ROLI's writing on the wall happened

[EvilDragon]

https://timesnewsexpress.com/news/finan ... musicians/

[SLiC]

Shame, sold my Seaboard last year as I ordered an Osmose but this could happen to any company (I'm a little nervous about the Osmose!) Lot's of other 'big name' music related software companies also struggling I think as the market saturates, frankly I am amazed how many keep going!

[whyterabbyt]

Im not even slightly surprised, tbh.

Betcha more than a couple of devs are happy JUCE went to PACE. Wonder what'll happen to FXP stuff, though.

[gaggle of hermits]

ruh roh: "To that end, Luminary wants to be the “Peloton for piano”, and will focus on helping beginners learn to read and play music through the Lumi keyboard and accompanying app. Learners, Lamb believes, will be a bigger target market than the pros who bought the Seaboard."

or you could just develop software for the native instruments keyboards and avoid having to flog hardware entirely if all you need are light-up keys. if you are going to expect to teach piano, you need a lot of those lumi modules and the keybed in the ni keyboards sells far more widely.

unless the lumi can magically detect bad technique (which might be possible through some of the sensors i think are in these machines), this has as many problems as zoom or any other remote-teaching technique. but realistically, the only thing that can help on the technique side (posture etc) is a video camera or physical presence.

the big problem now is what happens to the dashboard software for the seaboards. at least eigenlabs open-sourced theirs so you can get the brains running on a raspberry pi if push comes to shove. with venture capitalists in charge, i doubt that will happen for roli. a bit advantage of the linnstrument, in comparison, is that it's pretty much self-contained as it's basically an arduino with a touch interface.

[gaggle of hermits]

Im not even slightly surprised, tbh.

Betcha more than a couple of devs are happy JUCE went to PACE. Wonder what'll happen to FXP stuff, though.

probably also flogged to inmusic or a similar operator at some point.

[BertKoor]

Lamb said. “It became clear that the model that would succeed was more of a subscription/services-based model where hardware was an important component.”

To that end, Luminary wants to be the “Peloton for piano”, and will focus on helping beginners learn to read and play music through the Lumi keyboard and accompanying app. Learners, Lamb believes, will be a bigger target market than the pros who bought the Seaboard.

[zvenx]

....... ....... Wonder what'll happen to FXP stuff, though.

I think that died months ago.
Check linkedin for its former head, Angus Hewitt.

rsp

[ThomasHelzle]

Well deserved fail.
And the new plan sounds just as idiotic.
Burning investment capital while doing stupid things and not listening to customers is the classical "startup" killer.
Works every time.

"Lamb(s) to the slaughter" comes to mind for people investing in them again...
Designers not good company leaders make

I rather hope something REALLY good comes up in MPE land.
Fingers crossed for the Osmose!!!

[elxsound]

Shit, not unexpected here either. I had a feeling this would happen but was hoping I would be wrong.

It is interesting to see what this could mean for hardware moving forward. There seems to be lots of new gear being made by new companies. How much of the success is dependent on whims and demands of venture capitalist profit margins Vs market demands will be something to watch for.

I still can’t make sense of purchasing one of their Lumi keyboards other than it looking cool. I once was considering it for portability, but never pulled the trigger because the price point didn't make sense.

[ericj23]

Here is hoping the fxpansion/equator 2 stuff keeps working for a while. They are all quite nice synths.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

“Ultimately what happened was the pro-focused products we initially developed, although successful within their marketplace, the marketplace wasn’t big enough given our venture trajectory,” Lamb told Insider on Wednesday. “We had our eyes set on hypergrowth and that proved to be difficult.”

Yeah, no sh*t. Anyone with half a brain in their head saw that coming a mile away. The pro market is relatively small, your products were niche and expensive, and once you took all that venture money you decided to start going on an acquisition spree with no focused strategy. You'd need to watch a season of Silicon Valley to get the business acumen required to know this was doomed to fail.

Roli should've stayed small, taken less money, which would've demanded less growth, and focused on expanding their core business in a small, measured way without acquiring things like Fxpansion. 'Hey look, we got a huge valuation, people are throwing money at us, let's take it and buy sh*t!' Yeah, how'd that work out?

Glad BFD made it out alive. Hoping what's left of Fxpansion's product line can find a good home.

“Quite a lot of venture money was flowing into hardware startups, but around 2016 that market dynamic really changed,” Lamb said. “It became clear that the model that would succeed was more of a subscription/services-based model where hardware was an important component.”

To that end, Luminary wants to be the “Peloton for piano”, and will focus on helping beginners learn to read and play music through the Lumi keyboard and accompanying app

More great ideas!

I think the issue here is the founder is not a CEO. He had a great idea and developed some good products, but let someone else run the business.

[SLiC]

Peloton's shares have dropped by almost 50% in 2021 - good time to adopt their model!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Future headline: "Luminary Files for Bankruptcy"

[gaggle of hermits]

Future headline: "Luminary Files for Bankruptcy"

i'm going to bet the VCs will be a lot more hands-on with this one and will try to flog it to gibson or yamaha as fast as they possibly can (where the lumi then disappears without trace).

[GaryG]

Glad BFD made it out alive. Hoping what's left of Fxpansion's product line can find a good home.

Maybe the Bandlab guy can take it in, free geists!