Native Instruments file for insolvency...

[mixyguy2]

There are many reasons for the hard times of the music production software industry:

1.) Oversaturated markets. A lot of companies are making mostly the same or similar products.
2.) Limited market size. Almost everyone has a phone or computer, but grandmothers do not make beats.
3.) Rising costs. Almost everything is more expensive than 10-20 years ago.

Sorry #3 is totally untrue. Quality hardware and software have been declining in price, often dramatically, for years. But you are correct in that it may be contributing to hard times for the industry, because they are therefore making less money off of such things.

[Sindikhate]

One of the biggest mistakes NI has ever done was allowing people with a really old version of Komplete (up to version 2) to jump on the latest version for the same money a person who owns the previous version would need to spend to get up to date. I never understood this (and I also took advantage of it when I went from 5 to 11). Then the whole sounds com thing was so not needed. Then they went into hardware and missed the opportunity to give people what they really needed. A midi controller without many many faders and knobs? Why? Still they have sold a lot of these.

Breaking the NI in parts (its own software) would be a huge mistake. If someone takes it they should take it all (my wishes are for Yamaha to acquire the company if someone ends up getting them).

PA and Izotope could be sold also on their own. But breaking any of these apart into just buying a product would be an absolute nightmare. I understand some people only own a few products and they only care to get themselves covered.

The problem is many people have gotten into music making, without actually loving to make music, but loving what comes with it once they get some traction. These people will happily pay for AI to release something than study, learn, read the manual, put those hours and talent to create something. Recently I asked someone to show me their Ableton Live projects of an ambient album they recently released because I was talking with them about some Ableton Live features and they had zero idea what I was talking about (mind you I do not even own Ableton Live). It turns out their whole album was gen AI-ed and they just re-recorded some synths at a studio and got it mixed and mastered there. Some other dude who never released a single song suddenly spammed everyone about a Heilung-style album with lots of old folk and rare instruments that surely does not own or knows anyone who owns them. Still he bothered to create the logos, the cover, a story, give names to the "members", sell cassette tapes, merch etc.
It is utterly pahetic. And people bought it. A

[mixyguy2]

Maybe it was never worth $3000 to begin with? I mean usually this stuff is high margin anyway. The $3000 is usually marketing, like "hey get this thing that we say is super expensive for a crazy good deal", but they made up the price anyway.

aka the 8Dio.com business model, lol

[Sindikhate]

.double

[Funky40]

ok, so if i would freeze my mac now, take it off of the web, NOT updating my mac OS again, would everything NI continue to run properly ? I guess it would, no ? *


i´m not hyperventilating vs. NI and its situation, ......i´m well aware since some time that the day might come where this market will force me to just freeze my Mac, -and live with what i have-, anyway.

* a answer would be appreciated

[nightjar]

Looking at how Fender has handled the acquisition of PreSonus makes this idea even more palatable.

This is one of the few buyers that would keep NI hardware going. Other buyers would be likely to ditch it all and just do software.

Fender has just re-badged a bunch of PreSonus interfaces and could do the with NI controllers. Fleshing out Fender Studio Pro (formerly known as PreSonus StudioOne) with Kontakt instruments and iZotope effects would be a good fit. Guitar Rig would be the only certain ditched item.

Development Headquarters for both NI and Fender Studio Pro are in Germany.

I hope this is being considered by both companies.

https://www.fender.com/pages/fender-studio

[mixyguy2]

Why would anyone want to aquire NI for any reasonable money?

Because reasonable by definition means it was worth it. Or do you think someone should want to acquire NI for unreasonable money?

I bought Kontakt and paid to upgrade it once, to version 7. NI turned around and released version 8 on a very short upgrade schedule that appeared to just be a desperate cash grab. I didn’t bite.

You should have. 8 is what 7 should have been.

[jamcat]

I bought Kontakt and paid to upgrade it once, to version 7. NI turned around and released version 8 on a very short upgrade schedule that appeared to just be a desperate cash grab. I didn’t bite.

You should have. 8 is what 7 should have been.

I thought about it during the last sale, when it was $49. I almost got it, but ultimately I passed because I already don't use it, and it's unlikely that I will use it in the future.

Perhaps if I had, they wouldn't be in the financial trouble they're in today. Sorry guys, this one's on me.

[dayjob]

Kontakt will likely live on in some form but this is almost certainly the end of Reaktor. Now it won't even be maintained to run on current OSes. Serious bummer.

maybe something amazing will happen and Twisted Tools will end up with it

it’s day one of this news so next week everything could change.

[Cygnus X-1]

Funnily enough I was about to pull the trigger on the NI Kontrol S88, prob. the only MIDI controller w/ weighted keys and polyphonic aftertouch. I guess that will have to wait now. Gosh, I love many of their synths, Reaktor is amazing, now all/most of this will be gone, wiped out from existence, just like that, because someone did not make enough money to meet the board expectations?

[bermudagold]

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.

i've learned that a lot of people I thought knew this didn't realize that this market did a big u turn because of the pandemic...a lot of these companies had their best years in company existence during the pandemic...which changed the focus of developers because these new pandemic entrants had a different focus...most were looking for a gaming experience...and while dsp video gaming is a perfectly fine hobby...it's a much different hobby than being a musician

[bermudagold]

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

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.

IMO Splice and the Splice-like variants have done way more damage to Kontakt than any prompt-based generative AI like Suno. So many Kontakt instruments have been chasing the loop-based producer, but Splice is just a way better solution for those workflows.

output changed everything...and everyone has been copying output ever since

[bermudagold]

Now if someone bought the Kontakt licensing business, employed the lead Kontakt developers and operated the license server, that would probably be a 15-20 man operation at best. Easy to make that profitable.

Seriously, I don't think it's that easy to make it profitable. The market is super saturated and many library vendors are already trying to move away from Kontakt as it's been such a miserable affair.
And after this very event, you can bet that there's not much trust left, so that'd be the first thing whatever new teams would have to re-establish.

Alternatives, though... so I don´t see the alternative platform that could take over the world.

I think the value proposition for Kontakt is not what it used to be...lots of time has passed...virtually ALL of the major players have developed their own sampler, and they are clearly very deep in functionality based on their products...they just haven't opened them up to users...just imagine if they did...gorilla engine which is what virharmonic and ujam players are built on is about to do just that...and even for the instrument makers that haven't, look at the quality of what eduardo tarilonte has produced in both yellow tools and best service's new engine...look at what cinematique has produced moving to halion...look at what acoustic samples, gospel musicians, and VI labs have produced moving to falcon...now you have soniccouture, soundiron, realitone, and joshua bell signing on to the new koda sampler...No one I know talks of time machine pro being in the top 5 for time stretch even though its perfectly serviceable...VA, additive, and granular are a dime a dozen pedestrian dsp and dead simple for any of these guys to add rudimentary functional versions of if they wanted to...and kontakt never really put effort into making these features readily accessible nor marketed them because they wanted to sell PLAY libraries...and Hise, falcon, gorilla, and the new koda all have scripting APIs as well...most people don't realize things as sophisticated as lunacy audio cube were built on Hise...so yeah I wouldn't be sleeping on the alternatives

[dune_rave]

What if the new management will say They only support the last version? I mean you will not be able to download your older versions...

[ATS]

I find it sort of humorous how people think these people buying out companies sole purpose is to bankrupt them. You do know they WANT to make money right? They don't buy something to kill it.

In the US anyway, that is a profitable tactic.

how so?