Paul P
It'll be interesting to hear what Craig has to say on this subject, once he gets back.
Well, I do take requests
...Andrew pretty much nailed it from the Cakewalk standpoint. But, here's another perspective and remember, I speak here for myself - not Cakewalk or Gibson.
NAMM stands for National Association of
Music Merchants - retailers. Software is not much of a retail business any more, it's mostly downloads. When Apple announced Logic for $199, made it available only from the App Store, and pulled it from retail shelves, that pretty much marked the beginning of the end for selling software at retail (not to mention the decline of Pro Tools' Mac market share). This also had serious consequences for smaller companies that develop Mac software, like MOTU; fortunately they had a strong audio interface business to keep them going. Windows has traditionally had a somewhat smaller share of the music market than the Mac, so it had even less "pull" with retailers to stay on store shelves after the Mac stuff went away.
Another reality is that the number of audio interfaces outsells the number of DAWs sold or updated by a
huge margin every month. So either people are using 7 or 8 interfaces with their copy of SONAR or Cubase or whatever, or...there are
a lot of people stealing software via torrents.
Native Instruments and Ableton stopped doing trade shows a long time ago. Both took the huge sums of money required to participate, and re-invested it in growing their companies. Both are extremely successful...draw your own conclusions as to how "necessary" trade shows are for software companies.
At the inMusic booth, Sonivox and AIR were dropped from the list of companies - inMusic is getting out of the software business because they can't make any money from it. All those companies from a few years back selling iPad apps? Gone. The only truly successful ones are making apps part of a hardware/software combination, like IK Multimedia. Even Steinberg was relegated to a small demo space in the huge Yamaha Marquis ballroom at the Marriott hotel.
The attitude of some people on this forum makes it obvious why software companies are having such a hard time: people don't want to pay what's
required for these companies to grow and prosper. They have this unrealistic sense of entitlement that they should be able to pay $50 - $150 a year in a tiny, tiny business and get flawless code, insanely great support, discounts, their pet feature requests implemented, deals, and a big trade show presence. Frankly, what's amazing is that Cakewalk has delivered what it has delivered,
but that's only because of the company's dedication and Gibson's commitment. No, I don't take off weekends. And with very rare exceptions, neither do Andrew or Noel. But if a job needs to be done...I worked 14 hours straight last Saturday, Sunday, and Monday prior to NAMM to finish the eZine and do final quality control on the Gibson Bass Collection expansion pack. I'm
not asking for sympathy, I'm just asking for people not to post ridiculous speculation about Gibson, Cakewalk, NAMM shows, and tax writeoffs. I got home at 5 AM, it's 12:30 AM the next day, and I'm writing this because...I was asked to. So I am.
FWIW many companies basically subsidize their software through sales of interface hardware (or in the case of Apple, $800,000,000,000 in the bank and a zillion iPhones; or in the case of Reaper, selling Winamp to AOL back in the day for $500,000,000) - remember, hardware can't be downloaded from a torrent. So, software-only companies have to do whatever they can to try and meet the unrealistic expectations of consumers who are unaware of the realities of being in business. In today's world, a big trade show presence for a small company makes
zero sense. IMHO a company like Cakewalk might do better by taking the money they would spend on a trade show, and setting it on fire. That way they wouldn't have to go to the show, and could stay back at the office and get real work done, which ultimately would be far more beneficial for
all the end users.
And yes, I was at the show, but in a very different context from demoing SONAR. I moderated a panel discussion with the creme de la creme of the keyboard world, as well as participated on a panel with representatives from the MIDI Association, Google, Microsoft, Roland, and Roli about extensions to the MIDI spec (e.g., MPE and Bluetooth MIDI). I participated in another panel on "building a band in the digital age" with Stewart Copeland of the Police, Brian Hardgroove from Public Enemy, and representatives from Sennheiser, WholeWorldBand.com, and ReverbNation.com. I'm also on the board of the TEC Awards, and had several meetings involving that and its future direction with the head of the TEC Foundation, Joe Lamond from NAMM, Elliot Scheiner, Erik Tarkanian, etc. etc. and of course I attended the awards.
But NAMM shows also take on a life of their own. I was
not prepared for how many manufacturers wanted to meet and talk about the resurgence of
Harmony Central, for which I am Editorial Director. Many are looking to it to become "the Switzerland of the industry" that gets people excited about playing, recording, and listening to music. After almost a year-long (and difficult) struggle to fix the damage that had been done prior to Gibson's acquisition, this was kind of our "coming out" party to show off the mobile-friendly structure and other enhancements. We even had companies contact us about setting up meetings because they
wanted to advertise with us. That's unheard of - usually the media has to pester companies to advertise.
I also did quite a bit behind the scenes on behalf of Cakewalk. I am very close (cross fingers) to putting together a partnership which I think will benefit the Cakewalk community FAR more than my answering questions in the Gibson booth about when SONAR's going to be available for the Mac
. Understandably I can't go into details about these kinds of things, but suffice it to say I am always on the lookout for the Cakewalk community's best interests.
Finally, Gibson has a world-wide team of product specialists that visit music stores for one-on-one training and discussions with store personnel and managers. This is vastly more effective than what can be done at NAMM. However, where a NAMM show shines is for the kind of space Gibson's guitar divisions are in this year. The 2016 models have been extremely popular, but it's not possible for the product specialists to bring every model Gibson makes to a store. There was a back area of the Gibson booth, separate from the public, where dealers could check out all the latest Gibson guitars in depth.
Trade shows are becoming more relevant for some product categories and less relevant for others. Rather than waste resources on a major presence at NAMM, Cakewalk instead is devoting those resources to what
actually matters...like working on really cool updates for 2016. I suspect those who complain about Cakewalk's lack of presence at NAMM would also be first in line to complain if the 2016 updates didn't meet their expectations...because the company blew its resources on a trade show.