Reply To: [not a deal] CbB no longer support activation after August 1

[Peter DeLegge]

I have A LOT of unfinished projects in Cakewalk by Bandlab. It would have been nice if they just let the last version continue to work without phoning home. I believe Meng originally promised that Cakewalk by Bandlab would at least work for free for the next decade. I think this is a less than nice tactic to force CbB users to Sonar.

For those who naively think that Meng was/is practicing altruism, he’s using what is basically the same model that video game developers use who produce freemium games. To give you an idea of my knowledge of this area, Wired Magazine has interviewed me and about the model early on to get my insights. As an example, Fortnite is a popular freemium video game. Yes, it’s free to play. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t generate A LOT of revenue. It’s brought in more $20 billion in revenue for the developer In it’s first two years of release, it generated around $9 billion in revenue. The model seems to be working well for BandLab’s main software, and has bombed for CbB and Sonar.

BandLab serves as a free as means of bringing users into an ecosystem where the company markets related products and services to users. Even the anemic Cakewalk Forums is designed to (1) save a developer money by making it cheaper to support customers, and (2) be a means of bringing more customers into the fold.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with those strategies, but I often would see posts from people at Cakwalk Forum from people who clearly don’t have a strong grasp of business and business strategy and somehow think that investors are pumping tens of millions of dollars into BandLab so that Meng can be the billionaire trust fund boy altruist. Um no. That’s not even remotely reality. Meng — and his investors— are expecting to make a profit from all of these activities in the end. But it’s clear that they’re failing hard with Cakewalk by BandLab and Cakewalk Sonar, which mainly appeals to a very different demographic — a much older group (largely Millennials, Gen X and Boomers, but largely Boomers) than BandLab’s main software, which appeals to Gen Z and Generation Alpha.

My instincts are that they’ll bail on Cakewalk Sonar within the next two years and continue with Next. Next is the next logical step for BandLab users. Cakewalk Sonar intends to bring in the older DAW users, but it’s been a bust, and it’s not difficult to guess that it’s nowhere near being profitable. They didn’t promote it as they should have, either, and the branding is a case study in mismanagement. Sorry guys, but if you’re excited about Cakewalk Sonar, this move is a big sign with flashing red lights that Sonar free will — easily within two years — be deactivated, and the product line be shut down. No one can safely predict what other DAW makers will be doing in two years, but I would strongly recommend moving to one that is more likely to still work three years from now so that you can access your project files.

To use an analogy — if you’ve ever seen the movie, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” — “You’re going the wrong way!”

 

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