Gibson has to be nuts to not sale off Cakewalk instead of dumping it in the garbage can

Why wouldn't the company just sale it off it's valuable assets and cut their loses, instead of just dumping it in the garbage can?
 
Cakewalk is such a great company and has so many great products, I'm about 100% sure they would find a buyer in no time.
 
Either Gibson got something up their sleeve, or they are just totally selfish to the faithful customers.

I concluded here it was denseness: 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/The-denseness-of-Gibson-management-m3690336.aspx
 
:D
 
..but who really knows, maybe they tried and wanted TOO MUCH MONEY! Knowing Gibson, that prolly wouldn't surprise anyone, ha.

When Cakewalk made a contract to give us all future updates for free, they made a Faustian mistake.
 
No company will buy a product line or business that has no future revenue, and that is exactly what Platinum has attached to it.
 
I knew it was a last ditch effort last year when they made the lifetime updates for free contract.  Probably so did Cakewalk/Gibson.
 
I have to say this is really a big drag to have to change a DAW I have used since Dos 3. But I have seen it coming for a very long time. This future was cast very long ago. Probably before Roland was the owner.

ProChannel VSTs are simply VSTs constrained in size to fit the PC template.  The EQ and SSL buss comp are as good software as I've found, and the rest of the line good.
 
But, as far as worth - Gibson is likely to be bankrupt or sold next June when a large chunk of their $500M debt needs serviced.  A bankruptcy judge can sell the code to me for a $ if that is the best offer made.  A new owner, same thing.  And I hope to gawd there is new management soon.

There is no reason to assume they haven't sold it. They may not have sold the Cakewalk company but they may have sold the intellectual property - source code, patents etc. If that was sold to someone else to develop and rebrand, the new owner wouldn't owe the free lifetime updates - they die with Cakewalk and the slate is wiped clean for the new owners. So there is a lot of value there for any potential buyer even without the Cakewalk branding.
 
Also, we can only speculate as to whether Cakewalk was losing money for Gibson. It's more likely it was the other way round. I think Gibson would have to at least try to sell any assets associated with Cakewalk including IP at the insistence of their creditors.

35mm
Also, we can only speculate as to whether Cakewalk was losing money for Gibson.

True, but we know they were losing money under Roland and it seems sales have declined from that point.

35mm
It's more likely it was the other way round.

IMHO, it is most likely that BOTH have been losing money, but the end came when Gibson needed more capital and the banks or private investors insisted on serious cost cutting.  The key indication (pretty obvious, actually, for people who have been in such situations as either executives or investors) is that Gibson evidently approved the Momentum acquisition and product launch very recently -- only a few months ago.  That tells me Gibson was inclined to let this run longer and an external force changed that.
 
Have a look at this article;
https://www.thestreet.com/story/14280618/1/gibson-guitar-may-default-if-company-can-t-refinance-its-debt.html
 
Notice how many others in the music instrument business are also struggling.  Everybody from Steinway (which owns Selmer-- most of the band instrument business in the US) to Guitar Center.  This is much bigger than Cakewalk and Gibson.  There are too many products chasing too few customers.

AndrewLMacaulay
 
Why don't we all reach out to them all (and others you might think of), as well as putting pressure through social media, etc. on Gibson - and for that matter Philips, as this debacle could well affect Philips' global brand - to actually try to sell it on.

I would imagine it would have already been sold and maybe the buyer approached Gibson with an offer in the first place. I'm thinking Microsoft who it turns out is developing a DAW for windows to compete with Apple's Logic. Cakewalk was working with MS very closely in recent times. It wouldn't be very practical for MS to start development on a DAW from scratch. It would be far quicker, more efficient and far less cost to start off with an already established, well developed, Windows only product and redevelop and rebrand that.

35mm
It would have taken a long time to design and develop it. Launching it when they did might not be so crazy. Gibson wouldn't have told Cakewalk not to develop anything new. They wouldn't have given Cakewalk any indication of their plans at all.

It is my understanding that the Momentum product was developed by another company that sold out to Gibson/Cakewalk recently.  I may have that completely wrong as I see no press releases to support that.

35mm
There is no reason to assume they haven't sold it. They may not have sold the Cakewalk company but they may have sold the intellectual property - source code, patents etc. If that was sold to someone else to develop and rebrand, the new owner wouldn't owe the free lifetime updates - they die with Cakewalk and the slate is wiped clean for the new owners. So there is a lot of value there for any potential buyer even without the Cakewalk branding.
 
Also, we can only speculate as to whether Cakewalk was losing money for Gibson. It's more likely it was the other way round. I think Gibson would have to at least try to sell any assets associated with Cakewalk including IP at the insistence of their creditors.

Good points.
 
I have held the belief that Cakewalk lost the boat way way back before Roland bought it.
 
I have been with Cake since Dos 3, and watched as things developed.
 
