Well if there's one thing I've learned from all the back-and-forth here, it's that apparently there aren't a lot of professional mastering or mix engineers who frequent this forum. I guess they're off making money and doing projects.
MP3s are the
lingua franca for giving quick demos to clients. They don't want uncompressed WAV files to put on their iPhones to listen to mixes. They don't want something with no EQ or multiband limiting, because they're going to be listening in context with other material. They want a ballpark approximation of a finished product while they listen to rough mixes to figure out what to do next.
A lot of mix engineers do not consider themselves mastering engineers, with good reason; they're different skill sets. The client can either do the supremely stupid thing of paying a mastering engineer several hundred dollars to master a mix that will never be released so they can listen to it on their smart phone, pay the mix engineer to do a mastering job at the usual rates, or with LANDR, get a ballpark approximation for very little $$ in a couple minutes while the rest of the band is fidgeting and waiting to go home.
As I've mentioned many times before, I use Studio One for album assembly, in large part because it covers the publishing options mastering engineers need - DDP export, disc image, and MP3. There are plenty of bands that publish MP3 collections or post MP3s on their web sites. With LANDR and SONAR as it is now,
without paying a penny, they can take the live recording of their concert, and get a free MP3 to post on their site. Actually they can post two live recordings a month, 24 per year, for free. AND get free previews, which as gswitz has already figured out, you can record. IOW you can get many advantages from LANDR without signing up for any kind of plan. Cakewalk probably assumed that people would welcome the
free features, rather than complain that they have the
option to pay for more.
I suspect most of the people dissing the concept haven't read the eZine to realize the applications this opens up that a) have little, if anything, to do with traditional mastering, and b) how it can really help pro mastering engineers when dealing with clients. As to those who consider installing it bloatware - c'mon. It's a musically related tool whose potential many people will recognize over time, as many people have already. If you're smart enough to use SONAR, you're smart enough to uninstall LANDR if you don't have any use for what it offers.