Where's Cakewalk by Bandlab headed?

[Lee D]

2 hours ago, JoseC said:

So, yours is the Big Brother theory. Cakewalk as a big marketing Trojan. Around here we call that "conspiranoid"

Yeah I read their privacy policy.  I'm not saying they are doing anything evil.  But I think that's their business reason for offering a free DAW.

[Lee D]

6 hours ago, John said:

Lee I'm not sure why you are here at all.  Apparently, you don't use  Cakewalk or intend to do so, so what purpose have you in asking these things and also continuing do engage? I'm not sure how this thread fits in with the idea of a peer to peer forum trying to offer help to one another. 

In effect you are attempting to read the mind of Cakewalk's owners. I can't think of anything less fruitful. 

I've used it on and off in the past and would do so again in the future. It's just a conversation, maybe I should have posted in a different section of the forum? 

[Lee D]

8 minutes ago, Tezza said:

I am attracted to the "all in one" DAW, I know you can get bits and pieces here and there but I would prefer to get everything from one developer, so you just buy the DAW and away you go. I would suspect those who have sonar or other third party instruments wouldn't notice that Cakewalk doesn't really have instruments. All Cakewalk needs is a decent sample player (like halion, dimension pro or kontakt etc) and a couple of good synths and some pitch correction software then it's done and dusted. As long as it can all be authorized under one developer like Bandlab then that's it.

Keep the DAW free but then you pay for the add on pack which contains the sample player, the two good synths and the pitch correction. Don't tie them to the DAW so others can buy them for their different DAW's.

This way you keep the capability of owning a great DAW for free but then people can choose to upgrade to the premium version. I think it's a mistake to assume that everyone is using or even has third party instruments, I think people still want the "all in one" DAW at least to start with.

 

Yeah if they re-release Rapture Pro and Zeta 2 as paid add-ons then that would pretty much do the trick.

[Tezza]

18 hours ago, abacab said:

I think that is is highly likely that the direction of available development resources will be   based on the results of this recent Cakewalk poll from @Jesse Jost

Can you guess what the top feature area voted for was?

The answer is in the poll results at the top of the linked post.

 

 

It could be that the majority of people who voted in that poll were people who came over from Sonar and already had good instruments and a long history of making music with Sonar and so were quite technical and therefore picked up the more obscure audio editing needs. Either that or they found out what other DAW's do when they were forced to abandon Sonar for another DAW. This could be why audio editing was at the top of the list.

I would have thought instruments would have been at the top because Cakewalk doesn't really have any, but at least it's second!

EDIT: I read the posts from that thread with the poll and the majority certainly seemed to be longtime Sonar users who all already had good instruments that came with Sonar and could be used with Cakewalk. I think this may have skewed the poll against instruments.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Tezza

[msmcleod]

2 minutes ago, Lee D said:

Yeah I read their privacy policy.  I'm not saying they are doing anything evil.  But I think that's their business reason for offering a free DAW.

I see it differently.

The value of BandLab as a social media platform / online DAW is measured on their number of active users - just the same way as twitter or Facebook was when it started.

BandLab as a DAW however has limitations... so when their members want to go beyond that, where do they go? Cakewalk is the answer. It gives existing members a pro DAW to move to while staying within the BandLab eco system.

As far as getting their money, Craig has pretty much explained it.

I know it's radically different from how most companies work - i.e. they expect each product to make a profit.

But it's probably easier think of  it as being similar to how a lot of people do a day job to fund their music. So all the other companies BandLab owns fund the BandLab webste & DAW / Cakewalk side. They're not seen as separate products but more like part of a greater eco-system.

 

[Lee D]

19 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

I see it differently.

The value of BandLab as a social media platform / online DAW is measured on their number of active users - just the same way as twitter or Facebook was when it started.

BandLab as a DAW however has limitations... so when their members want to go beyond that, where do they go? Cakewalk is the answer. It gives existing members a pro DAW to move to while staying within the BandLab eco system.

As far as getting their money, Craig has pretty much explained it.

