Reply To: Studio One Pro is now Fender Studio V8

[Peter DeLegge]

Continuing down the strategy analysis path, Fender is clearly trying to take market share from BandLab. But BandLab has one of the most difficult strengths to displace, the social ecosystem they’ve built. While they’ve done a terrible job on the DAW end, my guess is that they’ll soon bail on Cakewalk Sonar and buy an established DAW to grab the technology and user base. Plain and simple, Sonar is a very obvious product failure and its not managed like an important product for BandLab.

They’re simply not going to get there on the path they’re on. A $450 million valued software / social media company with an obvious product failure that’s simply not on par with the category to the point that even the CEO’s own music publication doesn’t even mention Sonar when it does an article on the best DAWs available today (granted, sometimes it puts in a plug for Sonar, other times it doesn’t — but it’s very clear that Sonar only gets a plug because it’s owned by the same company; plugin developers, reviewers, producers, and influencers rarely mention Sonar).

But BandLab can afford to buy a successful DAW. I think the greater challenge is for another player, like Fender, to attempt to duplicate BandLab’s ecosystem — especially with Gen Z. I’m surprised Apple hasn’t tried that yet (of course, Apple lacks a presence on Android and Windows).

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