Cakewalk promoted this on their website where loyal users follow them. If you were interested in taking part in the draw all you had to do was fill in your email to be in it. When the draw was done, over the period of a week emails went out to those selected and they were offered to buy the pre release of Sonar, Artist, Producer or Platinum.
Simple really. Bill Jackson from Cakewalk explained it was a good opportunity to test out all their new systems which included ordering, payment both full and monthly, downloads, the Cakewalk Command Centre, installation and registration.
That's a lot of changes to manage and the 200 chosen was enough of a sampling to test all those systems. As well as report back in the forum what our view of all this has been. Unfortunately there's been so much nonsense about not understanding this or that, that a lot of the feedback has been drowned out by the constant chatter.
I can't believe that some people who can operate complex software like a DAW have so much difficulty understanding simple concepts that have been presented by Cakewalk.