Gibson axes Cakewalk /Sonar

[JerGoertz]

They finally shot Ol' Yeller.

[SHall1000]

http://cdm.link/

[paulbreeze]

Time to cancel my subscription then..?!

[jsp1979]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCNQMB5EuzE

[ghettosynth]

https://www.gearnews.com/rip-cakewalk-g ... -products/

Noel Borthwick, Cakewalk CTO, assures us that the Cakewalk servers will continue to operate and we’ll all still have access to our online assets. But for how long? Apparently, a special team has been created to serve the community during this “transition period” – transition to what? Presumably transitioning from software being available and functional to it not being available or functional anymore?

[dellboy]

I shall miss the constant Cakewalk emails regarding subscriptions.

Not.

Does this mean the music software subscription model is now dead ?

[ghettosynth]

http://www.cakewalk.com/announcement

Cakewalk Announcement
After 30 years of Cakewalk's long and illustrious history, I am saddened to announce that we ceased new product development and reduced overall operations this past Friday. You can read the formal announcement from Gibson here, which states that this decision was made in order to align with the company’s acquisition strategy, focused on growth in the global consumer electronics audio business.

Working at Cakewalk has been an incredibly positive experience for all of us who worked here. This can largely be attributed to the incredible people who worked here, past and present. I've been at Cakewalk 19 years and I've never come across a more dedicated and talented group of people. Our greatest motivation was the joy in producing software for an astonishingly passionate base of artists, musicians and producers who used our software to create music on a daily basis.

So what does this mean for you, our loyal customers who've been with us all these years? Cakewalk's servers will continue to operate, you will still have access to all of your online assets, and your software will continue to work normally. A dedicated team has been established during this transition period to continue to serve the Cakewalk community. Monthly updates to SONAR from Cakewalk will however cease during this time. We will continue to post notifications to keep you informed with any relevant developments. A sincere thank you to everyone in the Cakewalk community.

Sincerely,
Noel Borthwick,
CTO, Cakewalk

[Skorpius]

That's really really sad news.

I was going to switch over to Sonar Platinum from Samplitude Pro X2 last year, but finally decided differently. Thank God!

In the meantime, I'm really glad I've been sticking with Pro X2. It's the best sounding DAW I have worked with, and Magix have really improved with regard to the speed and quality of updates.

Maybe Magix could acquire Cakewalk's software products, like they did with a few Sony music/video products?

[cryophonik]

Wow, that was unexpected! Well, I've been primarily a Sonar user for the past decade or so, but I honestly didn't much care for the direction Gibson/Cakewalk had been taking Sonar, so I recently started working with Cubase again (and loving it so far).

As for the lifetime free updates, I got many updates for my money's worth and honestly never believed that it would be for more than a few years before Sonar was replaced by a different DAW or something. So, meh, I can't complain about that. Still, here's hoping for some future incarnation of Cakewalk/Sonar.

[SJ_Digriz]

On the plus side, my lifetime updates ending doesn't require a Eulogy from any of my family members.

[fmr]

And Gibson did it again

Sad, but nothing I wasn't expecting, giving the examples we had in the past. At least Cakewalk still did some work, while Opcode was left dying an agonizing death. At least we will have Cakewalk working for still a longtime, as long as we don't need to reauthorize anything.

Hope they will have the decency to not force the current "call home" method, and change it to versions with "serial only" authorization.

What hel does this mean anyway: "The decision was made to better align with the company’s acquisition strategy that is heavily focused on growth in the global consumer electronics audio business under the Philips brand." ?

[SJ_Digriz]

The real question here is how healthy is the DAW market? It's one thing to have the fringe applications churn. It's another to have a 30 year old original member kick the bucket. Quality, full featured apps are getting pummeled by freeware/appstore dumbed down autodoitforyou phone apps.

[ghettosynth]

What hel does this mean anyway: "The decision was made to better align with the company’s acquisition strategy that is heavily focused on growth in the global consumer electronics audio business under the Philips brand." ?

Pay attention to the words that matter: "heavily focused on growth" means that Cakewalk wasn't growing.

[fmr]

What hel does this mean anyway: "The decision was made to better align with the company’s acquisition strategy that is heavily focused on growth in the global consumer electronics audio business under the Philips brand." ?

Pay attention to the words that matter: "heavily focused on growth" means that Cakewalk wasn't growing.

Cakewalk isn't in the "global consumer electronics audio business" (or is it?).

Anyway, what were they expecting? They (and us, unfortunately) had the experience with Opcode.

[CTStump]

The real question here is how healthy is the DAW market? It's one thing to have the fringe applications churn. It's another to have a 30 year old original member kick the bucket. Quality, full featured apps are getting pummeled by freeware/appstore dumbed down autodoitforyou phone apps.

Yeah i got called on the carpet for a simular assertion I made earlier in this thread but the question does need to be asked:

How long will it be before the next shoe drops?

I will use what I got for as long as I can, of course on the dinosaur of an machine that houses all my obselete DAW software.