bapu
My SPlat works just fine. If development stopped tomorrow it would still operate just fine.

Unless the last guy to leave shuts down the servers that let you install and run it on a new machine. There is no obligation for a bankrupt company to continue service to customers, and no source of revenue to ensure that it will. 

I don't understand why Cakewalk needs a parent company anyway.
Seems like any brownstone that could contain the staff would be sufficient for Noel and the newbies to
bang away at features and bugs. The software isn't boxed and they don't even need phones anymore so, yeah.
 
 

bitman
I don't understand why Cakewalk needs a parent company anyway.
Seems like any brownstone that could contain the staff would be sufficient for Noel and the newbies to
bang away at features and bugs. The software isn't boxed and they don't even need phones anymore so, yeah.
 
 

Agreed.  I'm sure the CW side of the equation is a money-maker.  In the worst case, another company would buy Cakewalk from Gibson.   CW probably funds the ideas like robot tuners...
 
I wonder how much Gibson (& Fender) are pricing themselves out of the new guitar market?  I was in a chain store the other day, and a new Telecaster (not a Gibson guy, but i'd assume they're similarly marked up) cost around $1800CAD.  I bought a new MIM model back in 1991 for $350CAD and put in another $200 for new pickups, and it still sounds and feels as good as a new USA model.  At most, i could probably sell it for $500.  You could buy my guitar, an incredible amp, and guitar lessons for 2 years for what a new Tele costs today!

I found quite a few references on the web going back a number of years about "dire financial troubles" (July 2009 was the date of one early comment) for Gibson. Why is this report substantially different? I'm not trying to be combative, just wondering....

If Les Pauls would be 600.00 again or less, they wouldn't be able to make em fast enough. But no.... The have the Cadillac syndrome and it's taking them down.

And there was that guy a few weeks back that just learned that CW was owned by Gibson.
 
I wonder what he's thinking today?

bitman
If Les Pauls would be 600.00 again or less, they wouldn't be able to make em fast enough. But no.... The have the Cadillac syndrome and it's taking them down.

I think it would be pretty difficult to out cutthroat the makers of really cheap, while still reasonably playable, guitars. The only clear winners in the post-2008 world are the purveyors of luxury goods, for which the new even more wealthy gladly spend much more than value for the status of the brand. These luxury goods did well even through the depths of the recession, and lowering the price of such commodities devalues the brand dramatically. Most of the big guitar makers have introduced a variety of value lines, that sell at a quarter to half the price of their status instruments, but that may just represent a strategy of competing against themselves.  
 
One issue is the massive decline in guitar sales to young musicians, for which the popularity of rap and hiphop are largely to blame. The days of five guitarists and a drummer mounting the stage for an hour of pandemonium as the norm, have been replaced by lesser poets reciting doggerel while a crew of twenty guys with nothing in their hands wanders about the stage aimlessly. If you can get laid, let alone rich, without having to bruise your fingers or learn to do anything except speak, then taking up guitar is not so attractive. 
 
The other major impact on the guitar market is the trend for young musicians to produce their work in the box, using SONAR or one of its many easier to master competitors. If you want to do that, then it makes more sense to pick up keyboards, than fretboards. Even with that keyboard incentive, the sales of wood and wire pianos has largely tanked. Why spend the money on a device that cannot talk to your computer? 

 
Cure the "purist" debaters.

bapu
And there was that guy a few weeks back that just learned that CW was owned by Gibson.
 
I wonder what he's thinking today?

Probably won't notice,
 
but FF to the year 2021..........
 
"Hey, how come Gibson is suddenly having financial issues?"

slartabartfast

bitman
If Les Pauls would be 600.00 again or less, they wouldn't be able to make em fast enough. But no.... The have the Cadillac syndrome and it's taking them down.

I think it would be pretty difficult to out cutthroat the makers of really cheap, while still reasonably playable, guitars. The only clear winners in the post-2008 world are the purveyors of luxury goods, for which the new even more wealthy gladly spend much more than value for the status of the brand. These luxury goods did well even through the depths of the recession, and lowering the price of such commodities devalues the brand dramatically. Most of the big guitar makers have introduced a variety of value lines, that sell at a quarter to half the price of their status instruments, but that may just represent a strategy of competing against themselves.  
 
One issue is the massive decline in guitar sales to young musicians, for which the popularity of rap and hiphop are largely to blame. The days of five guitarists and a drummer mounting the stage for an hour of pandemonium as the norm, have been replaced by lesser poets reciting doggerel while a crew of twenty guys with nothing in their hands wanders about the stage aimlessly. If you can get laid, let alone rich, without having to bruise your fingers or learn to do anything except speak, then taking up guitar is not so attractive. 
 
The other major impact on the guitar market is the trend for young musicians to produce their work in the box, using SONAR or one of its many easier to master competitors. If you want to do that, then it makes more sense to pick up keyboards, than fretboards. Even with that keyboard incentive, the sales of wood and wire pianos has largely tanked. Why spend the money on a device that cannot talk to your computer? 

Gibson's problem is that the "cheap" guitars are really f'n good these days.  They also have the same problem as Harley.  That being that their biggest fans are getting older and older.  Subsequent generations don't have to have "Gibson" on the headstock or "Harley-Davidson" on the fuel tank (and every other part of the bike it can possibly be printed or engraved ).
 
Same for Fender, IMO.