jpetersen
 
... where is that reddit AMA link?

HERE

I always had the thought that Cakewalk was not profitable - since the day it was selled to Roland.
As then Roland selled to Gibson I was shure - they are not profitable.
Because I have my own little business with digitizing tapes, vinyls ... I don't understand how a small company can  go down with so much customers.
I'm convinced that Cakewalk would be alive, if they where a few freelancer developing software for professional musician.
We are sometimes asked if we would sell our company - but I say always no way.

jpetersen
 
Again, the insider source (where is that reddit AMA link?) said the motives were well intentioned but the execution lacking. Gibson was not involved.

I don't believe anything I read on Reddit as dependable information.
Just like I wouldn't buy the SS minnow from a guy named Gilligan on Craigslist.
 
It was interesting and left one to believe it was real but its not something I would quote as fact here in these forums.
 
 

anydmusic
Sadly I think the simple truth is that Sonar just was not popular enough and in spite of the many efforts made to change that like the bundling of third party VST and content along with some great innovations like ProChannel and the creation of instruments and effects that could be sold separately it never sold as well as it should have.
 

 
Popularity is indeed the key to software success. Consider that the development cost of creating one copy of the software is very close to the total cost of production and distribution (especially given online distribution) of all the copies sold. Price per copy is largely limited by the competitive market, unless the product is so uniquely valuable that it becomes the unchallenged leader, or unless interoperability concerns make it the de facto standard. If you can sell a humongous number of copies, your profit is assured. Support of purchasers of the software is the major drag on that profit. A large and complex program requires heavy investment in the development stage, and once the market is saturated, new sales fall off unless old users can be enticed to buy new versions. At some point current users are likely to find they have all they need to do what they want and then stand pat until technology, OS updates etc. make their current version obsolete. At that point there is little to be done except to recruit new users. Typically that requires convincing people who have another program that also probably does all they need to switch or convince first time buyers that your product is the absolutely only place to start. Both of those efforts require massive mind control via promotion or advertising which is usually unaffordable for a company that is not doing well financially.
 

dcmg
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.

One of the things ProTools has/had going for it goes right back to the early days of DAWs sufficiently capable of replacing tape-based systems.

It offered, at a price, a combination of hardware and software that would be certain to work together. It worked with external ADAT-based hard drive recorders such as the Alesis HD24. They were thought - whether correctly or not - to offer protection against a studio owner/manager/accountant’s nightmare of recording the clients then having a computer crash that lost data. And all this was supported, at a price, by a dedicated help team and engineers who knew PT and the PT approved hardware very well indeed.

It also interfaced with existing analogue and digital hardware and basically offered a simiar paradigm to tape but with the added copy, cut and paste editing functions of digital so the razor blades and sticky tape could be slung in the bin and forgotten about.

A combination which made it relatively easy for PT to become a studio standard. Not because it was “the best” at everything, or even the best at anything, but because it removed a big bundle of uncertainty about new-fangled computers and new-fangled multi-track digital recording. And once the capital, testing and training time has been invested the tendency when considering an update is to go with the latest from the company you know.

Once the “big boys” in any industry are seen to be using something the lower reaches tend to look to the same stuff. If the leaders have tested it all out and are happy with it, then for a smaller business buying the same stuff saves on an awful lot of worry. And the customers read up on what the top studios use, and again assume that using a studio that has the “industry standard” is a wise decision, because it’s the “industry standard”.

DrLumen 
As to Philips, has anyone actually bought anything Philips that wasn't a light bulb?

Valves. Or “tubes” if you’re on the Western side of the Atlantic. Though they are mostly designs originally made by Mullard (UK) and Sylvania (USA), and modern manufacturers finally seem to have more than caught up on 80s era Philips.

Other than that, cheap consumer electronics that weren’t exactly brilliant quality. The Asian electronics industry has pretty much swamped the market segments Philips operated in in the 1970s and 80s.

Can any of us say with any certainty that Sonar is popular?  I know Cakewalk has a loyal base, but that an popularity are not that same thing.  I honestly don't know. I don't know anyone under 30 outside of this forum that uses Sonar personally.  In fact , I don't know anyone under 30 who has heard of Sonar. Obviously that could just be persecution or just my circle. I do have a pretty big circle though and it seems odd that Sonar is practically non-existant in that circle.  I work at three schools, have worked for tv stations and ad agencies.  Belong to several production and post production organizations, including being a board member at one time for for a national media organization and sadly randomly running into cakewalk users was like finding a unicorn. This forum  is the one area of my life where cakewalk abounds.  Even in music software magazines, cakewalk is usually an afterthought and gets less coverage than reaper. It seems odd that controllers and other accessories rarely list Sonar when mentioning compatibility.  

sharke

DrLumen
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?

 
Personally I don't think there was anything wrong with their name and it probably had nothing to do with their demise. What about Fruity Loops - despite being named after a child's breakfast cereal, it's been one of the most popular DAW's of all time and is quite often seen in pro studios. 
 

beat me to it.  If Fruity Loops can be successfull (and most still call it that despite name change), the name is certainly not the main factor.

Anderton
I don't think Gibson owns the lights, electric toothbrushes, etc.,just the consumer audio products.

Woox Innovations, which is what Gibson bought, was not a Philips business I’d have been entirely happy to invest in back in 2013/14. Philips had been looking for buyers for it for some time. In 2013 it looked likely to be sold to Funai for $150,000,000 then that deal was off and in 2014 Gibson acquired the company for $135,000,000 plus ongoing royalty payments to Philips, though minus the TV side of the business until 2017. Woox had 1900 employees at the time of acquisition, based in Hong Kong.

If the DAW market is over-saturated then consumer audio/video is at least equally cut-throat. Competing successfully with Sony, Samsung, LG etc. is likely to require both a lot of capital and a wait for any financially positive returns.

Gibson Brands is what, around 100 companies now? I find myself wondering if the master plan was to buy up cheaply companies in difficulties, rapidly turn them around and sell them on for a capital gain to offset the group losses in the hopes of turning things around. If it was it doesn’t seem to have worked so far.

 

We had a lot of sound engineers in our studio that laughed about SONAR.
But as they saw what we do, they were absolute surprised. They all said, that there ProTools or Logic cann't do that.
They all remembered very early versions from SONAR about he year 2000 and never had a look on this software.
 

But you are forgetting that MAYBE the far and away biggest purchasers of cakewalk aren't professionals, they are home users or musicians or semi-pro users, simply because 'we' outnumber an actual pro , probably 10,000 to 1, worldwide....So sales to professionals is very unlikely to be the culprit...
Indeed, what I liked most about SONAR, was all the very cool 'songwriting' aids (instruments, MIDI stuff, note input by piano roll or notation, etc,etc,etc ) it has or could've been developing...