Taking a break from Sunday prep here...
Definite limbo territory here. As most anyone who reads here regularly knows, I am a Cakewalk fan, with their products at the front of the line amongst my "go-to" apps for music creation and production. So, though this is preachy, I hope that the Cake folk who do monitor this forum will take it in the spirit that it is intended -- the hope that, if P5 is indeed discontinued (as many here have concluded), the company will at least have the good grace to let us know about it directly, instead of simply allowing the abyss of unknowing to swallow us up.
In addition to making annoying avatars
, I like to watch trends (economic, social, musical). After watching Cakewalk in the months following their "nuptials" with Roland, I think that we're only seeing the beginning of a major shift in the focus of CBR (Cakewalk by Roland) as a company, particular now that the Bakers are but a part of the Roland Empire.
It seems that in the current tech economy, a company can be successful in two primary ways: either as a niche-market company that offers well something that larger companies don't find desirable and thus ignore OR become a market-dominating behemoth such as Micro$oft that has its fingers in
everything. While there once was a middle ground where you could be a bit of each, the last decade of corporate evolution has virtually eliminated the middle ground, thus making it a "niche or mammoth" proposition with no where else to find success.
In the music tech industry, the home-studio revolution wave has crested, and now what was a revolution is becoming an institution. A lot of people have become settled with their favorite DAW software, hardware, PC/Mac machine, and a few add-ons. The market is saturated, and slowing down.
It costs a lot of money and effort to be an "all things to all musicians" company, and in a market where a tighter focus is a must, the wider product base will mean that you'll gradually fade away for lack of staying power. Now that Cakewalk by Roland (CBR) are maturing into an institution, to hold and increase market share, they're going to have to surrender to the "eat or be eaten" nature of the beast and tighten their focus down. Anything that does not increase market share will be gone, in short order.
Now that the home studio market is saturated, the next "hill to conquer" will be the project/semi-pro studio that Digidesign has had a good hook into for quite a while. This latest hardware/software offering indicates that CBR have decided to make their bid for this niche of the market. My take is that CBR are going to put the majority of their resources into taking on Pro Tools and slough off anything that doesn't have the wherewithal to be a solid competitor on its own merits. If you look at the product forums that rarely if ever see the presence or interaction of Cakewalk personnel, you'll quickly know what products are being sloughed off!
P5, which is a pretty neat product, unfortunately doesn't have enough market clout to remain viable. It had/has great potential to be a serious competitor to Live, but it's my guess that Live already had enough of the market locked up that Cake couldn't get enough traction to justify further development. Further shifts and developments in the DAW market dictated that a change of course was needed, and that has led us to where we are today. The low- to non-performers (P5, Sonar HS and HSXL, Guitar Tracks, etc.) are being let go in favor of making Sonar and Sonar-integrating hardware solutions a market dominator. So, here we are.
So where am I going with this? Just a few predictions, based upon observed behavior of CBR and the music tech market in general:
- We will see a few more P5-like features appear in the next two to three releases of Sonar.
- Cakewalk by Roland will have an increasing focus on making Sonar and Sonar-integrating hardware a market dominator, and it will become "the" Cakewalk product of note, while all others (except Sonar LE, because it is an effective "tool of introduction") will gradually fade away, or maybe even mercifully be properly discontinued as the Cakewalk by Roland product focus solidifies.
- The line of Cakewalk soft synths will decline to just Rapture and a new offering in the next couple of years, while Dimension Pro will follow the decline of P5, Sonar HS, and so on, because it is by now "old news," though still great software.
The sad thing is (and I hope that the hall monitors will take note of this and communicate it to the people who CAN make a difference), given the regrettable lack of class (and manners) so rampant in corporate culture today, loyal customers who invested in products that didn't get continued will very likely not be shown the courtesy of being notified that their product is being/will be discontinued.
Come on, even
Microsoft put up a
web page noting that their Digital Image line of products was discontinued.
End of rant, carry on, and thank you for listening.
Russ
post edited by Russell.Whaley - 2008/10/04 18:10:29