itunes will work (as Craig suggested)
 
For $22 you can get Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 10 at Amazon. 

 
If you look at the product description for Music Creator 7, there is no mention of mp3.  In the Music Creator Tutorial 9 - Exporting and sharing and the Export Audio dialog in the online manual, there is mention of mp3, but nothing about you losing the ability to export mp3 after 30 days.  All it says in both cases is :
 
"MP3. Use this preset if you plan on sharing your song with friends, or if you want to listen to your song on an MP3 player. Your song will be saved as an MP3 (.mp3) file."
 
I can't find any reference to having to buy an mp3 licence anywhere.  There is no mp3 entry in the documentation TOC. 
 
If I were new to music software, I'd presume I'd be able to produce an mp3 since that's what most people listen to.
 
   "if you plan on sharing your song with friends"
 
Who wouldn't ?
 
---------------------------
 
The X3 online manual states under Uploading audio to SoundCloud  :
 
"Tip: By default, Cakewalk SoundCloud lets you upload either a .wav file or an .mp3 file. If you want to upload a different audio format, first use the File > Export > Audio command to export to the desired format, then go to Utilities > Share with SoundCloud and select the exported file."
 
In the X3 Tutorial 9 – Exporting, CD burning and sharing, there is no mention of mp3 at all.
 
Again, I can't find any word anywhere about having to unlock mp3 export.
 

Ian Ferrin
For $22 you can get Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 10 at Amazon. 

Which means that Sony probably nets about $15 after marketing costs.  Does anybody really believe they give away $10 out of that $15 to Fraunhofer?  I'm thinking that is pretty unlikely.

Sonar isn't the only sound editor I use, so I'm very happy to not be paying for MP3 capability in Sonar. I use lame, which I adore and which I configured Sonar to use in about three minutes. Adding that feature is nothing more than "checkbox" development for marketing purposes imho. I'd rather have them working on something more valuable to me. Just my two cents.
 
By the way, I do get the point you're trying to make but imho there's nothing wrong with Cakewalk making a profit, or Sony for that matter. I work hard to make a profit in my biz too, the more obscenely big the better. As long as they provide value to me, who cares what their margins are? I sure don't. An MP3 encoder in Sonar adds nothing of value for me.

Doktor Avalanche
There really is not much use for mp3 any more, even with cellphones.

cparmerlee
Every other audio product I have supports MP3. Sonar is the lone outlier.  Sorry, this is not the way to impress new users. This simply gives the impression that Cakewalk has such a low opinion of users or such a high opinion of themselves that they will dictate what is good and what customers should use.
 
We don't all have the same needs.  For what I do, almost all of the time, people want to receive the output as MP3s.  They aren't interested in arguments from me why they ought to be doing FLAC or something else.  I'm sorry if this offends anybody, but really, folks should get off their high horses and accept that there are valid reasons for people to use the tools in ways that aren't the same as what others might be doing.
 
Simple question, do you want to see Sonar accepted as a mainstream professional product or would you prefer it being seen as a second-class product only for hobbyists, techies, and garage bands?

Sonar supports MP3. To say it does not is totally inaccurate. Pay your $10 or spend the time you spent posting in these forums configuring it yourself. Personally I don't need to spend an extra $10 for this facility and I don't see why I should be charged an extra $10 just because somebody thinks it should be supplied by default. BTW you better get used to the idea, software in the future is going to become more and more modular and you are only going to end up paying for the parts you need in micropayments. That's the way it is going..

cparmerlee

Anderton
Here's the question I asked:
 
Should customers who already have multiple ways to convert files to MP3s (including having already unlocked the non-expiring Cakewalk encoder) be forced to pay $10 in order to subsidize other customers

 
If that is what it takes.

 
Thank you for finally answering my question.
 
 

I doubt that is what it takes, however, as these things are probably negotiable when talking about volumes.

 
If you think Cakewalk has anywhere the negotiating clout of a Microsoft or Apple due to huge volumes, you are very much mistaken.
 

Nonetheless, $10 would be a small price for Cakewalk to pay in order to clear out such a basic objection to the product.

 
You still don't understand that Cakewalk wouldn't pay that. Customers would pay it, either because the price would go up, or features would be reduced. Then again, Cakewalk could just fire a tech support person to pay for it :) 
 

You can spin this into sounding the way you want it -- as a "subsidy".

 
Subsidy is not a spin, it is an accurate characterization of what you want to see happen: "Pay part of the cost of producing (something) to reduce prices for the buyer."
 

I am simply pointing out that MP3 is one of the most basic requirements of any audio program, and other suppliers have had no difficulty dealing with it without making the customer jump through hoops.

 
They have simply built the price the consumer pays for it into the cost of the program. So you jumped through a hoop by paying for that MP3 encoder, whether you know it or not. The reason why I object to your line of thinking is that I feel it is fundamentally wrong to penalize Cakewalk for a) being transparent about it, and b) offering a choice to their customers of whether or not to pay for that encoder.

The licence fee paid t Frauenhofer is on a per unit sold basis. No bulk discount or such.

Companies that sign onto the licence convention are listed on the Fraunehofer site. It's simple if you use an MP3 encoding codec in a commercial product you pay a licence fee. Cakewalk's method f passing the cost to the end user is actually starting to catch on and other software companies are now doing the same.

cparmerlee

Ian Ferrin
For $22 you can get Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 10 at Amazon. 

Which means that Sony probably nets about $15 after marketing costs.  Does anybody really believe they give away $10 out of that $15 to Fraunhofer?  I'm thinking that is pretty unlikely.

 
Of course no one would believe that if they had any sense whatsoever, because they would realize how big Sony is, and what their volume is for the totality of their products that include MP3 capabilities. What do you think they turned to when ATRAC didn't fly? I consulted to Sony for several years, and among other things wrote the app note for Sony on how to convert Acid files for loading into one of their MP3 players. Sony sells a lot of MP3 players. I'll go out on a limb and take a crazy, wild guess that Sony sells more MP3 players than Cakewalk sells copies of SONAR.
 
On the other hand, if you DO use Minidisc and DO need to export as ATRAC, you can actually configure SONAR to export ATRAC files. Or AAC, if you use an iPod...you can even import/export PARIS files in case you have ancient Ensoniq files lying around and don't know what to do with them. (Which is great, given that I have files from a deceased classical guitarist that were only in PARIS format.)
 
Cakewalk assumes their customers can decide for themselves what they need and don't need, and offers them choices on how to fulfill those needs, from free to $9.99. That works for me. I understand that some people, for whatever reason, will not see the merits in that approach. 
 
 

FWIW, according to this site, all the MP3 patents expire within the next 27 months, so one would think Frauenhofer should be in a negotiating mood.

Doktor Avalanche
Sonar supports MP3. To say it does not is totally inaccurate.

 
Yes, and it supports a whole lot of other formats as well, thanks to its open-ended approach.
 

Personally I don't need to spend an extra $10 for this facility and I don't see why I should be charged an extra $10 just because somebody thinks it should be supplied by default.

 
Because it's your duty as a SONAR user to subsidize people who don't want to pay $9.99 or perform 9 steps to configure their own encoder.
 

BTW you better get used to the idea, software in the future is going to become more and more modular and you are only going to end up paying for the parts you need in micropayments. That's the way it is going..

Agreed 100%. For starters, look at Windows 10 or iOS, both of which rely on in-app purchases of options for income. As goes Microsoft and Apple, so goes the rest of the world.