Native Instruments file for insolvency...

[mcbpete]

God I hate YouTubers and their “omg” and “chin in my hand looking quizzled” looks

Where did this come from - who was patient zero ... and why does anyone doing it nowadays not realise how stupid it looks ?!

[dangayle]

Right now I’m thinking that the intellectual property is going to be the driver. It’s going to be a heavily VC-invested AI company that buys them.

For example, it’s totally foreseeable that you have something like a suno.com with “powered by iZotope” branding all over it.

If it didn’t have AI in it before, it definitely will now.

[thievedletter]

Funny how these VCs roll in, promise to “streamline operations,” go into full M&A mode, then “remove redundancies” they literally just created (aka firing people). And when they finally realize they can’t squeeze the margins they imagined out of a business they never understood in the first place, they sell it off in pieces. Pure vulture capitalism.

You forgot, "blame the people like designers and coders, who actually contribute to the world, not your own erroneous VC assumptions"

[jules99]

“powered by iZotope” branding all over it.

If it didn’t have AI in it before, it definitely will now.

So, uhm, what's that thing in Ozone and Neutron, that assistant. Are you... Do you think there is a human somewhere assisting with all of these LUFS?

[kraster]

With so little info it's hard to make out what's going to happen but I've been thinking of a more sober assessment.

Preliminary insolvency exists to establish the degree to which the company cannot cover its debts now, or is likely to be unable to do so in the near future, and—crucially—whether there is a viable going-concern once things are stripped back to what actually generates cash.

Germany does tend to favour rehabilitation and restructuring over outright break-ups, but that bias only really applies if the core business stands up on its own. If internal cross-subsidy is masking losses—i.e. a small number of products are quietly doing the financial heavy lifting of a lot of others—then selective cuts or asset sales become much more likely, even under a rehabilitation-first framework.

Kontakt is clearly the most likely survivor, either within a scaled-down version of NI or via a sale of the ecosystem intact. Maschine and Traktor are also relatively strong: not high-growth, but durable, predictable, and easy to keep running at lower intensity.

Where I’d be most concerned is around developers like Unfiltered Audio, Brainworx, and ADPTR under the Plugin Alliance umbrella. These feel like classic candidates for cross-subsidy: valued creatively, but easier to freeze, sell, or de-emphasise without damaging the core cash engines.

iZotope still has valuable, workflow-critical products, but even there a scaled-down, more consolidated version seems more plausible than business as usual.

I don't think this is a sky falling in scenario nor is it in any way a "this is fine" situation.

[dangayle]

“powered by iZotope” branding all over it.

If it didn’t have AI in it before, it definitely will now.

So, uhm, what's that thing in Ozone and Neutron, that assistant. Are you... Do you think there is a human somewhere assisting with all of these LUFS?

No, that’s exactly what I mean. All the other things will now be powered by “iZotope” AI so you know it’s “professional”.

Using the branding will add legitimacy to the AI slop.

[Stokely]

YouTube videos on the subject are starting to appear:

God I hate YouTubers and their “omg” and “chin in my hand looking quizzled” looks

I get more and more picky about youtube videos I click on.

"youtuber shock face" instant ignore.
Asking a question? probably an ignore (e.g. "Is this REALLY the worst/best plugin ever?")
Normal face (or better yet, none) with a boring title like "I check out the new features in product", sounds good to me. That's about 1 in 100 videos on any given subject.

Anyway, this isn't a good thing but it's also not any kind of surprise, once you knew who bought them up.

I have Komplete but don't use all that much of it, so if that goes away/stops working it's not a huge loss in what I actually use...except of course for Kontakt. I have a lot of 3rd party libraries and I know many others do too. The stuff I do use from Komplete is almost all Kontakt-related. I have some non-Kontakt ones--East west has Opus, Orchestral Tools has Sine and so on, but most of mine are Kontakt.

[pekbro]

Oh well, I stopped using NI stuff a while ago. Interesting to see what becomes of everything else tho.

Imageline will probably buy everything and become the autodesk of music production.

[IvyBirds]

I think the mistake many people make is assuming that their favourite instrument (s) in Komplete were financially successful for NI..

Those instruments were the driving force for people to buy Komplete

This is where the Pareto principle, and long tail economics come into play

Which is why when the long tail dried up because I already had them, I stopped buying it

[digitalboytn]

Holy crap! What does this mean for all NI customers? Think of Kontakt alone and all the 3rd party developers that have made instruments that only work in Kontakt.

This could be absolutely devastating for all of us. I can't tell you how much NI stuff I own.

I doubt it would go under completely. The Kontakt user base alone is valuable enough to make sense to a company like Yamaha or Fender. Just pray it isn't Avid or Gibson.

Or Disco DSP

[zvenx]

yes but maybe people upgrading to Komplete wasn't their biggest bread and butter.
rsp

[zvenx]

I think Expansion sales was where the money was at for quite awhile now...(Kontakt (Leap and Play), Maschine (Battery to a lesser extent) and well maybe the Massive X was the weak link in that structure).
rsp

[AdvancedFollower]

Are they the first big victim of A.I. in this field?

I think there are hard times ahead for a lot of companies in the plugin/music production business. We've already seen a lot of acquisitions, mergers and consolidations, which will likely accelerate, combined with a lot of household names going out of business.

There are two main reasons why the market is shrinking:
1. AI generated "music" doesn't require expensive plugins and hardware, or any effort, talent or creativity for that matter. Even with a free subscription to one of those services, you can generate more "music" every month than you could ever hope to actually produce yourself. This has essentially killed off the bedroom producer/hobbyist market. Those people are just typing prompts into Suno now instead of impulse buying plugins and sample packs.

2. During the pandemic, people had a lot of spare time due to lockdowns, wfh etc. Now the pandemic is over, people are going back to work, and the economy is also slowing down leaving people with less time and money to spend on hobbies like music production.

[Caine123]

ok this came out of nowhere for me. looking forward for more news. i thought NI is a bit better on track after Absynth 6 and some hints from EvilDragon. let's see.... if all goes downhill they shall put out offline installers asap.

[michat]

They should re-offer their entire catalogue as free abandonware