Kamikaze
Cakewalk and Sonar have always struggled  to be rated among the other DAWs, it was third in a three horse race, and now it's a stampede.

Definitely.  And at the end, I'd say SONAR was not in the top 5 in a race that only bothered to count the first 4.
 
There is no future -- absolutely no future for a general-purpose DAW.  We already have SO, Cubase, Protools, Reaper, and Logic, not to mention _____ (fill in your favorite unmentionable generic DAW.)  I don't care how much money Bandlab has, that game is over and there will be no coming back from that.
 
Notice I didn't mention Live.  They smartly designed and positioned that DAW as its own category (live performance and improvisational composition.)  They are first in a category of one, with some of the general-purpose DAWs trying to copy some of the features, but really, why bother?
 
Bandlab can be successful, but only by putting their new DAW yet to be named into its own category of one.  It happens that Bandlab's products are ALREADY in that category, which is the creative end of the whole process (songwriting and collaboration.)  Tying a studio-grade (OK, with some fixes) DAW to that value chain can work.  Offering another generic DAW is a loser.  So let's see what they do.
 
And this seems very similar to the Cakewalk Momentum strategy, except that Bandlab has more pieces in place and established.
 
If you can go with that premise for a moment (even if you don't agree with it), that suggests something fairly significant for the people tuned in here.  The SONAR base is surely the most helpful and most experienced/expert DAW community out there.  But under the scenario I laid out, we won't be seeing a lot of "studio greybeards" coming on board the new product.  If it goes the way I'm describing, there will be loads of production newbies who have been fluttering around the cloud-based stuff and now want to cut their teeth on commercial-quality production.  If it goes that way, then YOU ALL are actually part of the product, which is why Mr. Meng should be interested in keeping the user base together, even if it means essentially giving away free licenses.  Learn to speak "Millennial".
 

Fact is sonar has been doing man y things that all the other daws are or have recently just implemented so to imply it’s behind the eight ball is somewhat silly. I record primarily live bands with real drums and a smattering of virtual keys and with 64 bit engine, off line bouncing, ara integration and built in melodyne coupled with unlimited insert slots, buses, tracks and intuitive track and bus routing, and I even like LANDR (I’m an early adopter of the product and subcribe at a steep discount) for workflow testing mixes so for me, there simply no competition against sonar and I’ve mixed on PT, Cubase, mixbus and studio one. I am thrilled there are new owners and sonar is alive and well. Meng to me sounds very sincere and hopefully keeps things going in the right direction.... even if we’re not sure yet what that might be

Fact is sonar has been doing man y things that all the other daws are or have recently just implemented so to imply it’s behind the eight ball is somewhat silly. I record primarily live bands with real drums and a smattering of virtual keys and with 64 bit engine, off line bouncing, ara integration and built in melodyne coupled with unlimited insert slots, buses, tracks and intuitive track and bus routing, and I even like LANDR (I’m an early adopter of the product and subcribe at a steep discount) for workflow testing mixes so for me, there simply no competition against sonar and I’ve mixed on PT, Cubase, mixbus and studio one. I am thrilled there are new owners and sonar is alive and well. Meng to me sounds very sincere and hopefully keeps things going in the right direction.... even if we’re not sure yet what that might be

cparmerlee

Kamikaze
Cakewalk and Sonar have always struggled  to be rated among the other DAWs, it was third in a three horse race, and now it's a stampede.

There is no future -- absolutely no future for a general-purpose DAW.  We already have SO, Cubase, Protools, Reaper, and Logic, not to mention _____ (fill in your favorite unmentionable generic DAW.)  I don't care how much money Bandlab has, that game is over and there will be no coming back from that.
 
Notice I didn't mention Live.  They smartly designed and positioned that DAW as its own category (live performance and improvisational composition.)  They are first in a category of one, with some of the general-purpose DAWs trying to copy some of the features, but really, why bother?
 
Bandlab can be successful, but only by putting their new DAW yet to be named into its own category of one.  It happens that Bandlab's products are ALREADY in that category, which is the creative end of the whole process (songwriting and collaboration.)  Tying a studio-grade (OK, with some fixes) DAW to that value chain can work.  Offering another generic DAW is a loser.  So let's see what they do.
 
And this seems very similar to the Cakewalk Momentum strategy, except that Bandlab has more pieces in place and established.
 
If you can go with that premise for a moment (even if you don't agree with it), that suggests something fairly significant for the people tuned in here.  The SONAR base is surely the most helpful and most experienced/expert DAW community out there.  But under the scenario I laid out, we won't be seeing a lot of "studio greybeards" coming on board the new product.  If it goes the way I'm describing, there will be loads of production newbies who have been fluttering around the cloud-based stuff and now want to cut their teeth on commercial-quality production.  If it goes that way, then YOU ALL are actually part of the product, which is why Mr. Meng should be interested in keeping the user base together, even if it means essentially giving away free licenses.  Learn to speak "Millennial".
 

