Who next to be bought? Who will be around in 10 years?

[wuworld]

So we have all these acquisitions. Who do you guys still see being around 5 years from now or who do you see be acquired?
-Plugin Alliance (Soundwide)
-Slate Digital (Audiotonix)
-Waves (self owned?)
-Arturia (Venture Capitalist based in Paris)
-Acustica Audio (Acustica Holdings)
-UAD (Founders son is CEO)
-SSL (Audiotonix)
-Sonible
-Fabfilter


Wonder how Waves have been able to last so long? Especially have that fiasco recently.

[MogwaiBoy]

Waves got in early, invested hard and made themselves the 'Industry Standard'. They even managed to convince a bunch of consumer electronics giants to license MaxxBass audio 'enhancement' for their products.

Having such a massive headstart and a knack for marketing (especially celebrity endorsements, which Waves pioneered in the plugin scene), they entrenched themselves as the dominant force. They also lead the way in SUPER aggressive sales (ie: 90% off). They gathered so much sales data, they knew exactly at which price point people would jump - like the $29 sweetspot and $19 impulse buy... they practically invented those. They also figured out how to slimline the customer funnel, for example: Free plugin > WUP expires > Upgrade to bundle > WUP expires > upgrade to bigger bundle - etc.

They've had this stuff worked out for decades now - probably have an internal book written on how many touchpoints they can have in triggering a customer to open their wallets.

Sounds like I'm showing a lot of respect for Waves - I'm not. They are shady and untrustworthy and cynically they think their customers are dense and don't see WUP for what it is (a scam).

I couldn't care less if they got ploughed over by a larger corporate.

[musicproducerdee]

They all will be around for the foreseeable future. Not sure about Slate Digital though. I think Mr Slate departing from Slate Digital is a huge loss for the brand name. It certainly did put me off a little bit. No complaints about the products though. I like the original Slate Digital products (not talking about the emulations). As I understand, Audiotonix also owns SSL Audio, who run their own subscription service, so it's kind of an overlap there. Although one could argue that Slate Digital is free to release emulations based on any hardware, while SSL simply sticks to SSL obviously.

Straight up, I don't like the whole idea around Soundwide. I used to be a fan of Native Instruments and their products, I still use Massive (the original, not massive x). Kontakt and it's libraries are great for various purposes. But then they decided to merge with iZotope, which was still fine. But then they brought in Plugin Alliance. For me, that's a hard NO. And it's not because of the subscription. I don't mind the subscription at all.

As for the other brands, I like Arturia, Sonible and FabFiler. I think they're great. I wish Arturia would work a little bit on their plugin load times and cpu usage. I like Arturia because they not only emulate the gear, but they add many advanced tools that are from the preset times, and that totally makes sense. Apart from that, solid customer service and solid upgrade prices, very customer friendly. Do we need to say anything about FabFiler? They're awesome. Sonible is taking things forward with AI implementation and smarter tools that make mixing easier for the user. Love it. Love that they're not emulating yet another piece of analog equipment that no one needs.

SSL isn't going anywhere, ever. Good workhorse plugins. Great user interface. Wish they'd get rid of iLok. No complaints here.

[noiseboyuk]

SSL isn't going anywhere, ever. Good workhorse plugins. Great user interface. Wish they'd get rid of iLok. No complaints here.

Funny you should mention SSL. Their fire sale prices I found really surprising - stuff RRP'd at $249 going for $19 or something. It just seemed very off-brand for them and I wondered if they were struggling in their plugin division.

[davidka]

NI and Waves is on the wrong track. Sacrificing the soul and innovation just to push more and more money for investors.
Certainly there is a targeted market who chooses them and keeps this going with their money spent. I just wonder when they hit that wall, and the investors start to act up - will they return to their roots, or abandon ship?

Having spent most of my hobby money on NI and Arturia products... I sincerely hope the latter can keep doing things like they do it now. A usable software center, cool new products, colourful things, reasonable deals, and general content updates. Knowing they casually read KvR, I like to grab their attention and encourage them to keep things in this direction. I hope the business results can also justify this - especially in the increasingly dire economic situation.

Is there a chance that Arturia might acquire smaller companies or make further collaborations (like with Korg) for technology in the future?

[ghettosynth]

SSL isn't going anywhere, ever. Good workhorse plugins. Great user interface. Wish they'd get rid of iLok. No complaints here.

Funny you should mention SSL. Their fire sale prices I found really surprising - stuff RRP'd at $249 going for $19 or something. It just seemed very off-brand for them and I wondered if they were struggling in their plugin division.

They are going to have to lose that shitty 3d knob perspective to get me to crack my wallet. Reminds me of Admiral Quality FFS.

[beely]

Funny you should mention SSL. Their fire sale prices I found really surprising - stuff RRP'd at $249 going for $19 or something. It just seemed very off-brand for them and I wondered if they were struggling in their plugin division.

No, they've been doing this for a few years now, and it really co-incided with a massive ramping up of their plugin development. For a long time, they just had the old bundle they'd been selling/maintaining for years, then out of the blue came the first SSL Essentials deal (which is currently active again now), followed by new versions of some of the old products, then new products, and the plugin catalog has expanded massively.

So really I think these sales were a way to really inject the plugin side of SSL with some market interest as they planned to release a lot more products going forward.

Let's face it, few people are paying $300 for a single EQ or compressor plugin these days - that's not where the market is at.

They are going to have to lose that shitty 3d knob perspective to get me to crack my wallet.

Thankfully, they already have - it was really bad on the earlier products (I super really disliked it), but if you look at all the recent ones, included the GUI makeovers of the second pass of the new channel strip and buss comp, they massively toned this down, and it's fine now for me. A small amount of faux 3D doesn't bother me, it's the super exaggerated stuff I find somewhat visually offensive...

