mudgel
I would speculate that most sales dollars account for upgrades not first time buyers with new purchasers being in the minority. With discounts being industry wide real margins must be very thin if you don't have a partner with deeper pockets, either through your own hardware sales or in the case of Cakewalk being owned by a larger company that can help offset some of the cost of sales.

Again, this seems to be an argument why DAW makers should be looking to EXPAND their market rather than putting all their energy toward pleasing the faithful.  Clearly a balance is required.  Nobody is successful n teh long run by ignoring their base.  But a fixation on the base can be just as bad.
 
For example, how many people have moved into the realm of advanced notation with the free MuseScore product?  Can some of these be DAW users if there were an easy way to hook their MuseScore work to a DAW?

cparmerlee
Again, this seems to be an argument why DAW makers should be looking to EXPAND their market rather than putting all their energy toward pleasing the faithful.  Clearly a balance is required.  Nobody is successful n teh long run by ignoring their base.  But a fixation on the base can be just as bad.

Not to belabor the point, but a few other stats...
 
Consider that Sibelus, Finale, and Notion were all sold to larger companies (and believe me, if they were raking in the bucks they almost certainly would not have been up for sale). This is a perfect example of the companies that acquired them expanding their market; but Pro Tools notwithstanding (which is likely popular due to many reasons beyond including notation), companies whose products include notation do not have any commanding sales lead compared to programs that don't. According to MI Sales Trak, of the top 10 software brands for May, three offered products with notation and of those, products with notation represented only part of their product mix. I also think we can assume that not all people using those programs use the notation aspect. As to pure scoring programs, as mentioned previously they represent only a tiny fraction of overall sales.
 
From this you can conclude that the universe of people who would switch DAWs or pay extra for extra notation capabilities is sufficiently small that expanding into that market, or even dominating it, would make little difference to the bottom line. Producing a good virtual instrument, or adding features so as not to lose market share to competitors, would likely bring in a lot more income.
 
As Mudgel surmises correctly, not only is income low in the industry, margins are thin. Look at the resistance some people have to paying $149 for a year's worth of substantive updates to SONAR Platinum...based on what it costs to produce those updates and content, $149 is a bargain. So companies cannot afford to throw money at something that won't justify the expenditure, or they risk going out of business or at least having to decimate the staff to reduce payroll. Looking at the sales of notation/scoring programs, and the sales of programs that include notation versus programs that don't, would make any company nervous about making a significant investment into that world.
 
If they can pick up a failing company's IP inexpensively that's one thing, but to start a new initiative from scratch is something else - especially if it's a "universal" one, in which case they might actually be promoting sales for someone else's DAW. ("Well gee, if I'm using Pro Tools mostly because it has notation, and I can get better notation with Avid's 'Notation Companion' program in conjunction with Ableton Live, I'll buy the companion program and ditch Pro Tools in favor of Ableton Live.")
 
I'm not saying this is good, just that economic realities drive choices in this industry to a huge extent because of the thin margins and lack of product diversification. If Apple blows it with Apple Music, they won't care because they a) have so much cash in the bank, and b) they sell a gazillion smart phones.
 
If any program was suddenly to have the most amazing notation capabilities on the planet, I believe the difference it would make to market share would be tiny. Maybe it would be worth it to Pro Tools, which makes a bunch of money and has mature market penetration, to risk a bunch of bucks to increase its market share by (maybe) 1% or 2% but most other companies would be very wary.

Anderton
If any program was suddenly to have the most amazing notation capabilities on the planet, I believe the difference it would make to market share would be tiny. Maybe it would be worth it to Pro Tools, which makes a bunch of money and has mature market penetration, to risk a bunch of bucks to increase its market share by (maybe) 1% or 2% but most other companies would be very wary.

I agree there is no business case for improving the internal notation capabilities.  But there isn't much of a business case for building the drum replacer either.  While these things may thrill the faithful, they just don't expand the market. At best they try to maintain the current slice of a small pie.
 
Can you at least acknowledge that the proposition of making DAWs more seamless with the major notation programs would expand the market rather than please the faithful?  We could debate how much that expansion would be and whether that would represent a good business case, but I think it is really important not to lump the two scenarios together. 
 
Improving the internal notation is not the same marketing proposition as opening up to a new base us users.

cparmerlee

Anderton
If any program was suddenly to have the most amazing notation capabilities on the planet, I believe the difference it would make to market share would be tiny. Maybe it would be worth it to Pro Tools, which makes a bunch of money and has mature market penetration, to risk a bunch of bucks to increase its market share by (maybe) 1% or 2% but most other companies would be very wary.

I agree there is no business case for improving the internal notation capabilities.  But there isn't much of a business case for building the drum replacer either.

 
Actually there is, because Pro Tools includes a Drum Replacer, and programs like Slate's Trigger do very well. Suppose a SONAR owner wants a drum replacer. If the choice is between spending $149 on Slate's Trigger 2 or $149 on upgrading to Platinum and getting a drum replacer and a bunch of other stuff, it's much more likely that $149 would end up in Cakewalk's bottom line instead of Slate's. Drum Replacers are becoming more popular all the time. I don't think it will be long before they become a more or less standard feature in other DAWs.
 

At best they try to maintain the current slice of a small pie.

 
Yes that's true, because they have to maintain that slice.
 

Can you at least acknowledge that the proposition of making DAWs more seamless with the major notation programs would expand the market rather than please the faithful?

