Reply To: Free Sonar Tier

[SoulfulKeys]

On LinkedMusicians said

Also, @soulfulkeys, welcome to the forum! I’d love to know how you found LinkedMusicians. Were you researching Cakewalk Sonar and found this thread and registered or was it something else? It’s also valuable to learn how people found our community.

I’m the guy who started this place, but don’t worry, you never have to agree with me! My kids don’t and I adore them! As you can probably see, I enjoy analyzing and discussing this stuff the way some guys enjoy analyzing sports teams and athletes. I totally geek out on strategy and my publication was just my hobby outlet for my sharing my thoughts on marketing, branding, business strategy and business ethics that unintentionally went viral. I realize it looks less than modest to share my bio, but people here — with the exceptions of some real-life friends — don’t know that is my professional life (analyzing strategies and companies).

Thank you! I’ve been a long time Cakewalk forum lurker and discovered this sight when Larry left the deals forum there and showed up here. I’ve been using Cakewalk and Sonar for 20 years now. Started with Cakewalk Music Creator 2 when I was a poor high school student and eventually moved up to Sonar 8.5 and the X series. I’ve tried other DAWs but no switch yet.

 

The point I was trying to make about BandLab and Cakewalk is that you’re still looking at Sonar as a standalone product when you have to look at it as a feature. It’s like the air conditioning in a car, car manufacturers aren’t trying to sell you the AC separately, it’s a feature that makes the car more appealing to the buyer. Sonar is a feature BandLab uses to sell their Membership subscriptions, not the main product itself.

You also have to consider the demographic BandLab is aiming for. Their core audience is younger, often just getting into music production, and typically doesn’t have the budget for a $300 DAW, plugin bundles, and paid distribution services. The fact you can start making music on your phone for free with BandLab is a huge draw for that market.

Now, with Sonar added to the subscription, BandLab can say: for $14.95/month you get everything we’ve always offered plus a full-featured pro desktop DAW.
For their target demographic, that’s a perfect value proposition. Most of them probably have little or no experience with pro DAWs and wouldn’t realistically pay for something like Cubase, Logic, or Ableton even if they wanted to.

It’s not about Sonar dominating the DAW market again, it’s about keeping users inside BandLab’s ecosystem as they level up. It’s an ecosystem retention tool, not a standalone money-maker.

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