I just heard that Gibson is having financial issues ($450 million, supposedly). Does anyone know if this is true? How could this affect Cakewalk? I sure don't want my lifetime membership to go defunct!!

rodreb
I just heard that Gibson is having financial issues ($450 million, supposedly). Does anyone know if this is true? How could this affect Cakewalk? I sure don't want my lifetime membership to go defunct!!

 
If Gibson begins to divest its assets, and Cakewalk is one of the assets divested, and Cakewalk is acquired by some sort of Private Equity firm or an industry player such as InMusic or Magix, you should then immediately assume your lifetime membership is no longer guaranteed.  So save yourself the trouble; make the assumption now.

I thought the world is ending thread got locked.

I solved this problem 3 months ago.

eph221
I solved this problem 3 months ago.

You bought a second copy of SONAR as backup?

As much as I love Sonar, if they get shuffled off to some other corporation, again, I might finally have to consider going to another DAW. I've been here since Sonar 1 and thought Cakewalk had finally gotten the stable, committed ownership it deserves. I felt the Gibson era was the best we had seen yet. 

A lot of things are going on in this world we live in.
Teenagers are not running out to the stores in droves to buy guitars like they were when we were kids.
While our teen idol was the amazing Eddie Van Halen and his master tapping thing, Taylor Swift seems to be the new "Guitar Hero" for this new generation.
 
So guitar sales are down across the board, not just Gibson. The Guitar center chain is in the hole big time.
Did anyone see the article "The death of the 6 string guitar" this past summer ?
Gibson was prepared for the shift and started trying to boost sales in other places. Like the sales on Ukuleles. Which seems to be picking up quite a bit.
 
To be totally honest, Gibson is not the only company riding with the times.
DAW sales across the board have gone down (not just Sonar).
 
But this is not the first time we have seen a decline of the 6 string. Disco almost did the same thing
back in the 1970. Almost killed guitar sales. I think the sample based music, the click and drag songwriting has taken over. It has a bit to do with being lazy (not wanting to learn an instrument). and price (not wanting to buy a 500 dollar drum set when you can download the samples for 20 bucks).
 
When I ever I see a photo of an Alien from another planet (with its large head and huge eyes), I wonder if that's us in 50000 years from now. Our body's have mutated to accommodate our habits (sitting in front of a computer monitor and using our brain more than our body, sipping a juice box full of slim-fast. 
 
I think Cakewalk will be fine. They have been around a while now and I don't think they are a big company. so overhead is manageable. They offered "Lifetime updates" over a year ago now.
What's happened since ? many good features, many good fixes. if they were trying to cash out I think we would see a decline. We haven't seen that yet with Cakewalks production of Sonar.
 
 

If you transported the Taylor Swift fans back 30 years, they wouldn't be listening to EVH, they'd be into Madonna, Janet Jackson, or Kylie Minogue.
 
I've seen this kind of thing mooted here before..''We had led Zeppelin, they have Justin Bieber'..yeah, but we had Donny & Marie Osmond and David Cassidy too..
 
I don't buy this 'kids don't want to learn an instrument' thing either. From what I see on YouTube, there are thousands of young kids playing guitar, and many of them seem to want to tackle some of the most complex rock music too, loads of Dream Theater covers for example.
 
On Wednesday I helped a 20 year old lad set up his new Alesis Nitro kit. His heroes are Art Blakey and Buddy Rich.

Justin Bibba's new song is actually pretty good

Gibson's decline started about when Les Paul died, coincidence?