Reply To: IK Multimedia MixBox 80% Off $19.99 +Loyalty Cash +FREE Plugin

[LinkedMusicians]

On jude77 said

What’s up with IK these days?  With all the fire-sale prices and discontinuation of some of their major software players (Sampletank, Mellotron to name two) I get the feeling they’re leaving the software world behind and moving towards a Tonex/hardware type future.

I don’t think there’s anything really surprising about a small company with a lot of SKUs/products needing to trim some. That’s very standard. I’m not sure how many employees IK has, but they’re not a big company and every product they make needs to be supported, so it’s very standard in business management that a company can only sustain so many SKUs (according to the number of employees they have). IK has always been a hardware and software company.

As far as IK leaving the software world, the signs are very clear that they are very actively releasing new, leading edge software, like PianoVerse, their two modeled instrument lines for bass and drums, and their recent release of a vocal AI software line. Now, don’t write me off as an IK apologist, any businessperson or strategy person would say everything I just wrote are very basic observations. They are. As an IK customer, I own (and paid for) Mixbox and a bunch of IK software, some of it that is being discontinued. I actually would guess — and it’s just a guess — that SampleTank would be one to go or it will evolve into a more specialized product, something more like SoundPaint or Musio. But considering IK’s size, my instincts are that it could be a product that doesn’t fit with where they’re going.

I think that the success of Tonex has likely led to increased staff dedicated to that product line. I actually haven’t asked Peter or Dave that (Dave Kerzner is very involved with IK and his brother heads up sales). But every sign from IK shows that they are very actively involved in their non-guitar side software business, which is the side of the business that I use. While I own guitars, my tendonitis makes them unusable.

FREE: Kontakt Libraries, Synth Presets Loops & Sound FX

TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, , QuickGuides, Gear Reviews, Mags & Podcasts