New LM Blog Post: Research & Trends for the DAW, Plugin & Sample Market

[Peter DeLegge]

As the majority of this community is still staying in the Deals forum (hopefully, that will change in the near future), I thought I’d share the latest LinkedMusicians Blog post here. I’ve promised to write this one for a long time, as a number of our members have told me that they’d be very interested in it. It’s a look at the DAW, sample library, and plugin market (of course, one could say markets, but I’m looking at it as a whole for this post). I was inspired to write this, frankly, because there was this persistent series of posts at Cakewalk Forum and other forums that the industry is in decline, that simply has no basis in reality and is, in fact, the opposite of what’s going on.

So, I created a post that uses hard industry data to make crystal clear that the industry isn’t only NOT in decline, it’s thriving. That’s the reason that billionaire trust fun kids are buying up DAW brand assets, why investor groups are buying plugin developers and why plugin developers and sample library developers are lowering their prices. They’re lowering it to capture greater market share in a marketplace that is thriving and expanding.

The DAW, Plugin, and Sample Library Market Is Thriving, and That’s Great News for Home-Based Music Creators

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

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[Peter DeLegge]

I have a draft of my next post, which is about the DAW market, including the market shares of the major DAW players and the great generational divide between older generations (Boomers and Gen X) and younger generations (Millennials and Gen Z) when it comes to perpetual licenses vs. software subscriptions.

I think it will provide more insights — and supporting research — for the community on why so many DAW makers and audio production software developers contemplate or attempt to go subscription-only, and how BandLab — valued at $425 million US –has forsaken older users to target younger ones, but hasn’t had much success with selling subscriptions for their traditional DAW users, which are predominately much older than users of entry level DAWs like BandLab Studio, BandLab’s main product. even eliminating it from its product line, as the product has clearly not been a success. The BandLab brand has built too much ill will and distrust among DAW users and have very little market share to overcome the existing negative brand image. Even influencers have bailed on their traditional DAW (Sonar), a sign that they don’t see personal revenue opportunities.  Such poor strategy is surprising for a tech company valued at $425 million. Experience tells me, change will soon come.

What’s also interesting is that BandLab’s DAW market share for Sonar is so low that the researchers analyzing the market share of the main players don’t even show it. While Studio One Pro — the DAW many of us went to after Cakewalk or the last version of Sonar before BandLab bought Cakewalk’s assets — Pro Tools still is the market leader, with Cubase in second place, Studio One Pro is gaining with semi-pro and hobbyist users (still only a 5-10% share of the pro market, while Pro Tools has 30-40%). Estimates for BandLab’s traditional DAW market share put it at around 1-3% and I’m fairly confident that it’s not growing.

Anyhow, that’s a glimpse of my next blog post.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

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