I know it's radically different from how most companies work - i.e. they expect each product to make a profit.

But it's probably easier think of  it as being similar to how a lot of people do a day job to fund their music. So all the other companies BandLab owns fund the BandLab webste & DAW / Cakewalk side. They're not seen as separate products but more like part of a greater eco-system.

 

I think we are actually saying the same thing

[abacab]

I'm thinking this thread actually belongs in the coffee house.

[Craig Anderton]

4 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I know it's radically different from how most companies work - i.e. they expect each product to make a profit.

But it's probably easier think of  it as being similar to how a lot of people do a day job to fund their music. So all the other companies BandLab owns fund the BandLab webste & DAW / Cakewalk side. They're not seen as separate products but more like part of a greater eco-system.

FWIW - my experience with Asian companies in general is that they tend to think longer-term than American companies (whose orientation often skews toward the current quarter's bottom line). So a lot of times when doing analysis, you have to consider what an initiative is designed to accomplish long-term, as opposed to just thinking about what immediate returns it can provide.

[razor7music]

I think Bandlab's long-term business goal is to contribute to the creation of another major superstar and complete global music domination!

 

(had to do it)

[Craig Anderton]

2 hours ago, razor7music said:

I think Bandlab's long-term business goal is to contribute to the creation of another major superstar and complete global music domination!

Dude - I must emphasize to you how serious it is to violate a non-disclosure agreement. That was an INTERNAL DOCUMENT only!!!

[Starship Krupa]

18 hours ago, Lee D said:

I think that Cakewalk will be modified in the future to collect user data

I think the line of reasoning is:

1. We only understand things a company does in terms of how they directly produce revenue, i.e. We make or do a thing, you pay us money for that thing

2. BandLab has never explained to us how Cakewalk will directly produce revenue for them

3. As it is a human trait to fear what we don't understand, we will invent a sinister way that Cakewalk could directly produce revenue for BandLab and try to convince Cakewalk users that BandLab intends to  implement it

4. If we are successful, we will no longer fear, because with the reinforcement of the Cakewalk users' belief, we will understand BandLab's motives

This has already become very tiresome for the people who are not burdened by #1, so I will try to relate a parallel example.

Every year, Sony PlayStation pays millions of dollars to put their name on a college football game. The PlayStation Bowl! It's a big deal. Many people attend the game and watch it on TV.

Does PlayStation make money from this? They must, in some way, they are not stupid, college football is not a charity. But the people who broadcast the PlayStation Bowl don't pay them money to do it, nor do the people who show up and sit in the stands and watch pay them.

Nope, they actually lose money on the actual act of putting their name on the bowl game. However they sell enough of their  consoles to more than make up for it as a result, because people who watch the game associate PlayStation with football. If they have watch parties, they may even buy a new PlayStation, and it will never be the competitor's console, because who would do that.

Cakewalk can be BandLab's PlayStation Bowl, their Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, their Goodyear Blimp. Something cool with BandLab's name on it. To suddenly put code in it that would harvest user data and send it back to a server somewhere, which is activity easily detected, and DAW users are constantly monitoring their systems' CPU and network use to squeeze every last drop of performance, would be idiotic. It would generate so much bad publicity.

The value of any user data that might be collected in such a fashion is rather overrated, I think. BandLab has already had my email address for a year and a half and what have they done with it? Nothing. Zero, zip, nada, not even sent me mail themselves. That's how interested they are in using our precious user data.

Does BandLab or any person or company associated with them have any history of involvement with any activity like that? Of course not. The owner is the son of a wealthy and successful family who is building his own business with the help of his family's wisdom and  capital and doesn't need to pull stupid scams.