[ghettosynth]

They are going to have to lose that shitty 3d knob perspective to get me to crack my wallet.

Thankfully, they already have - it was really bad on the earlier products (I super really disliked it), but if you look at all the recent ones, included the GUI makeovers of the second pass of the new channel strip and buss comp, they massively toned this down, and it's fine now for me. A small amount of faux 3D doesn't bother me, it's the super exaggerated stuff I find somewhat visually offensive...

Well, I need more. I still feel like I'm looking up the plugin's nose. Oh yeah, that's a big crusty right there! Yes, it is better than the 3d knob goatse that they had before, but it's still not a good look.

Also, I don't care about hardware emulation of EQs.

[MogwaiBoy]

SSL isn't going anywhere, ever. Good workhorse plugins. Great user interface. Wish they'd get rid of iLok. No complaints here.

Funny you should mention SSL. Their fire sale prices I found really surprising - stuff RRP'd at $249 going for $19 or something. It just seemed very off-brand for them and I wondered if they were struggling in their plugin division.

I don't think it's desperation, it's just a kind of 'loss leader' tactic to gain a solid foothold in the impulse buy plugin market which they knew to be worth a tonne. And they probably got tired of the low kickbacks from Brainworx licensing their consoles and thought "we can just do this ourselves".

But I do think SSL are sometimes a little too reliant on the heritage/historical reputation of their hardware to carry them in the plugin world. Yeah they have the enviable position of being the premium brand synonymous with "punchy" desks that spawned hundreds of classic songs, but... that doesn't make your $199 side channel gain increaser (SSL Fusion Stereo) any better than what you can do for free in your DAW.

Don't get me wrong I love several SSL plugins a lot!

And they seem to be working pretty hard to increase their stable of plugins, with a sub-octave bass generator recently released. So I hope they're not in trouble, and keep those deep occasional sales going

[alvin58]

Interesting question. I have some thoughts on all of them:

Arturia - didn't know they were bought by VCs, but makes sense to merge w/UVI (also French)
UAD - I thought their new excursion into native was laughable. $150 (on sale) for an 1176 for which everyone already has a good/great emulation? Not to mention you can't keyboard input any parameters, like most plugins
Plugin Alliance - I find their stuff just barely above Waves. Again, no keyboard input, plus plugins don't display the preset when one is loaded. I think they know their day is done.
Izotope - Neutron & Ozone are widely overrated IMHO. Both have terrible compressors for starters & I could go on. I think they know their bread & butter is RX, but even for that they're struggling to come up w/new features. No surprise both they & PA merged w/Native.
Anything that has "AI": possibly the future, but none of it is that great yet, again IMHO.

[rod_zero]

The market is so saturated I feel some some companies just don't see the point in releasing new stuff and discounting old stuff is the best way to go to make profits.

This is not the vibrant market of 10 years ago, most people already making music in a DAW have enough plugins to get never bored.

I wish some new technology or DAW comes around that kind of hits the reset button.

[musicproducerdee]

SSL isn't going anywhere, ever. Good workhorse plugins. Great user interface. Wish they'd get rid of iLok. No complaints here.

Funny you should mention SSL. Their fire sale prices I found really surprising - stuff RRP'd at $249 going for $19 or something. It just seemed very off-brand for them and I wondered if they were struggling in their plugin division.

they have a sale going on right now. You get SSL Bus Compressor and SSL Channel Strip 2 as a bundle for $49. It's a nice deal if someone is looking for similar plugins.

[musicproducerdee]

Interesting question. I have some thoughts on all of them:

Arturia - didn't know they were bought by VCs, but makes sense to merge w/UVI (also French)
UAD - I thought their new excursion into native was laughable. $150 (on sale) for an 1176 for which everyone already has a good/great emulation? Not to mention you can't keyboard input any parameters, like most plugins
Plugin Alliance - I find their stuff just barely above Waves. Again, no keyboard input, plus plugins don't display the preset when one is loaded. I think they know their day is done.
Izotope - Neutron & Ozone are widely overrated IMHO. Both have terrible compressors for starters & I could go on. I think they know their bread & butter is RX, but even for that they're struggling to come up w/new features. No surprise both they & PA merged w/Native.
Anything that has "AI": possibly the future, but none of it is that great yet, again IMHO.

UVI was recently bought out by Image Line (FL Studio). So, that's already done. I'd like to get into UVI, but their sonicpass (subscription) is $25 per month. Ain't no way I'm paying that. Although I really wanna try Falcon and some other libraries they offer.

I share the almost exact opinion with everything else you said

[musicproducerdee]

The market is so saturated I feel some some companies just don't see the point in releasing new stuff and discounting old stuff is the best way to go to make profits.

This is not the vibrant market of 10 years ago, most people already making music in a DAW have enough plugins to get never bored.

I wish some new technology or DAW comes around that kind of hits the reset button.

I don't see any new DAW coming out anytime soon. Bitwig is the latest innovating DAW that came out a few years ago and I think it's struggled to make a solid position for itself in the market. I love it though. And I think it has a good future. But surely I don't think someone is gonna come up with a new DAW in this oversaturated market. Except maybe Behringer lol.

[alvin58]

UVI was recently bought out by Image Line (FL Studio). So, that's already done. I'd like to get into UVI, but their sonicpass (subscription) is $25 per month. Ain't no way I'm paying that. Although I really wanna try Falcon and some other libraries they offer.

I share the almost exact opinion with everything else you said

Great minds! And as Waves recently learned, forcing people into subscriptions is not the way to go. Ditto UVI - as of now, I'm not paying a subscription for any software. Period.