The denseness of Gibson management?

The whole thing is just unbelievable. I am in business myself a long time and never EVER seen something handled so bad. With such callous disregard to a loyal client base.
 

I agree entirely with you both. I have been with Cakewalk for many years, from the old Pro Audio era and have grown to love the software as it blossomed to it's Sonar Platinum stage. I am a guitar player, and I will never ever buy Gibson brands again. Their overpriced instruments should have taken the blame for their bad business strategy. Not Cakewalk products.

chuckebaby
I would go easy with the name calling of Gibson.
They have (after all) been kind enough to keep this forum and the servers open.

Good. I hope their senior management is reading this and this is a lame duck forum now anyway.

PhilW
I'm sure they tried to sell and had no takers, hence the closedown. 
 
Gibson's issue is the circa $500 million debt hanging over them that needs a re-fi, and holding loss-making companies isn't going to help that. 

We'll likely never know, but I can well imagine them having not tried to sell. I've worked for more than one employer that's gone into a tail-spin, and I've seen this a few times: the company decides to just cut all possible outgoings that don't look immediately critical, on the assumption that they can recover later. I get the feeling that's what Gibson is doing, over all its operations, and someone probably saw the Cakewalk office salary bill as something they could just get rid of.
 
What typically happens at the end of this kind of wild cutting is that you survive just long enough to find out you don't actually have a business any more.

I was getting ready to upgrade x3 and I got email that my ability to upgrade at die count was being terminated I have upgraded for 3 ecades since I am one of the early cw adopters and upgraded as a loyal customer. I have all the synths. However I considered this threat extortion so I didn't upgrade despite having planned  to. Threatening your customers especially early adopters is bad business practice and with the recent news is that they would have taken my money and not delivered. I doubt anyone who paid for a years subscription will get a refund. So sad on many levels and they expect loyalty from customers but not the other way around. I assume craigslist Anderson is looking for work

Yes, shared sentiments here as well. Wouldn't it be great if we received some kind of monetary assistance in adopting another DAW? I mean I paid for the so-called Life-time updates as I saw it a great opportunity to keep using a program I loved and not have to shell any more money out. Now, I have to pay for another in the event that something break it...but that's just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. 

guitz
. . . large userbase . . .

So, I actually wonder.  And I don't in any way mean this to be negative, I actually do wonder.  And the answers are fundamental to the question asked.

• Does Cakewalk have a large userbase? 
• Was it growing or shrinking?
• How does it compare with the other DAWs? 
• Were there a large number of SPLAT users? 
• How much future revenue is (was) each user worth (by segment)?

By the way, I think it is really cool that people can still run Cakewalk 8.5 -- which says more about Microsoft compatibility efforts than anything -- but those folks probably weren't lighting up the revenue #s for Cakewalk (which of course isn't their responsibility either).
 
At the end of the day, my guess is that the numbers didn't work out.  If they had, well . . . 
 

John T
 
We'll likely never know, but I can well imagine them having not tried to sell. I've worked for more than one employer that's gone into a tail-spin, and I've seen this a few times: the company decides to just cut all possible outgoings that don't look immediately critical, on the assumption that they can recover later. I get the feeling that's what Gibson is doing, over all its operations, and someone probably saw the Cakewalk office salary bill as something they could just get rid of.
 
What typically happens at the end of this kind of wild cutting is that you survive just long enough to find out you don't actually have a business any more.

I agree John. All we can really do is hope that Gibson sees that the right thing to do, atm, is make sure the authorization app happens........

I can't imagine why Gibson wouldn't rather just sell the whole ball of wax to somebody? Or why some other entity wouldn't be interested in it? What would possibly be in their interest in Killing It Off?
Especially if something like Reaper is still a viable product.
WSS

Can one of you that keeps telling us cakewalk has a huge base be kind enough to provide figures to support this. I'm disputing it. I just have no frame of reference. Most polls i have seen put it behind all the major names. In all of my musical circles it is non-existent. I personally know only three people who have used Sonar as main DAW in the last 5 years. None of them are under 40. Cakewalk obviously wasn't selling enough to stay afloat or even be attrsctive to a buyer. It is totally possible cakewalk may be more valuable as a loss for Gibson than selling it at even bigger loss.

KeithAdv
I don't think it's quite fair to call Gibson management dense. I think they are reacting to a desperate situation.

I would venture to say that Gibson management was dense, but that it goes back a long way. Businesses go under when they forget why they are in business. Yes, every business wants to make money, but nearly every business out there started by wanting to provide a product or service to the public. Makes no difference if it is the corner bakery or the manufacturer of a world class musical instrument. They become a good company by listening to the customers, providing a quality product or service, and selling it for a fair price.
 
But when a business becomes more about making money then anything else, things go bad. When more money is the mantra, they begin to find cheaper places to make their product or hire people who aren't really qualified to provide a service, all to reduce their cost - but they keep their prices the same so they can make more money. It works for a while, but people ultimately realize the name alone is not worth the money and they quit buying.
 
A smart business will realize this when they get off track and work very hard to get back to where they were. Its hard, as once you lose the trust value with the public, it is hard to get it back. It can be done, but it isn't easy. The longer you wait, the harder it is. Others will instead look for the next great thing to 'invest' in, that will make them even more money. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it doesn't.
 
Gibson is no different than any other failing company. Look back and you will see a company who use to make a great product and worked hard at making a great product. Then they just worked hard at making money. Now they have neither. Most companies will fail as they are too far in debt to ever get out. Some of these companies continue as Zombie companies. They sell their name (their only thing of value) to put on products, products they don't build, service or control. Others never make it to zombie status.
 
Time will tell what happens to Gibson. But there is nothing new to see here....

If I had an if for every if I'd be richer than all the bitcoin holders.
 
If only.