IMHO it depends on the VSTs quality and their prices whether you can sell additional stuff.
But a growing user base of Cakewalk gives the potential to sell comparable high quality plugins like Adaptive Limiter, LP-EQ, LP-MB, CA-2A and QuadCurve for tempting prices. And to be honest, most of us like to make a bargain from time to time (dependent on the price)! Somehow our greed for plugins is like women's for shoes!
 
Marc

meng

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!

I think Meng wishes he was getting 15% on the Music. Anyone would be happy with a 15% margin. I would for sure but I have to take less otherwise I dont sell nothing.

Try to look at it this way.
DAW functionality is not much more than:

• Recording and editing Audio
• Recording and editing Midi
• Hosting virtual instruments and effects
• Mixing and Mastering

This functionality has matured over the past years and in the future there is not much innovative functionality to develop to justify asking users to pay $100 per year or more for upgrades. 
 
Ofcourse we can all think of new features but on a large scale DAW evolution is slowing down. What has been developed until now has diminishing value. Reaper can sell it for $60 (what I read in another thread) and prices are falling.
 
Companies need income to stay alive, so DAW-makers are looking for new business models.
 
Examples you can observe today are selling hardware, extra plugins or third party plugins, samples, collaboration platforms, apps. Maybe Meng has thought of even a more innovative business model.
 
That is why I believe "Cakewalk for Free" is a forerunner in these developments in a global market.
So shake off old ideas. You guys and me, we are at the beginning of a new future :-)

It will be interesting what the other DAW companies will do next? Protools will be feeling the heat with their overpriced updates. Presonus Studio3 that taken many of their customers.

This new development could turn the home studio industry upside down.  Just think about it.  Bandlab just released one of the very best DAW systems to the entire world, for free.  This isn't some stripped-down toy we're talking about.  I may be biased, but I've tried Studio One and Cubase.  They're both very capable DAWs, but the more I used them, the more I missed the DAW formerly known as Sonar.  Sonar is at least their equal, and in my opinion, superior.  And now, it is 100% FREE.  Buying in to any other system will cost you hundreds of bucks.  I realize I'm sort of restating the obvious here, but it still blows my mind that this is the situation at hand.  It's nothing short of revolutionary, and I have no idea what it will ultimately mean to the industry.  My feeling is that this must be a temporary, "lure them in early" proposition, and that at a later date they'll again start charging for the software.  That would be smart.  When people start using Cakewalk and find out how great it is, they'll never want to switch.  Imagine if Cakewalk became the absolute "go-to" industry standard for everyone who was just starting off?  That's some powerful stuff right there.  

Whatever the case, it seems clear that we're all in for an interesting ride.  But best of all, I'm simply THRILLED that I can finally use the latest, greatest edition of Cakewalk again.  I had been struggling with X2 on my newly upgraded system.  Cakewalk by Bandlab is a dream come true.  Bandlab has certainly gotten my attention in a big way.

fitzj
It will be interesting what the other DAW companies will do next? Protools will be feeling the heat with their overpriced updates. Presonus Studio3 that taken many of their customers.

 I doubt it. The professional industry is not always about value.  A professional studio with Pro Tools experts aren't going to change over where time is money due to familiarity.  The "industry standard" is going away anytime soon at the professional level. 

HeatherHaze
This new development could turn the home studio industry upside down.  Just think about it.  Bandlab just released one of the very best DAW systems to the entire world, for free.  This isn't some stripped-down toy we're talking about.  I may be biased, but I've tried Studio One and Cubase.  They're both very capable DAWs, but the more I used them, the more I missed the DAW formerly known as Sonar.  Sonar is at least their equal, and in my opinion, superior.  And now, it is 100% FREE.  Buying in to any other system will cost you hundreds of bucks.  I realize I'm sort of restating the obvious here, but it still blows my mind that this is the situation at hand.  It's nothing short of revolutionary, and I have no idea what it will ultimately mean to the industry.  My feeling is that this must be a temporary, "lure them in early" proposition, and that at a later date they'll again start charging for the software.  That would be smart.  When people start using Cakewalk and find out how great it is, they'll never want to switch.  Imagine if Cakewalk became the absolute "go-to" industry standard for everyone who was just starting off?  That's some powerful stuff right there.  

Whatever the case, it seems clear that we're all in for an interesting ride.  But best of all, I'm simply THRILLED that I can finally use the latest, greatest edition of Cakewalk again.  I had been struggling with X2 on my newly upgraded system.  Cakewalk by Bandlab is a dream come true.  Bandlab has certainly gotten my attention in a big way.

  Most DAWs are apple and oranges.  FL and Live will continue to dominate the dance genre market.
  Bias is created from being familiar with a DAW.  Reason users think their DAW is the best and still doesn't have options to offload their bloat on other drives.  Still can't drag and drop midi and other simple things Sonar can do.
 
 

mister happy
If the bapu had bought all of his pluginz through the Cakewalk store Gibson might still be selling toasters.
 

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