
nanoKONTROL2 for “Input” and “Output.”
3. Open the “Controllers/Surfaces” window, then select “Mackie
Control” for “Control Surface.”
4. Select nanoKONTROL2 for the MIDI In/Out ports used.

If you're using it as a generic ACT controller, your mileage may differ however.

Swapping between nanoKONTROL 2 "modes" can be a PITA ( i.e. using it in Mackie/SONAR mode, then changing it to CC mode) so I'd avoid doing it unless you want to go through the setup steps every time you swap.  Better to get an additional (and different) controller so you have one for each mode.

But to answer the original question of the post... "How many users does CbB have?"... go here:
https://bandlabtechnologies.com/brands/cakewalk/

[Michael Vogel]

On 3/8/2021 at 3:01 PM, Shane_B. said:

Celemony and Presonus developed ARA. They worked together on it. That was a huge shot in the arm for Presonus. That and Studio One has always been rock solid and Presonus makes really good hardware too that integrates with Studio One. Yes, there have been hiccups here and there but they were few and far between and fixed very quickly. That was not the case with Sonar.

CbB is far better than Sonar by a mile, but it's too little too late, at least for now. I think that will change especially if they update the GUI a little. 4K support is a must now and it looks really bad on a 4K monitor. At least on mine. Maybe it's ok on yours. The people who were representing Cakewalk at the time took the Todd Howard stance saying, "It just works.". And that wasn't true unless you really knew how to tweak a PC to run a DAW and knew what things to avoid doing in Sonar. You never had to know any of that with Studio One. It truly does, just work.

It will take some time and some forgetting that Sonar and CbB are the same before the tide turns for CbB but I believe it will happen. 

This is my opinion based on how I remember how things went down. 

Cakewalk (under Gibson) were actually involved in developing the ARA protocol along with Celemony and Presonus.

Lots of collaboration among developers where Cakewalk gets little recognition. Noel in particular has worked very closely with companies like Microsoft on audio aspects of the OS.

[Michael Richards]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

In my experience, the Korg nanoKONTROL 2 / nanoKONTROL Studio are by far the easiest to integrate with Cakewalk - as long as you're using it in Mackie/SONAR mode that is.

It's pretty simple to set up... just follow the steps in the nanoKONTROL 2 manual:

SONAR
1. While pressing and holding down the SET MARKER and REC
buttons, connect the USB cable from your computer to the
nanoKONTROL2.
2. Open the “MIDI device” window in SONAR, then select
nanoKONTROL2 for “Input” and “Output.”
3. Open the “Controllers/Surfaces” window, then select “Mackie
Control” for “Control Surface.”
4. Select nanoKONTROL2 for the MIDI In/Out ports used.

If you're using it as a generic ACT controller, your mileage may differ however.

Swapping between nanoKONTROL 2 "modes" can be a PITA ( i.e. using it in Mackie/SONAR mode, then changing it to CC mode) so I'd avoid doing it unless you want to go through the setup steps every time you swap.  Better to get an additional (and different) controller so you have one for each mode.

But to answer the original question of the post... "How many users does CbB have?"... go here:
https://bandlabtechnologies.com/brands/cakewalk/

I’m with Starship Krupa. I gave up on using the nano KONTROL2. I spent over a month trying to get it to work, awhile back until it broke Cakewalk and Noel had use some debugging software to revive Lazarus. Last week I spent several days, again, using these directions which are very clear. Still, it does not work. I really want it to work. I didn’t ask for help this time around. I think I was annoying my first time around. 

[msmcleod]

Just now, Michael Richards said:

I’m with Starship Krupa. I gave up on using the nano KONTROL2. I spent over a month trying to get it to work, awhile back until it broke Cakewalk and Noel had use some debugging software to revive Lazarus. Last week I spent several days, again, using these directions which are very clear. Still, it does not work. I really want it to work. I didn’t ask for help this time around. I think I was annoying my first time around. 

A couple of things that may be different from my setup:

1. I don't use the Korg USB drivers, as they keep breaking with Windows 10 updates.  It works fine as a class compliant device.
2. Set your MIDI mode to MME rather UWP within Cakewalk.

[Larry Jones]

On 3/6/2021 at 10:09 PM, bitflipper said:

BTW, in this podcast, Noel says the BandLab user base is 29 million. Not all of those are Cakewalk users, but holy crap, that's a LOT of people. That's about equivalent to the entire population of Texas.

Have you explored the Bandlab metaverse? They are beatmakers and "producers." They can't sing or play an instrument. They are vague about what genre of music they are doing, so it's difficult to find like-minded potential collaborators. Except for the ones who are hired to demonstrate the app, they are the rankest of amateurs. I know my musical tastes are old fashioned, but the only things I've found there that I like is the stuff done by CbB users, right here on this forum. With that many users, of course, you'd expect it to be tough to find folks you'd actually want to work with, but to me, it looks like 29 million people, doing not much of anything.

[John Vere]

5 hours ago, Larry Jones said:

With that many users, of course, you'd expect it to be tough to find folks you'd actually want to work with, but to me, it looks like 29 million people, doing not much of anything.

Bingo!  And not only that,  we now seem to have at least 40  Distribution companies that are the modern day version of a Record Label. They will get all of this on Spotify and Apple Music for you for free or a small fee.  And there's a lot of them that claim " Anyone can be a Member"  But there are some, thank goodness, that will review your submissions first.  So we have almost totally lost the quality control watch dogs of the past.  

I'm in the process of researching which of these Distribution companies to use. And I almost feel like a weirdo because I actually have recorded what I feel is real normal pop music. Even Sound Click now is totally focused on "beats"  You watch any video that was made to show you how to do this and the presenter is talking about Hip Hop etc. I think we have become dinosaurs Larry!  

