You know, I had a pretty long post here, but then deleted it before posting.
 
Gibson is the big dog here. Gibson is to blame for all of it. If CW employees were messing up, the big dog needs to step up.
 

When I buy a piece of hardware it often comes with one or 2 free software packages with reduced features. That is how I first learned about Fruity Loops and Ableton among other software.

It certainly gets the word out about products and allows you to try them. This was happening before Gibson bought Cakewalk. Cakewalk could have done the same. As others have said the Marketing people seemed to be asleep at the wheel. You can be the best in the world but if no one knows about you, then you and your product will fail.

As far as Gibson goes I have little respect for them since "Henry" took over. When it comes to their Guitars, acoustic or electric, the quality control is not very good to say the least.

The announcement as too the closing of Cakewalk was less than reasonable. Cakewalk has had no problem sending me emails to advertise products and advise me of updates, but no email to advise me of their imminent closing. Like many I am not a forum regular and had I not decided to check the Sonar forum for Black Friday deals I would have had no idea about their closing.

Had the servers been closed early I would have been out of luck to properly back up all the items I bought from Cakewalk over the years. There are probably people who are non professional hobbiests who may still not know of the closing.

At least they are keeping the forums, website and servers open for now, and we have been promised an update that will avoid authorization problems in the future. This is very positive.

I am appalled that Gibson could not wait until after your Thanksgiving holiday to have this announcement made.
Gibson's lack of thoughtfulness is disgusting.

jude77In the end SONAR, even though it was an outstanding product, was like the Sears of DAWs and found itself unable to compete in a changing marketplace.

SONAR was like the Windows Phone of DAWs. And I was using a Windows Phone until very recently. Now I have an iPhone and Cubase because WP and SONAR missed the popularity boat. What a world.
 

z1812
The announcement as too the closing of Cakewalk was less than reasonable. Cakewalk has had no problem sending me emails to advertise products and advise me of updates, but no email to advise me of their imminent closing. Like many I am not a forum regular and had I not decided to check the Sonar forum for Black Friday deals I would have had no idea about their closing.

 
Yeah, I'm kind of disturbed by the fact that I've received no direct communication about this from Cakewalk, while I'm still on a monthly payment plan. I would've had no idea about this if I hadn't come to the forum with a dumb question about the metronome.

sharke
I should think in reality there's a lot of blame to go round, both Gibson and Cakewalk. At the end of the day Cakewalk were responsible for the direction the program was headed, and that direction was not enough to attract new users in the kind of numbers that would have saved the company. I've said it a lot before and I still think it's true - Cakewalk did not do enough to attract fresh new amateur bedroom producers.

These kids aren't miking up drums and guitars and soundproofing rooms and recording bands, they're using synths and samplers and a plethora of modern electronic production techniques to make contemporary styles of music, and they're doing it in small rooms on headphones. There was literally nothing steering this market demographic to Sonar instead of FL and Ableton. Pro Tools has the pro studio market cornered, and it was frequently apparent to me that Sonar's core base continued to be older guys who write and produce more traditional forms of music.

Ask the question "how long have you been using Sonar" either on this forum or the Facebook groups, and 90% of the answers will be along the lines of "Since the DOS days - here's a photo of my original floppies!" or "been using it since 1998." You'll be lucky to see a single person who says they just started using it. It had an image as a long in the tooth DAW popular with aging guitarists, even though it is better than things like Ableton and FL in so many ways. Many here never saw a problem with that and said they were happy to use a program which doesn't appeal to kids. Well, those kids have money - their parent's money - and Cakewalk needed it. Desperately.

hindsight is a wonderful thing .. pro audio market has had some big players falling / failing for years, some of you act surprised.
 
all this talk / rubbish about a class action.. sorry , it's not some $30k car, with some rather "innovative" emission test programming on the ECU.  I took someone to court a while back, it was a headache *BUT* I needed to do it out of principle as I knew they were a lying, and worse doing it in front of potential customers.
 
if you did the lifetime upgrades and you got your 2 years worth, you aren't LOADS out of pocket, vs what I have to pay for other products years.
 
you can still use sonar for a while.I disliked aspects of it vs rivals .. rewire (with reason) is the worst implementation  of that I've seen ... it was over complex, when it didn't need to be.
 
from when roland stopped dealing with cakewalk, then I thought whats going on... roland ain't exactly a small player.
 
things ran it's course.. growing up, my dad got made redundant from 2-3 jobs, so yer I saw that aspect with him.. or folks turning up to a closed shop, like with digital village.
 
pro audio company I worked for in 2000.. the owner now sells bikes.. joking being, my dad did that many moons ago in a market.
 
you should be past the stage of getting raged about things now.... s.... happens.
 
