Ableton Acquires Cycling 74

[SLiC]

So....Max finally fully integrated in to Live?
Good thing or a bad thing? (what if they don t do a version of Max outside of Live?)

Interesting development

[whyterabbyt]

I honestly dont think they could get away with not having a standalone version of MAX, but its, erm, an interesting development. Not entirely unexpected, but Im not exactly sure what I think of it.

Although Im now expecting a bajillion new Push-centric features to be the primary updates to MAX for the next three years. Feck.

[ghettosynth]

I don't know either, but, I'm hoping that this means better integration, among other things.

http://cdm.link/2017/06/exclusive-ablet ... -the-deal/

[untimelyman]

But whatever this may mean for the future, the immediate present won’t change – which should bring relief to Cycling’s own loyal customer base.

“It’s about the continuation of Cycling as it has always been – the same people, products, customers, vision, and so forth,” says Zicarelli. “But it makes it easier to essentially be on the same side as Ableton in anything that we do together. From the perspective of anyone dealing with Cycling ’74, I can’t imagine that anything really changes. That’s how we at Cycling are thinking about it.”

“We are continuing to be a separate company,” says Zicarelli. “It’s just that the ownership changes from me to Ableton.” [A US-based Ableton legal entity will technically become the owner.]

http://cdm.link/2017/06/exclusive-ablet ... -the-deal/

Great interview of the two founders and CEOs of Ableton and Cycling '74 - http://cdm.link/2017/06/conversation-da ... ard-behles

[crystalmsc]

I have a good feeling about this, those articles are hints that it's going to be great for both Max and M4L users.

[SLiC]

no changes in the "immediate" future, but change is coming, there is pretty much always major change after an acquisition, but the corporate line is always 'nothing will change'.

Doesn't neseserily mean it's bad, I would expect it to be better for the company that made the acquisition....but maybe it will just be live lite bundled free with Max....(it will be Ableton Max after all....) or maybe it will become one product (to counter the unified modular system promised by Bitwig....perhaps that even influenced the desision?

[Aloysius]

The acquisition is already complete and effective immediately. But now for Max and Live users, nothing changes for the moment. We keep making music, while we wait to see what these two music tool makers will create next.

It seems like a good move. Will have to wait and see. It's the ''keep making music, while we wait'' part that I'm struggling with.

[crystalmsc]

maybe it will become one product

Sounds even better, it will make everything more stable and faster to develop.

This is an important part from the conversation:

David: "We would have opportunities of making the experience of using Max and Live together more integrated, that we’ve resisted because we were independent organizations. So for example, our release schedule and Ableton’s release schedule….

From the perspective of how we would work together, it’s really exciting for our team to have all these people to talk to now. How can we do this together and think holistically about what’s in the best interest of the person actually using this technology?"

[fmr]

Intriguing. Max has a completely different target audience than Live (although there can be some overlap). The approaches to music are also as differtent as they can be - Max is mainly for avant-garde musicians, while Ableton strongest presence, AFAIK is among dance music. The point of contact is basically M4L.

My main curiosity is: Will the Ableton team of programmers work in Max and vice-versa? If yes, what will they come-up with?

[deastman]

Wow! I didn't see this coming, although in retrospect it should have been obvious. I'm a user of both platforms and have been an on again/off again Max user since the early days. This does seem like a sensible decision, and I just hope they'll continue with the standalone version.

[Michael L]

I expected this. When Henke 'left' Ableton to explore multimedia, I was wondering when Ableton would become a Multimedia DAW. That is where the big money will be in the future for live performance, hence Ableton's investment... and control.

[whyterabbyt]

Intriguing. Max has a completely different target audience than Live

]

more like 'had'. M4L changed the landscape quite drastically. Once upon a time MAX was relatively 'insular' (or a less pejorarive term), projects were primarily personal one-offs, and, sans Pluggo, what was shared tended to be objects, not fully-built devices.
When M4L got traction, the new audience, which I believe to have been much larger than the legacy one, obviously shifted the balance and focus. One of the results of that has been an awful lot of publically shared work, in the form of M4L devices. C74 effectively acknowledged the inertia of this effort by opening MAX up to running M4L devices without Live.

Maybe the folk who should be worried most about this, though, are companies like Resolume etc, if MAX's video/installation side is now 'formally' part of the Live family.

[tooneba]

RIP. all native plugin will be m4l.

[wasi]

RIP. all native plugin will be m4l.

Yep. But aren't they already? Anything recent, that is.

What I'm worried about is the Ableton m4L appstore business model being welded onto Max now. Only minimal updates to the plattform with the intent to sell you new features as 'Packs'. But we'll see.

[Winstontaneous]

I actually think they will go in the opposite direction, making M4L modular functionality a core part of Ableton. Cycling '74 has accumulated a fair amount of technical debt (being dependent on Java 6), it would be a great opportunity to use Ableton's resources to fix this with a unified codebase.