Reply To: Native Instruments Insolvency and Updates

[LinkedMusicians]

According to industry chatter (which means this could be true or not true), Fender, Focusrite, Avid, Yamaha/Steinberg, InMusic, and AlphaTheta (Pioneer DJ) have all engaged in talks about acquiring parts or all of Native Instruments.

Of those choices, I’d greatly prefer if Fender took over Kontakt and its ecosystem. Fender has done a good job with software, based on their acquisition and management of PreSonus. I think Yamaha/Steinberg could also manage Kontakt and its ecosystem well, but they’re already a major software player in the digital audio space and own Kontakt competitor, HALion. Consequently, I prefer competition to one player owning too much (IMO) of the market. Avid would be an iffy choice, IMO. AlphaTheta seems to only be interested in NI’s DJ products, and that would appear to be a good fit.

The company I would not want to see with Kontakt and its ecosystem is InMusic. The company has proven to be terrible at managing software brands. They take old brands and don’t invest enough in them. They tend to treat old brands as cash cows, or close to cash cows. Look at BFD. BFD hasn’t had a version update in more than 10 years. It’s had more software problems than I could fit on a page. Then look at AIR Tech’s history of software problems. Then, when InMusic released a brand extension for BFD with BFD Player, it was a huge step backwards. BFD Player isn’t competitive with AD2 or EZDrummer. It’s a far lower quality product with sample libraries that don’t sound anywhere near the same league.

For my fellow music producers and composers, I recommend hitting the pause button on making NI purchases (that includes iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx products) until April to May 2026, after a preferred bidder is announced. Sales will always come around. Until then, purchasing any NI products and service is risky.

One more tip: Keep a PDF copy of all your NI serial numbers and purchase receipts. In an M&A scenario (as opposed to when a company merely buys the intellectual property of a company, like what BandLab did with Cakewalk) , the “New Owner” is legally obligated to honor existing licenses, but you are responsible for proving you own the products.

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