90% of what we worry about is out of our control.
 

One thing was done wrong, well not at all... Offensive Marketing! 
Many saw it! I said it! others said it! Create Sonar VS AllDAW Videos! and push them! That's ALL they had to do!
Facebook is like $10.00 for like 300 direct market hits! Geez!

I hate to say this, but the reason I didn't go in for the 'lifetime BS' is because I didn't mind paying the $100 a year to support the company, and believed that the 'lifetime' idea was like the Cloister Bell in the Tardis.  Bong!  Bong!  Then they raised the $100/yr to $180/yr and that killed it for me.  I backed up every .exe that Command Center stuck on my harddrive like some music-survivalist, and purchased a 2 terabyte drive to clone everything when the inevitable day comes I suffer hardware failure. 
 
As far as people dissing Sonar, some people get off being negative and critical when they don't know what they are talking about and are misinformed.  I think they are Trump voters.

GregGraves
As far as people dissing Sonar, some people get off being negative and critical when they don't know what they are talking about and are misinformed.  I think they are Trump voters.

But unlike cakewalk users, Trump voters backed a winner.

There is not much more what I can add to what is already said, so I give my personal view on this case.
 
First of all - A lot of people raged when Sonar went from 8.5 to the "X" series. Personally I think they did a really good move with that. It was all about attracting "new blood", and that was really needed for Cakewalk to survive.
 
Secondly (and that's again a personal opinion) - I think dropping Project 5 was not an very clever idea. It was a program with a lot of potential. Yes - there was Ableton Live too, but there WAS room for an contender. Just look at Bitwig, and you get what I mean.
 
Later they tried the above again with the matrix view, but sadly after the introduction it was never developed any further. It was some halfway development, that lead nowhere at the end. And that's a shame, because it has a huge potential to draw in that badly needed "new blood".
 
This was symptomatic for the direction Sonar was heading. I have the feeling Cakewalk was aiming at the more "professional" section of the market. I think that was a big mistake, because that "top of the market" was already occupied by some big brands. Sonar simply had no chance to wriggle itself into that high end of the market.
 
A lot of us (luckily not all of us) look down on what's called "bedroom producers". Unfortunately for them that's where the money is at this moment. And those people are intensive users of MIDI, samples and loops. Like it or not - If Cakewalk had developed Project 5 further, and gave it the same attention and "outfit" as they gave the Sonar series, they would have a potential winner on their hands now. They got a second chance with the matrix in Sonar, but, frankly said, they blew it. And by that they just lost the chance to draw in that group of new users.
 
All what I said here is nothing new. I have been saying that from the moment they dropped Project 5. I was always an fierce promoter of the "X" direction Sonar was taking, and was very happy when the matrix was introduced. Over the years I got less enthusiastic, because the development in the direction I thought was needed was stagnating. For me the tipping point was when Sonar's MIDI got lagging behind what other programs (like Cubase) where offering me. Add to that the increased yearly cost, and the battle was in humble opinion "lost".
 
It's sad Sonar ended this way, but it does not surprise me. They had their chances, but kept primarily targeting the wrong market and at the end failed.

The reddit AMA ( ASK ME ANYTHING ) from former Cakewalk Employee ( UsedToWorkAtCakewalk ) continues .. with more "inside" info. 
 
BTW UsedToWorkAtCakewalk said:
 
" I would treat everything I'm saying as 'from my perspective'. I was not a part of all the decisions or every conversation."

So up to everyone individually how they want to take all this ..
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/...ISAK8R&sh=2dc889b3