As so many others have pointed out, SONAR never really had the "pro street cred" of PT and others.
Financially, Avid conditioned its users to a cost of doing business that was higher and reinforced that notion that this is the cost of playing with the big boys. Pros and novices alike bought into that.
 
SONAR, on the other had....had ( has?) users that whine about $99 upgrades and complain about not getting their "lifetime" of software updates. Apparently that's not a very lucrative market 
 
Which begs a question: Knowing what you know now, how many of you might have happily paid a little bit more if you knew it was the difference between keeping SONAR alive and having it shuttered?
 
<raises hand>

jpetersen
They mean they want to focus on hifis, radios, batteries etc. associated with the purchase of the Consumer Electronics division of Philips they made in 2014.
 
http://www.gibsoninnovations.com/en/our-brands/philips
 
Unfortunately, having publicly committed to a monthly continuous delivery model makes it impossible to move from a development mode to just maintenance mode without everybody noticing.

That’s nice but I fail to see the connection with this and Cakewalk. If Gibson doesn’t see profits in continuing Cakewalk products because they made the dumb move (or crooked move) of selling Lifetime updates then they should just say so because this makes no sense unless you assume they planned to sell the lifetime updates, offer some... for a while, then take the money and run while lying about the reason to avoid liability. They should refund people who bought lifetime updates in good faith. Is anyone here an attorney? I’d actually feel better about it if they told the truth. This Phillips is not the reason, rather it’s an excuse.
J

sonarman1
Despite not covering the huge mac userbase cakewalk was successful. They weren't doing excellent in the market but they were doing fine.

Not sure I understand this reasoning. "Successful" is a subjective term, but we can for our purposes define it here as something which at least manages to stay afloat and make a profit. If Cakewalk had been successful it wouldn't have been sold and offloaded twice, and there would be a line of investors interested in it now. 
 
The problem Sonar had was that it was not attracting enough new users. Its user base is aging, and that's why in my mid 40's I almost feel like one of the "young'uns" around here. There's nothing wrong with that per se, and it's resulted in one of the wisest, most knowledgeable and mature audio production communities on the internet. Unfortunately that does not translate to a healthy revenue stream. 
 
That was Cakewalk's problem. It's not to say that Cakewalk couldn't have turned it around - of course they could. But not with a soulless husk of a company like Gibson cracking the whip. 

Sonar is not that popular.
In many ways it's the Dangerfield of Daws.
Maybe because Cakewalk sounds like a bakery and SONAR while technically correct, it overthinking it.
Momentum is a strange name for a mobile idea catcher.
 
There is little wrong with the code or what it does compared to it's peers.
It's called by some dorky monikers. And that's bad. After while you don't want to say you use
SONAR. It's kinda like RADAR which is / was also a daw.
 
But what do I know.

jbow

That’s nice but I fail to see the connection with this and Cakewalk. If Gibson doesn’t see profits in continuing Cakewalk products because they made the dumb move (or crooked move) of selling Lifetime updates then they should just say so because this makes no sense unless you assume they planned to sell the lifetime updates, offer some... for a while, then take the money and run while lying about the reason to avoid liability. They should refund people who bought lifetime updates in good faith. Is anyone here an attorney? I’d actually feel better about it if they told the truth. This Phillips is not the reason, rather it’s an excuse.
J

Hi Julien
 
According to an ex-Cakewalk employee's exposé on Reddit, the lifetime update model was dreamt up and implemented by Cakewalk, not Gibson.
 
 
To quote:
 
.... The lifetime plan was a Cakewalk idea, not a Gibson one. To elaborate "the plan" for lifetime was:

• Be like FL Studio and make updates free
• Offer compelling add-ons. Kind of like Project5 where you could buy extra stuff if you needed it. This could be more pluggable features like Drum Replacer and effects like the Adaptive Limiter
• Lure in lots of new customers with the free updates for life thing

The plan wasnt followed and after 6-8 months of stagnation not a single compelling/sellable feature or plugin was ready.

dcmg

SONAR, on the other had....had ( has?) users that whine about $99 upgrades and complain about not getting their "lifetime" of software updates. Apparently that's not a very lucrative market 

No kidding.... You can't make money selling stuff to people with no money.


Nor is "lose money on every sale, but make up for it in volume" a profitable business strategy.

cakewalk hasn't got a big market share, never did.
many daw makers aligned themselves with hardware makers.. pretty much had to..
 
I found it over engineered to be honest.. e.g. drum maps or how reason rewire was implemented.
the staff are / were capable.. but they never addressed the elephants in the room .e.g scoring.
 
I dislike aspects of other daws also. e.g. studio one, isn't so great for my midi sound stuff.. and cubase is a bit too eager to ask for cash,and I've never seen the update on sale.. but is better with the midi stuff... reason should have stayed a rack style thing.. even some of their own artists mix down in a daw.
 
it would have been nice if it had worked out better with roland I felt.. but it just came across cakewalk was writing drivers for them, and roland were try to flog hardware.
 
presonus did that better in the sense of the faderport is functional outside studio one.. but really shines when used with studio one.
 
it's the balance of .. is it cheaper to build a new daw from scratch ... or re-use sonar's code if someone bought it off gibson. people like Noel obv. know it inside out, and I'd not be surprised if he was "jaded" with the whole pro audio thing, to do something else. It's a bit like when your hobby becomes your job.. it's different.
 
the market is crowded, thats for sure. maybe better to do something with VST's etc. where the userbase is far bigger, but obv. end prices are smaller.
 

dcmg
 
SONAR, on the other had....had ( has?) users that whine about $99 upgrades and complain about not getting their "lifetime" of software updates.

So what?
 
The customer is king. Once they've paid for something, they're entitled to express an opinion on whether it represents value for money or not, or whether or not they believe they've received what they paid for.
 
 

dcmg
 
Which begs a question: Knowing what you know now, how many of you might have happily paid a little bit more if you knew it was the difference between keeping SONAR alive and having it shuttered?

 
Judging by the reaction overall, I would imagine most users would have happily continued to pay for an annual 'upgrade' (maybe even pay a bit more) if it meant Cakewalk stayed in business.
 
The problem appears to be that only half of the lifetime updates model was fulfilled, and for whatever reason Cakewalk did not deliver the extras that would entice new and existing customers to part with their cash.

How many here think the name CakeWalk might have had a little something to do with their demise? That name always causes me to cringe a bit. If you had a mega studio trying to attract business would you want to be known for using software named after a child's game?
 
From what I have gleaned from the reddit posts and Craig's posts here, it sounds like they were rudderless. They would create a course and set off but midway to their destination would come up with a different course and start off again. Kinda sounds like they were stuck in the middle of the ocean, as it were, going nowhere fast. They never reached their goal of profitability as they were going in circles. Look at Momentum. It was practically dead before it was even released. It was given one week or so to make or break them? smh
 
It also sounds like their sales group was completely incompetent.
 
As to Philips, has anyone actually bought anything Philips that wasn't a light bulb? Where I work, we were offered discounts on philips shtuff. Some people bought their TV's but there were problems with them. We learned to stay away from Philips. Maybe they do better outside of the US... All-in-all, it sounds to me that Philips is just a 500 million ton anchor that is going to pull them to bankruptcy.

Philips are big in Europe