Yet at an event I just did live sound for we had a bunch of local bands and singer songwriter acts who were all real musicians and played very well. They also had this DJ dude who did what all modern DJ's do, the exact same thing. Somebody elses stuff and add a few effects. It is so shallow and pointless yet it is now what sells. Of course everybody walked away during his set because people aren't stupid about what is music and what is just somebody pushing buttons. 

The only good news is that Cakewalk /Sonar are still functioning properly for the few real musicians left on this planet to make music with. Next will be built for the new world of beat makers and button pusher. 

Edited September 14, 2023 by JohnnyV

[under_the_influence]

On 9/14/2023 at 2:04 AM, JohnnyV said:

Bingo!  And not only that,  we now seem to have at least 40  Distribution companies that are the modern day version of a Record Label. They will get all of this on Spotify and Apple Music for you for free or a small fee.  And there's a lot of them that claim " Anyone can be a Member"  But there are some, thank goodness, that will review your submissions first.  So we have almost totally lost the quality control watch dogs of the past. 

I'm in the process of researching which of these Distribution companies to use. And I almost feel like a weirdo because I actually have recorded what I feel is real normal pop music. Even Sound Click now is totally focused on "beats"  You watch any video that was made to show you how to do this and the presenter is talking about Hip Hop etc. I think we have become dinosaurs Larry!  

Yet at an event I just did live sound for we had a bunch of local bands and singer songwriter acts who were all real musicians and played very well. They also had this DJ dude who did what all modern DJ's do, the exact same thing. Somebody elses stuff and add a few effects. It is so shallow and pointless yet it is now what sells. Of course everybody walked away during his set because people aren't stupid about what is music and what is just somebody pushing buttons. 

The only good news is that Cakewalk /Sonar are still functioning properly for the few real musicians left on this planet to make music with. Next will be built for the new world of beat makers and button pusher. 

I'm not so sure @JohnnyV ? ... it's so easy to dismiss the next generation (my dad came of age in the mid-fifties and still says anything from the sixties onwards 'isn't music' ?)

But the scenes I'm involved in (not pop - more jazz, funk, all sorts of electronic and yes ... even a little hip-hop) are full of bewilderingly amazing players, plus many who can't really play instruments in the traditional sense but still create fantastic (at least for my taste) music.

It's also full of DJs, but they're an equally valuable part of the scene and the musicians love the DJs as much as the other way around. Without the DJs and the promoters, the musicians have nowhere to play and it's also really fascinating to see how the musicians are inspired by the DJs and what a pivotal role they play. No one makes much money, most still have to keep their day jobs. But there's a huge community impact and there are organisations that are really improving lives (e.g. https://tomorrowswarriors.org/) which are a core part of this.

When it comes to distribution, bandcamp has been a gamechanger. There are so many small independent labels run by people in their spare time with full rosters and a lot of A&R behind the scenes. The sales are low and they only just break even (this is not mainstream pop!), but I'm still a fan of the current state of affairs versus the days when a few 'majors' controlled everything.

I don't need to tell anyone how hard it is to make money from music these days - up until a few years ago 'merch' seemed to be the new way to make it work, but now I hear even that's not breaking even - productions costs are high and money is tights for fans. But I'm still positive about everything that's going on and people who love music will continue to make and play music.

More power to Cakewalk - long may it carry on for the players, the button pushers and the DJs - and I'm happy to pay ?

[RexRed]

It's never been about quantity, it is about quality.

The quality people use Cakewalk because they are intelligent enough to know the industry secret is that Cakewalk is the best. ?

[Bristol_Jonesey]

19 hours ago, RexRed said:

It's never been about quantity, it is about quality.

The quality people use Cakewalk because they are intelligent enough to know the industry secret is that Cakewalk is the best. ?

Best comment yet

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

On 9/13/2023 at 12:14 PM, msmcleod said:

But to answer the original question of the post... "How many users does CbB have?"... go here:
https://bandlabtechnologies.com/brands/cakewalk/

Wow . That is a lot 

Out of interest do you get useage data , are you able to see how many CbB were logged over a given time period ?

[user 905133]

On 9/11/2023 at 10:34 PM, Starship Krupa said:

There are of course no plans to lock anybody out. BL have said that registered and validated installations of CbB will continue to function.  And given their past behavior in regard to how you can still download and install SONAR, I don't expect that to change. CbB will be a legacy app just like SONAR.

I used to think this and even said as much. However there has been some more recent discussion based on quotes that seem to be saying that at some point all version of CbB will not be usable, including the last version (yet to be released).

That being said, the final details have yet to be revealed. So I see no harm in waiting until then.

Who knows, maybe the details will include something for everyone at a price everyone can afford!  ?  

I just hope the people that rant about what the previous owners did will move on.  As I have said, Bandlab has more than made up for the $500 (or less, if there were loyalty discounts; not sure) by giving everyone five years of a quality DAW. 

[Shane_B.]

2 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

As I have said, Bandlab has more than made up for the $500 (or less, if there were loyalty discounts; not sure) by giving everyone five years of a quality DAW. 

Didn't a lot of people get screwed out of 'lifetime upgrades' that paid for them? I doubt they would agree with you.

It would be one thing if the product totally went away, but it didn't. In my opinion the new owners should honor that commitment.

They honor the fact that we can still access and use everything else we paid for with the old company, why not that?

Please don't answer. That was a rhetorical question. It's just food for thought/thinking out loud/other side of the coin ... you know what I mean.

[Lord Tim]

Please let's not get stuck in the same loop as the other recent threads, guys. They've all been fairly well played out by now.