I think I agree with your point of view, which is probably also why the "lifetime update" in itself seems to have failed. I don't think it was a money grab and con, but a rational reflection of the new reality for general DAW's.  
 
The question is how successful and quickly "Sonar" can be integrated in a Social DAW ecosystem. As I see it what's going on in the world of music, total integration is the name of the game. Horisontal and Vertical. Everything after the creative impulse to strike a key until the note reaches someone elses ear. It looks like BandLab is at the cutting edge here, in a direction also Cakewalk Inc seemed to be moving ... with apps like Momentum and Sketchpad ... and who knows what more that didn't see the light of day before the battery ran dry.

Frankly I believe BandLab's social/cloud ecosystem is probably the only chance Sonar has to regain any kind of market share. I don't of course have access to a demographic breakdown of Sonar users, but any reasonably observant person who frequents the forums and Facebook groups can see that the average age of Sonar's community is very high. You rarely see anyone under 30, and indeed I would go further and speculate that the bulk of its user base is in the 40+ age group, with significant numbers aged 50 and beyond. And a large proportion of these seem to be people who have used the program for decades (look how many posts related to end of Sonar and subsequent revival by BandLab start with "Been using the program since the DOS days" and similar). What that means from a business standpoint is that Sonar was having a problem attracting new users.
 
Frankly given Sonar's lack of "street cred" among kids, I don't see how that was ever going to be rectified without putting it in front of their faces in the context of something like BandLab. I find that many young people haven't even heard of Sonar. If you can get a good sized crowd of young newbies using Sonar through their contact with BandLab, you'll start to see things like video tutorials making the rounds, and kids will start referencing the program on sites like Reddit and Twitter. That's going to attract a lot of fresh new blood and it's exactly what Sonar needs to save it from the brink.

sharke
"Been using the program since the DOS days" 
 

Hoho, that's hilarious :) But yeah, I think your assessment of Sonar forum demographics is spot on.
 
I guess the punks who grew up with facebook and smartphones have new  expectations. 
 
I don't get around that much these days, so I'm curious as to what you would say have "street cred" these days ?

iRelevant
... which is probably also why the "lifetime update" in itself seems to have failed. I don't think it was a money grab and con, but a rational reflection of the new reality for general DAW's.  

Likewise.  I didn't think it was a con.  I thought it was a "Hail Mary" play that was a sign of desperation.  I saw it as "OK, Let's add Mac and meanwhile shore up our user base so we'll have momentum when the Mac version hits the streets.  And if that doesn't work, it is game over anyway, so why not?"
 

iRelevant
The question is how successful and quickly "Sonar" can be integrated in a Social DAW ecosystem. As I see it what's going on in the world of music, total integration is the name of the game. Horizontal and Vertical. Everything after the creative impulse to strike a key until the note reaches someone else's ear.

Totally agree.  However, it seems that some of this integration was already done as part of the Momentum project, and I'd think some of that could be reused.
Conceptually it isn't that complicated (although the implementation could be a lot of work).  You will have tracks sitting in the various Bandlab tools and you want a 2-way synchronization between the cloud/mobile tracks and the DAW tracks.  Of course, there is a lot of metadata to think about as well, and how to handle a mismatch in the effects and instruments available on each platform.  And maybe you would want the ability to keep all tracks on the DAW, but sync stems back to the cloud platforms so that the cloud/mobile stuff isn't trying to deal with 60 tracks.  And so on.
But it doesn't all have to happen at once.

It's all about routes to customers really. Ableton is very popular with people in electronic music and from a DJ background, and very much designed for them. ProTools has the "industry standard" reputation. Logic has the massive install base of Garage Band on all Apple devices for free to build on, plus also a strong industry reputation. Studio One ties in very strongly with Presonus as an audio hardware company.
 
So I'd say it's not so much about street cred or percieved hipness per se. It's about having some kind of cachet that will being in new customers. Pro Tools has never been "hip" in that sense, but it has other things it can draw on.
 
Sonar is a bit out on its own in that sense. People who know it tend to regard it very highly. And everyone else is barely aware of it, it sometimes seems.

To say Sonar wasn't profitable is absurd. We have NO idea what Gibson did. What they snafu-ed etc. They owe 1/2 Billion dollars today. So why would anything they do or did be used as a guide or to come to a conclusion. Except a BAD conclusion.
I agree that many left because some issues they had were never addressed. 
 
 

sharke
Frankly given Sonar's lack of "street cred" among kids, I don't see how that was ever going to be rectified without putting it in front of their faces in the context of something like BandLab. I find that many young people haven't even heard of Sonar. If you can get a good sized crowd of young newbies using Sonar through their contact with BandLab, you'll start to see things like video tutorials making the rounds, and kids will start referencing the program on sites like Reddit and Twitter.

Speaking of kids:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dcTw-Jk-yE
 
(You have to hang in there past the 1:20 mark.)