The late 80's and early 90's were critical for market share. Protools was getting the rep as a pro level tool, and the others were for weekend warriors. (I didn't agree with this reputation but it was that was going on).
 
Cakewalk was really only marketed in the United States. I remember Europeans on the forum asking to buy, but were pushed away. Eventually Roland became the agent for sales outside the US, and Roland treated the software very passively. It remained difficult to buy it in Europe.
 
Meanwhile, Cake stuck with Dxi while the world went with VST.  Cake didn't want to pay the licensing, I imagine. So we had to deal with a really bad VST wrapper.
 
Cubase took over from capturing the worldwide market from being based in Germany, and having native VST.
 
Also they got good endorsements.  An equation in the music business is no endorsements = no sales. It would really help Cubase when some star would report in and interview that he composed the hit in Cubase.
 
Then Roland bought the company and continued its attitude of using the DAW to sell hardware. But by that time Cubase was the DAW on most musician's lips, or Protools if you had a big budget.  I figured Cake had an uphill battle since then. At a point in time that was critical to take over the market the corporation was lackluster in imagination for marketing.
 
Not to mention Roland's shameless lack of support for all of that hardware they managed to sell.
 
That is my memory of what happened. If I am wrong I would like to know. Cake has been part of my life for 30 years.
 
 

Audioicon

kday
Either Gibson got something up their sleeve, or they are just totally selfish to the faithful customers.

I do not think Gibson knows what Gibson wants.

Gibson wants the world to be like it was in 1969.
 
But things have changed.
 
They don't seem to have any Elon Musk type to give vision from the top.

pharohoknaughty
Gibson wants the world to be like it was in 1969.

I don't have any first hand knowledge of this.  But everything has changed since 1969.  Never mind all the changes in the studio and production end, or even the creative end.  In 1969, everybody wanted to play the guitar.  And if not the guitar, people played piano, drums or band instruments.  Today, students are under such time pressure to prepare for college that many schools offer minimal musical opportunities.  I know high schools in my area that used to present three large concert bands.  Now they are lucky to have one good band.
 
On the guitar scene, just hanging around the music stores, I don't see so many kids.  It seems to me that most of the people buying guitars are adults, many of whom are playing on Contemporary Christian bands on Sunday.  If not for the churches moving to this genre, there would barely be any market for guitars now.
 
So basically, Gibson's entire business is turned upside down.  And I doubt Gibson is the only one struggling.

 
After bankruptcy restructuring, they will still own the code.  The question is, did they retain any of the engineers from Cakewalk to work on it?

For Gibson, best case scenario is to rename/rebrand Sonar as something they bundle with every guitar sale.  This will release them from any obligation to provide lifetime updates.
 
Its a property they own that they can use after bankruptcy to rebuild.
 
 

cparmerlee

mritenburg
Because writing off a substantial loss for a business asset that you acquired for way undervalue is a better for your bottom line then trying to sell the asset; especially when you are facing bankruptcy.

Not if the parent company is losing money, as I believe Gibson is.
 
The reason they didn't sell it is really, really simple.  There aren't any buyers.  SONAR is a very mature product; one of the best ever created in its category.  But they have been losing more money every year, mainly because it is a really crowded field.  The financial track record is clear.  The product lost money under Roland.  it lost money under Gibson.  Nobody wants to give it another try because the results would probably not be any different.
 
Ironically, the impressive improvements that the Bakers made in the past 24 months of monthly updates sealed the fate.  The product is truly great now, yet it still loses money.  There is nothing anybody else could do to make the product profitable.
 
Gibson might have been able to sell the code and brand name for a few dollars.  They obviously did not receive an attractive offer.  They may find there are pieces they can sell off piecemeal, but I doubt they will bring much.  Basically we are talking the plug-ins.  Most of them are rather dated by now, and nobody will pay anything for the ProChannel stuff because no other DAW uses that architecture.  So basically I think we are talking the Adaptive Limiter and the recent LP plugs.  How much do you think an investor would pay for those?

Perfectly said.  You can't sell something if no one will by it.

Hello, I'm Cakewalk user since Pro Audio 9 till SONAR Platinum (with lifetimeupdates).
I understand Cakewalk could be difficult to sell because of its debts, and maybe the lifetime updates complicates the attraction of potential buyers. But remember, all that belongs to Cakewalk and SONAR brands.
What if the SONAR CODE has been already sold, just before the announcement? Is it so stupid what I'm saying? Ofcourse Gibson wont tell us nothing about that, they only could inform us if the Cakewalk brand is sold, but it didn't happen. So, we should be alert for any new DAW appearing in the market, because it could have the SONAR heart, without any advice.
The only (and important) thing that throws my guessing away, is that if SONAR CODE has been sold, Gibson must stop providing downloads for existing users, and it didn't happen too.