Hi Marcus,
 The link was not intended to seem humorous. It was meant as a direct response to your comments about searching the web for info about Roland's recent notices. The pertinent links are on that front page under "News".


I see you also made some comments about April vs October... this link may offer a chance to see how April was in the scheme of things.

May 1999 - Dec 2012 

2003 was the commitment to joint dev.
2007 was the buyout of 51% of Cakewalk... let's hope it was cash rather than stock and options.
2012 seems to be when Cakewalk sold the rest of the 49% to Roland.


3 years ago analysts were optimistically guessing that Roland would endeavor to pay dividends with its cash reserves. Now Roland is asking people to volunteer to retire and announcing structural reform of its electronic music business.



best regards,
mike
  

Linear Phase

jm24

Expenses are determined by transactions. Lower prices requires more transactions to obtain the same revenue. 

 

No..  I'm afraid that is not how business works at all.   Expenses are determined by, "production and material costs, marketing costs, payroll and shipping costs, taxes, and other costs.
Transaction costs money, but the lower prices could be more profitable, even if the actual dollar amount of revenue is lower.  Why?  Lower prices could reflect a lower material cost, and a higher profit margin.

All of the items you list are connected to "sale" transactions. None of them make any sense without a transaction that involves a buyer. For software companies the major costs are intellectual.
 
This is also so for companies like intel.  The "direct" cost of production per piece is practically nil.  Yes the plants are expensive. But those are sunk costs. The costs of being in the business. But without the sale there is no reason for the rest to exist.
 
'Tis true the cost of the intellectual labor is an "up front" expense. But it also is sunk cost. It must be done or a product will not exist.
 
>>>>Transaction costs money, but the lower prices could be more profitable, even if the actual dollar amount of revenue is lower. Why? Lower prices could reflect a lower material cost, and a higher profit margin.
 
Lower prices cannot be more profitable. If the costs went done, and the price stayed the same, the result would be more profit, for the company.
 
The point of lowering the price was to attract more users. More users means more support costs.
 
And this is a software company. The only real costs the company has are employees. Discs and boxes cost nothing in comparison.
 
I think the CW managers should have opted for the traditional upgrade price. When adjusted for inflation during the past 12 years, that price, in real dollars, was already lower that it should be for what is supposed to be the best of breed.
 
 
And: moving to a yearly subscription would surely reduce the new-version-just-in-time-for-christmas insanity. Pay for a year's support and get ALL updates and upgrades for that year. It evens revenue. Reduces need to meet arbitrarily stupid deadlines. Increases focus on continuous improvement.
 

 
 

Anyway, to throw my hat into the ring: I'm entirely indifferent about Roland's ownership of Cakewalk, not least because I know basically nothing about the internal workings of the business. The latter is true for everyone here. The former, well, everyone's entitled to an opinion, however ill-informed.

I think jm24 is dead wrong-

lower prices do not mean less profit. Cakewalk swims in the same water as the rest of the daw makers. And it is a RED SEA industry- lots of competitors offering very similiar products- so the price comes down and very little profit is made. 

You couldn't ask for a better place to be centred than Cakewalk is Mass., the smartest people in the world live there Harvard, MIT etc. But Cakewalk probably can't afford to hire these top guys, and anyway they are not needed to program a good daw.

DAWs are struggling and falling out of the race now- too many people in the race...

it can be argued that low price will mean more innovation (got to make cool prodcts to best competitors) but really you need the TALENT and they will mostly go for big bucks (not offered in DAW development).

Cakewalk will be putting Sonar at a price point where it will make them money and be most likely to put the opposition out of business jm24. You can't take twice as long to put out a product and then charge twice as much- the consumer will buy the other daw at half price.

FastBikerBoy

I feel that Some of their gear is missing the mark while other products are really good.

Isn't this true for just about any company in any business? I have a Roland Sonic Cell and a BOSS GT-6 both of which I find great. I've always found their customer service and spares depts very good too - here in the UK at least.

now that I think about it I suppose your right Karl. There just seems to be more of a line of separation between good and not good products when it comes to Roland. This is just my opinion of course. other people may feel different. I am really salivating over some of their new product line. especially this 


http://www.rolandus.com/p...details/1188/475 


and these


http://www.rolandus.com/p...details/1255/475 


http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/1256/475


I just wish I had the cash for those items right now. 

My first synth was a Roland. I got a GM-70 (guitar synth) and MKS-50 when the GM-70 first came out. I've had a fair amount of their gear over the years. I currently use the VG-99, GR-55, JP-8080, A300Pro, and Quad-Capture. 

It seems like the upgrades have been priced better since Roland bought cakewalk. I've been upgrading since since cakewalk 3!

I think the VS-700 says all there needs to be said about Roland. I'm so glad I didn't invest in their flagship DAW accessory. 

BTW if Tescos are reading this I am available for shelf stacking...

rsinger


My first synth was a Roland. I got a GM-70 (guitar synth) and MKS-50 when the GM-70 first came out. I've had a fair amount of their gear over the years. I currently use the VG-99, GR-55, JP-8080, A300Pro, and Quad-Capture. 

It seems like the upgrades have been priced better since Roland bought cakewalk. I've been upgrading since since cakewalk 3!

I had one of those old synths too. It took me a while to buy one of the newer ones because as music is not my main business it is a major investment. I looked at the gr55. it combines the sounds of the gr 20 and the gr33. It may have a few new sounds. I am not really sure. It has some sounds from the vg-99 or so I'm told. 


I already have a pile of line 6 stuff and I got those two guitar synths as well. So basically I would just be buying it for the limited vg-99 sounds and at that price point it is just not worth it to me.

Resonant Order


Happy with the improvements, but I want to see more Pro Channel modules. The amount of modules for Reason's new format blows away what's available for X2. Makes me think that Cakewalk really doesn't have that much of a market share compared to the Props.

+1 on more pro channel modules

I also wish that X2 had a smaller GUI version. Would work exactly the same, but you could install one that simply made the gui 30% smaller.