Reply To: Free Sonar Tier

[superabbit]

On peter said

If it came out that the new subscription had less than 50,000 subscribers, even less than 25,000, I would not find it surprising. And we’re just going to have to agree to disagree if you think that targeting DAW users with the subscription-only model…

What “new subscription” are you referring to?

AFAIK, there has never been any “subscription” to Sonar and/or Next, only a membership to BandLab that includes those products. How would BandLab be able to determine how many people bought memberships primarily to get the Cakewalk DAW’s?

Do you think that BandLab only have between 25,000 and 50,000 paid members?

You still seem to be assuming that BandLab’s goal in buying the Cakewalk IP was to market Cakewalk’s flagship product, SONAR/CbB/Sonar, as a standalone product, maybe with incidental connection to the BandLab ecosystem. And that BnadLab’s “success” or “failure” with Sonar should be measured in Sonar’s market share.

And for all I know, you may be right.

But what if they don’t and maybe have never cared about how well Sonar did or does in the DAW market? What if the goal was/is to have Sonar just be a small part of a collection of products and services that are marketed as one package?

From the perspective of the Cakewalk faithful, BandLab membership as a product is just a distraction from the important thing: the almighty Sonar. People like me who spent hours a day reading and replying on the forum, who pretty much always have Sonar running on our computers. It would be fine with me if nothing BandLab did apart from Sonar even existed. I’d love it if Cakewalk still had a booth at Winter NAMM and magazine reviews and YouTube channels and all that.

I now think that my perspective was ass backward for a long time. I don’t know if Cakewalk’s loyal following and existing user base ever meant much to BandLab. I certainly never thought they were excited about attracting former SONAR users to BandLab. I now believe that Sonar is just a trinket whose success is about whether its presence in the package makes people more likely to pay their membership fees.

You may think of BandLab as a pack of fools who botched their Cakewalk experiment, but what if SoulfulKeys is right and they’ve never cared about the criteria by which you are measuring “success?”

It’s even possible that making the Cakewalk brand too prominent would be seen as drawing attention away from the main event. You don’t want to be blown off the stage by the opening act.

If a “successful” DAW is one that has a lot of loyal users and gets a lot of attention from influencers, then Sonar is decidedly unsuccessful. Stick a fork in it, it’s done. However, if a “successful” DAW is one that’s a nice little addition to a larger package of services, then maybe it’s already performing that role adequately.

No question, what happened with the premature announcement of Sonar, the relations with what was left of the older user base and the seeming lack of consideration for the value of the ecosystem of YouTube channels, those were botched. As I’ve put it before, it was like watching someone shoot their foot off, then use the severed foot to beat themselves about the head and shoulders. Quite a spectacle.

Even if all Sonar is something tossed in the bag with the main product, a happy and thriving user community does make it a better thing to have in the bag no matter how incidental it is. But in the context of Sonar being an accessory, it’s not the end of the world. Few people who are considering BandLab memberships based on the core features are going to stop and think “I’d pay for these services, but they include Sonar, and BandLab alienated Sonar’s userbase, therefore I must decline.”

Sonar is already part of the BandLab ecosystem; it didn’t take long for CbB to get the rudimentary ability for 2-way transfer back and forth with BandLab DAW. Transfer between Next and Bandlab is even tighter, as is transfer between Sonar and Next. If Sonar becomes better integrated, then it will likely have a better chance of maintaining its place in the BandLab package.

It’s been interesting to watch how SONAR/CbB/Sonar has fared in the BandLab era. It’s not always gone to my liking, but at least the product is still around and not officially under the turf. Development continues. They’re coming out with a new free version, so I can still recommend it to friends who want to get in on making music on their computers on the cheap. BandLab have so far offered a free to use version for 7 years and have announced pans for that to continue. I don’t feel betrayed or hard done by.

I very much wish they hadn’t been so rude to certain loyal long term users that I hold in high esteem, but there’s little I can do about that. The Cakewalk world is lessened by their departure from it and that’s punishment enough, I think. New users coming along will have lost the potential benefit of the advice of people decades of experience with the product and that’s a shame.

-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com

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