Reply To: inMusic will acquire Native Instruments, as NI joins brands from Akai to Moog

[LinkedMusicians]

On Brian said

Ohhh.  I am not so pleased.  In Music has orphaned a LOT of hardware over the years. and I own a NI S61 Mk3.  Wait and see I guess.  On the plus side, I really like my Akai MPC and Headrush hardware that is excellent mainly because of integrated software support, but I have also owned M-Audio and Alesis hardware that they promised future software upgrades for that was completely orphaned and abandoned.  I will certainly wait for a lot of dust to settle before I put any $ into In Music (et al) hardware.  Software, yes I think I can support that.  There is going to be a big shakeup in all their hardware lines because of the many cross-overs.

I hear you, Brian. I can’t say that I’m confident that inMusic will make the right choices with NI. inMusic.

In the blog posts leading up to the acquisition, I listed a few companies I hoped would step in for NI. Once word spread that it was down to Focusrite and inMusic—and I’d heard from a trustworthy insider a couple of weeks ago that it was likely going to be inMusic—I was firmly in the Focusrite camp. While both are hardware companies first, inMusic’s track record with software acquisitions has been particularly problematic.

I’ve consulted for a couple of companies that operate exactly like inMusic, using what strategists call a “harvesting strategy.” They buy once-popular brands in distress and either use them as a “cash cow” or attempt to revitalize them. Historically, inMusic has done both.

As a creator, I’ve seen the fallout when software isn’t adequately maintained. You can survey any major forum or subreddit and see the overwhelming frustration with AIR Music Technology or BFD. I personally had to reinstall Windows and lost a massive amount of data due to a security flaw in an AIR plugin that went unaddressed for months after it was reported. BFD has been stuck on version 3 for over a decade, plagued by one buggy release after another. A developer friend of mine, who once used BFD for all his product demos, even told me that at a $34 sale price, it wasn’t worth the headache.

There is also the very real risk of aggressive account integration. Even if we keep our perpetual licenses, we may find NI products increasingly “locked” to inMusic hardware or an “inMusic Profile” cloud system. This creates a “soft” subscription or a walled garden that many of us will find frustrating.

However, I’m holding out some hope. The success of the modern Akai MPC line proves that inMusic can pull off a successful revitalization when they see a brand as a flagship platform. But there is a massive caveat here: It’s important to remember that Akai’s success was built on standalone hardware units. This fits inMusic’s comfort zone. The real challenge for NI is that a huge portion of their user base is software-only (Komplete/Kontakt).

This leads to my biggest concern: the developer ecosystem. As someone who has given advice to a lot of Kontakt developers, I know that the real value of NI isn’t just their own libraries—it’s the thousands of third-party developers who have built their businesses on the Kontakt platform. If inMusic pushes the “walled garden” too hard or fails to invest in the software engine that these developers rely on, they risk a mass exodus. You cannot manage an industry-standard platform with the same “strip-for-parts” mentality used for entry-level plugins.

NI remains the most relevant brand in its space by leaps and bounds, but its distress was due to the previous private equity firm’s management, not the brand itself. In my opinion, inMusic’s job is to let the managers who made NI great continue to lead and only integrate where it actually adds value. The best thing the CEO can do is get out of the way of the people responsible for NI’s relevance.

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