It's been about 4 months since Cakewalk by Bandlab was introduced and we were all asked to create an account at Bandlab so our Cakewalk accounts could be migrated over. Since then we have had some great updates to Cakewalk, but nothing else seems to have happened with regards to the proposals to migrate user accounts, launch new forums, update the Cakewalk site etc. Looking on bandlab.com there is no mention of Cakewalk which I can understand in the absence of lack of user account migration and other preparations.
 
It seems that a lot of time has passed and while there has been great progress with the software development, the community, marketing, user accounts website etc. have not progressed at all. Visiting cakewalk.com will still tell you all about Sonar and even has buy links still. Meanwhile, where are the new users? Cakewalk is available if you know how to get it, but it almost seems to be a secret and if someone does find it by diving through deep links, they can't join the community. It seems as if Cakewalk is still a prerelease for existing users only.
 
I'm not impatient for any changes to take place. I mean Cakewalk works well for us and the community here is great as it is, but I'm surprised that nothing public, outside of the software has changed during the past 4 months, not even a hint of anything. Maybe something massive is going on behind the scenes or they are simply not happy releasing Cakewalk to the masses in its current form. It all seems a bit odd to me.

I totally agree with you. There is too much secrecy with CBB and I am starting to feel a little bit nervous. Meng has said several times that there is an "aggresive roadmap" coming but, apparently, they can't share any more information . In my case, I need more than promises and blind faith for staying with Cakewalk in its current form.
 

When it's free to D/L you have zero rights to expect anything. 

I agree that Cakewalk isn't front and center when a person looks for it. It can be found fairly easy by anyone who wants to try and find it.  I'm in no hurry either. These things take time.
 
Concerning new users, we don't have the download stats. I don't think you are being optimistic enough. But that's me.

ampfixer
When it's free to D/L you have zero rights to expect anything. 

Brutal but right on the nail. (-:

Four months isn't really that long. When I've consulted to software companies, it's sometimes about stops on the roadmap that are 2 or 3 years in the future. 
 
Frankly, I'm pleasantly surprised that Noel has kept the monthly updates coming. That's impressive.

a13xhp
I totally agree with you. There is too much secrecy with CBB and I am starting to feel a little bit nervous. Meng has said several times that there is an "aggresive roadmap" coming but, apparently, they can't share any more information . In my case, I need more than promises and blind faith for staying with Cakewalk in its current form.

It's not secrecy that I'm worried about. In fact, I'm not worried. Just curious. The length of time with no changes to anything other than the software is a curiosity to me.

Anderton
Four months isn't really that long. When I've consulted to software companies, it's sometimes about stops on the roadmap that are 2 or 3 years in the future. 
 
Frankly, I'm pleasantly surprised that Noel has kept the monthly updates coming. That's impressive.

No, it's not that long when it comes to developing a load of infrastructure, but it's a long time to keep the old Cakewalk site up with old products and all. It's also a long time to keep newbies locked out of this community. And a long time to archive this forum and set up a new one. I wouldn't expect all these things to be done at once but in stages and there haven't been any stages :)  Noel et al are doing a great job developing the software, knocking out bug fixes and new features every month, but everything else seems to be stagnating a bit. I do really appreciate the fact that the monthly updates are pretty much just for us existing users of a now free product.
 

Starise
I agree that Cakewalk isn't front and center when a person looks for it. It can be found fairly easy by anyone who wants to try and find it.  I'm in no hurry either. These things take time.
 
Concerning new users, we don't have the download stats. I don't think you are being optimistic enough. But that's me.

I don't think that I'm not being optimistic enough, there simply hasn't been any marketing to get people interested in getting the new Cakewalk so there aren't that many people looking for it. Hell, there's hardly even any mention of it and nothing at all on cakewalk.com. It certainly isn't being pushed out to new users yet. That may be because BL are getting server infrastructure in place to cope with what could be huge demand and that's fair enough. 

Not just impressive but generous also.
I don't think we also don't have the right to worry either. It's not our fight and we've already died once. Anything more we get is just icing on the cake.
 
Enjoy it.

Just jumping in here so you can hear it from the horse's mouth. :-)
 
The most important thing to note is that take-up of CbB has been far better than we expected. For the conspiracy theorists who maybe feel that it has underperformed - this isn't true. 
 
There are definitely a lot of things being worked on behind the scenes, as with all companies!  I personally feel it may be a little harsh to say that we've been secretive about things - if anything I'd like to think we've tried to be as transparent as possible on issues without saying things that could compromise marketing and roadmap plans or announcements for the future - if there is a level of transparency that anyone feels we are lacking versus other companies, I am very happy for anyone to share examples with me, take the feedback seriously and address it and see if we can improve how we communicate with our audience.
 
The forum migration is taking longer than expected but it's nearly there. Two things: 1) We want to make sure the authentication system is set up correctly as we are phasing out the old Cakewalk accounts and we want to make the transition as seamless for everyone as possible 2) We need to make sure we have a proper executable end of life strategy and plan for the current forum so that it doesn't become a big mess when it happens. There is still a strong amount of traffic and people who use it as a daily resource for information so we can't jeopardise that with a half-baked transition.
 
Marketing efforts have absolutely not started yet at all, CbB has performed so well on a purely word of mouth basis right now and through the growth of BandLab Assistant that we had to throw our expectations of user acquisition funnel performance plans out of the window and start again from scratch. I can only credit the strength and support of the community for this and we can't thank you guys enough!
 
With regards to the legacy website - there are also currently a lot of things tied into it that is not so obvious from the consumer angle - for example, our context-sensitive documentation, such that sunsetting it into a legacy website is not as straightforward as you might think. The long-term replacement for www.cakewalk.com is already up at https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk but the update to the BandLab website takes a bit longer because of the UX considerations and current acquisition funnel that is affected by small amendments to the architecture of the landing page, and making sure it doesn't confuse our core users who are there purely for BandLab so again the refresh of that isn't necessary trivial.
 
Hope some of the inside info that I've shared above is helpful!