Cakewalk is a freebie that has synergy with BandLab's other products. That's about it. They're not going to wait until a whole bunch of people have a lot of projects they're working on and then start charging for it, and they're not going to turn it into spyware.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Starship Krupa

[Lee D]

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I think the line of reasoning is:

1. We only understand things a company does in terms of how they directly produce revenue, i.e. We make or do a thing, you pay us money for that thing

2. BandLab has never explained to us how Cakewalk will directly produce revenue for them

3. As it is a human trait to fear what we don't understand, we will invent a sinister way that Cakewalk could directly produce revenue for BandLab and try to convince Cakewalk users that BandLab intends to  implement it

4. If we are successful, we will no longer fear, because with the reinforcement of the Cakewalk users' belief, we will understand BandLab's motives

This has already become very tiresome for the people who are not burdened by #1, so I will try to relate a parallel example.

Every year, Sony PlayStation pays millions of dollars to put their name on a college football game. The PlayStation Bowl! It's a big deal. Many people attend the game and watch it on TV.

Does PlayStation make money from this? They must, in some way, they are not stupid, college football is not a charity. But the people who broadcast the PlayStation Bowl don't pay them money to do it, nor do the people who show up and sit in the stands and watch pay them.

Nope, they actually lose money on the actual act of putting their name on the bowl game. However they sell enough of their  consoles to more than make up for it as a result, because people who watch the game associate PlayStation with football. If they have watch parties, they may even buy a new PlayStation, and it will never be the competitor's console, because who would do that.

Cakewalk can be BandLab's PlayStation Bowl, their Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, their Goodyear Blimp. Something cool with BandLab's name on it. To suddenly put code in it that would harvest user data and send it back to a server somewhere, which is activity easily detected, and DAW users are constantly monitoring their systems' CPU and network use to squeeze every last drop of performance, would be idiotic. It would generate so much bad publicity.

The value of any user data that might be collected in such a fashion is rather overrated, I think. BandLab has already had my email address for a year and a half and what have they done with it? Nothing. Zero, zip, nada, not even sent me mail themselves. That's how interested they are in using our precious user data.

Does BandLab or any person or company associated with them have any history of involvement with any activity like that? Of course not. The owner is the son of a wealthy and successful family who is building his own business with the help of his family's wisdom and  capital and doesn't need to pull stupid scams.

Cakewalk is a freebie that has synergy with BandLab's other products. That's about it. They're not going to wait until a whole bunch of people have a lot of projects they're working on and then start charging for it, and they're not going to turn it into spyware.

Have you read Bandlab's privacy policy?  I think your view is a little naive to be honest.  You have to sign up for a Bandlab account to get Cakewalk, why do you think that is?

By the way, I don't think there is anything bad or evil with collecting user marketing data in exchange for free services. 

[Bill Ruys]

21 hours ago, Lee D said:

I think that Cakewalk will be modified in the future to collect user data and to more tightly integrate with the Bandlab ecosystem.  This might even allow them to collect data on the usage of the other equipment such as the audio interfaces, guitars, etc which would give a big step up in terms of product development and marketing.

Lee has gone from feigning an interest in Sonar to conspiracy theorist over the course of this thread.  I can't wait to see where this goes next!

[Lee D]

1 hour ago, Bill Ruys said:

Lee has gone from feigning an interest in Sonar to conspiracy theorist over the course of this thread.  I can't wait to see where this goes next!

And while we are on it, the moon landing was staged!

[InstrEd]

24 minutes ago, Lee D said:

And while we are on it, the moon landing was staged!

Stage Left or Stage Right?

[Mandolin Picker]

1 hour ago, Lee D said:

And while we are on it, the moon landing was staged!

If you want to see/hear something unique, there is a web site that is playing back the entire Apollo 11 mission in real time. It includes over 11,000 hours of audio from mission control. Also has video that is synced to actual events as they occurred. It is a very neat web site.

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/

[Lee D]

13 minutes ago, Mandolin Picker said:

If you want to see/hear something unique, there is a web site that is playing back the entire Apollo 11 mission in real time. It includes over 11,000 hours of audio from mission control. Also has video that is synced to actual events as they occurred. It is a very neat web site.

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/

Holy crap that's awesome... I will be checking that out at work tomorrow for sure!

[Wookiee]

This thread looks like ti is going down a rabbit hole time to bring it to a halt before any carrots or other underground life gets damaged.