I, for one, am not in a hurry to draw conclusions about this transaction.
 
Yes, they do make it sound as though their intent is to revive SONAR and continue its development. But merely buying intellectual property does not commit the buyer to anything other than trying to get some return on their investment.
 
It could mean an entirely new product (although they'd be foolish to give up an established brand name), it could mean they re-purpose CW code for other products they already own, or they might just re-sell some of it to a third party. It's their IP, they can do anything they want with it. It's important to note that they didn't buy the business. They only bought Cakewalk's IP, and therefore didn't take on any of Cakewalk's obligations.

Including the obligation to keep the authentication/activation servers online. In fact, one could argue that Gibson/Cakewalk (does it even exist post-acquisition?) now have no obligation to keep the servers online.
 
So, I don't see this as good news. Yet.

I really don't care about a lifetime membership (which I have) etc. I'll happily pay again if this means carrying on with a fully supported DAW which happens to be the best one in the business. That's just my opinion.

LJB
I really don't care about a lifetime membership (which I have) etc. I'll happily pay again if this means carrying on with a fully supported DAW which happens to be the best one in the business. That's just my opinion.

Same for me,
 
Giorgio

What this news means is that Cakewalk, and by extension, Sonar, is truly dead and buried. Bandlab is not "buying" Cakewalk to continue work on Sonar - they are taking what they want from the corpse that was Cakewalk, and leaving what remains to rot and be forgotten.

Very interesting. While still at Gibson I set up a meeting between Bandlab and Alex Westner because I thought there could be a mutually advantageous partnership - I didn't think Momentum would get off the ground but could possibly fit into Bandlab's social media/web aspect, while for Bandlab, they could offer Sonar as the next step up for those in their customer base who wanted to get further into music. Alex didn't agree with me, so nothing came of it.
 
Now here we are. I met the head of Bandlab at NAMM - he's young, successful, enthusiastic, and driven. I have no idea where he will take Sonar, but I'm very happy to see that Sonar will survive.
 
Okay everybody, you can go back to playing your Les Pauls   Apparently Gibson did care about y'all.

Exciting news.  I'll be damned if I ever pay for Sonar again, though, after purchasing the lifetime update.

I hope they honor pre-existing users on a scaled basis. Whatever selling strategy they intend to employ. So, as a Platinum owner I will expect a better discount than a X3 owner and so on. Myself will not mind going back to the older 'once a year upgrade purchase'. 

gps
That's great news. It looks like a young and innovative company.

As long as they don't change Sonar into an iPhone app!

 

I love it how lifetimers are just throwing in the towel already and basically giving Bandlab an inroad to demand more money of them.  Even if Bandlab might not have been considering it, I'm sure now they will be.  Go team.  Stay strong.