Interesting developments.
Maybe all DAWs will become free and wil be used as platforms to sell additional content, plugins, hardware, coffee mugs and T-shirts.
I see a parallel development at Propellerhead, where Reason is becoming cheaper and cheaper and a lot of additional sound libraries, rack extensions, plugins are available in the shop, claiming over 1000 companies are developing for Reason.
Now vst support is added, email campaigns for the Reason community are set up to sell third party plugins.  
 
Reason is becoming a sales channel for content and plugin developers.
 
Will the same happen with Cakewalk by Bandlab??

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Sorry folks, was confusing with Bandcamp since the names are similar. Still remains to be seen how this will play out and wish them luck!

>>It's kind of like Vegas where the house always wins.
 
Sounds more like eBays business model.
And not a bad idea IMHO.   It's pretty darn hard to market music, and having a free DAW to do it in?  Pretty nice...
If they can make enough $$ form the music, giving away the DAW makes a lot of sense.

Hey Zonno, Propellerhead has released Reason 10 Intro, that has a lot more value for money then their old "limited". I just made a post about that in the Software section of this forum.
 
And yes - I think the new model of "give away" Sonar Platinum, and charge fore expansions and plug-ins can be a very sound model. In my humble opinion they will certainly attract a larger audience than Sonar ever had, and thus a larger user base to sell those things.

JClosed
And yes - I think the new model of "give away" Sonar Platinum, and charge fore expansions and plug-ins can be a very sound model. In my humble opinion they will certainly attract a larger audience than Sonar ever had, and thus a larger user base to sell those things.

 
I wonder about that model where music software is concerned?
 
VSTs are available like snuf at a wake. As in FREE VSTs and good ones at that. So why would someone necessarily buy CAKEWALK VSTs, just go off and use BL Cakewalk for free forever and use free VSTs .. a zero cost thing to you.
 
VSTs are not tied to BL CAKEWALK nor are samples etc etc. So in effect BL Cakewalk would be just another VST / Sample company trying to sell that while giving away a free but devved DAW
 
The Game engines - UNITY and UNREAL at least have a limit on usage of there game engine. If a company earns over a certain turnover they have to pay to use the engines
 

bsantini99
Bandlab makes their money by taking a 15% cut of the music you sell on their site. This is the main reason for buying Sonar and giving it away. Very soon they will make it easy from within Cakewalk by Bandlab to publish your music directly to the site. Not sure how they will deal with people that just use the daw for free and not upload anything. It's a very smart, but also nefarious and incestuous plan. You and I produce songs, put it on their site, buy each others music, and they get rich in the process. It's kind of like Vegas where the house always wins.

I think you’re mistaking us with BandCamp :) we don’t take 15% of anyone’s music sales!

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mister happy
Selling content to parties that produce content seems like a limited proposition.

Typical McCue "quote".

Anybody use Kontakt?  Most of that cost is for the libraries, not the delivery system.  Yes, Virginia, it can work.  I can actually see the "free" model working.  Which newbie is going to buy PT if you can get "Cakewalk" free.  And a certain number of those users will buy extra loops.  And some will buy synths.  And a few will buy effects.  Get enough "free" users and you start to talk about real money.
 
That doesn't mean the idea will work for BL, but it will for someone along the line.

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