 
I disagree that it's "rather than" please the faithful, more like "in addition to pleasing the faithful." It would do both.
 

Improving the internal notation is not the same marketing proposition as opening up to a new base us users.

Agreed 100%. Unfortunately, the point is moot if the addition of new users isn't sufficient to offset the cost of acquiring those new users. This is why an open source option or academic exercise is IMHO the most likely way for the "notation companion" program to happen. I think the best shot for a company producing a program like this would be Make Music, as they did MusicXML, have a commitment to Finale, and are doing reasonably well.

Drum Replacement is a huge part of modern record production. I don't love that, personally, and I think just playing and recording the drums well in the first place is always more to my taste. But we're in a world now where there are bands who want and expect that to happen on their records. It's not a niche thing at all.

So having come that far it seems logical that Cakewalk's plan of a little often is a major change in the way in which marketing can be attacked along with development and program release. The little often helps in being able to tackle things like Notaion where a little bit can be done nearly every release cycle without robbing too much dev time. The result over the course of a year could be that the list of major requests have been fulfilled.

This monthly cycle is really beginning to show its worth and only after 6 months.

While I see problems discussed on the forum with every cycle it's not the same people. For those with stable well performing systems it seems each release is a little better. More responsive, smoother operation, ie more stable.

cparmerlee
This explains my situation perfectly.  I feel there is a gigantic disconnect.  Calling the Sonar notation "rudimentary" is to be extremely generous.  It is what it is, and some people find it useful.  That's OK.  But it isn't anything like even the most basic music notation capability.  I doubt anybody who needs to produce professional-quality sheet music would ever find that acceptable, and surely Cakewalk never intended it to be so.There are good notation products out there.  The bridge is the piece that is missing.
 
Given the intense resistance to that simple proposition here on the forum and given that virtually all the enhancements in Sonar Platinum are nowhere near this "bridge", I think it is fair to say nobody should expect that bridge to come from Cakewalk, and I don't.  I do get some other value from Sonar unrelated to notation-based projects, so I will probably continue paying for Platinum until I see at least some hints of bridge construction elsewhere.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I believe the bridge exists, and its name is "Rewire". Consider the following thread from PreSonus' forum:
 
https://forums.presonus.com/viewtopic.php?f=167&t=5661
 
SONAR supports Rewire. Craig A. says so!
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013043/The-Complete-Guide-to-Using-Rewire-Part-2
 
Your clients require Finale. Finale does NOT support Rewire. Notion does. Sibelius does. SONAR does. Studio One does. Reaper does. Reason, of course, does.
 
I agree 100% with the comments made in support of the end product and doing whatever works for YOU to get to that end product, so I'm not suggesting that you need to, or should, find some other workflow.
 
But, I believe your gripe should be with Finale and not Cakewalk. Google "Finale" and "Rewire". You'll find kludges (like adding DP to the chain and setting up a three-way routing) to make Finale work in a Rewire setup, but what you'll find mostly are NUMEROUS requests going back 8+ years, from Finale users, for Rewire support.
 
The bridge exists.

If it's unlikely that a true synthesis of DAW and notation will emerge due to the economics not being favorable, and the only way for it happen is through open source software, then that is what will happen. The need is there, however small the market, and it will be met somehow. My bet is that in time, Linux will become more user-friendly, and daws for linux will incorporate the free notations like Musescore and Lily Pond (Rosegarden already has LP, but I was not able to get it to work, a common experience). Bitwig works in linux, but has no notation ability. so it could be a good candidate. I think all this is made more likely by the coming of windows 10 (it's name eerily similar to sonar X, no?), which a lot of people are going to see as their limit of tolerance of microsoft's increasing control-grab of their computers. more and more will be exploring linux. Retired old farts like me who have the time will eventually figure out how to make it work. I think that is where we are headed. It is the nature of the technological revolution that is the computer to liberate us from the constrictions of the marketplace (not that I'm a socialist; I'll take capitalism any day over what's happening in the Greece).

I have said this many times before. I use Notion 5 with Sonar and the results have been remarkably good. The use of ReWire was never really a strong point of mine until I tried it with Sonar. As my use of Notion got better it occured to me that if Notion incorporated audio multitracking, the game would be over as far as notation coupled with audio recording. ReWire almost gets us there. Totally incorporating it in to your DAW would absolutely blow competitors off of the track!
I bought Notion 3 in the Cakewalk store on a sale. I remember thinking that maybe Cake was luring us in to accepting this as their option to get out of the notation business totally. I was shocked when Presonus beat Cake to the punch when they bought Notion and I was also saddened that Cake missed a great opportunity to possibly gain some serious footing in the marketplace if they could blend these two together as one.
I am very happy with ReWire but it would be SO much better if a Notion-type program ran inside Sonar. I think we should all stop and think about how difficult it will be to bring about the change we ask for but I know they are watching these threads very closely. Let's hope that the bakers are getting fired up and the change will be soon.

I will add my voice, once again, to the choir begging, beseeching, nagging (you get the gist) the Bakers to continue working on giving us standard musical notation that is:
 
1. stable
2. easy and quick to use; especially, features easy and intuitive entry of clefs, keys, time signatures, accidentals, bar lines, repeats, endings, notes and rests
3. workmanlike; not fancy, just plain usable
4. able to handle other common notation tasks, like tuplet entry, correctly
 
Thank you for listening,
LJ