Joe_A
And most have to do with "marketing partnerships", who's giving away their software with everything 79.00 piece of hardware equals name recognition and those recording no more than two or four channels limited use will never change from the "freeware", then tell their friends what they're using, and so on.

I think this is very true.  But I also think most Sonar users (a relatively sophisticated, objective, knowledgeable crowd) would agree that for the "price performance" that SONAR delivers today, it is very under-represented in the market.  Of the "serious DAW users" I know, 80% are non in it professionally, even for part time income, and they tend to go for Reaper or some of the Mac stuff.  The ones I know who are making some professional use of a DAW are all using Pro Tools, Cubase, StudioOne or SONAR.  And of that set, I'd say StudioOne has its base mostly because of the give-away marketing.  In my case, I had one of those free disks for a couple of years before I actually installed it in order to collaborate with a colleague. and then I did an upgrade to their full producer product.  In that case, my colleague had switched from Cubase to StudioOne after he got a free disk with a Presonus audio interface, and he found StusioOne was a lot more intuitive than Cubase.  And he upgraded to the full S1 version at the same time I did.  This type of marketing works.
 
It is a little frustrating, not that the SONAR market share is so low, but that there seems to be so little awareness of SONAR, which is one of the most established products in the market.  One would think that the Gibson family would present many opportunities to work on that awareness in the same way Presonus has done for SuudioOne.  But there is a really big problem with that, and that is FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
 
SONAR is great, but most of the users have been immersed in the SONAR culture for many years if not decades. Things that make sense to the long-term SONAR user may be completely bewildering to a new person who happens to turn up on the doorstep.  I have no insight into Gibson's marketing plans.  But I do notice there has been a lot of attention on the first impressions.  The command center makes installation coherent.  The start page and the recent track add changes make the product more welcoming for newcomers.
 
Some have expressed a distaste for these pretty veneers, but I would suggest they are really important if the market share is to grow -- indeed if SONAR is even able to keep a critical mass.  So I hope they continue to devote resources to making the product welcoming to the new user, and then follow that up with marketing efforts to raise the awareness of the product.  There is much that can be done here, and it doesn't always require a multi-million dollar advertising budget.

I googled "Best Daw Software for 2017" and the second choice was from ehomerecordingstudio dot com.  And Sonar was ranked as #2.  Even though the writer of the article wrote some negative comments overall, mostly because Sonar was not available as a cross-platform DAW (Mac and PC).  But just the fact that this site listed it as #2 and ProTools as #10, tells you that you'll never get the same ranking repeated by any polls, reviews, or "professional" opinion rankings.  And even though this site wrote mostly negative things about Sonar, it sill showed up as #2, just behind Presonus Studio One 3.

Also browsing various Google results, Sonar seems to show up a lot in the top ten, sometimes #5, sometimes #3.  But it's up there and it's a contender in the professional world of DAW software.  The rest comes down to personal taste and workflow.

https://ehomerecordingstu.o.com/best-daw-software/

I think sonar has become stuck in the middle...you have a large younger audience wanting to do edm without learning an instrument. This crowd has all migrated to flstudio...live...bitwig...ect. and sonar does not  appeal to them because of the non hype and traditional set up. Then you have the new musicians and older ones turning to computers getting told that the professionals only use pro-tools. The mac users are going to stick with logic because of the price and they buy everything apple...so i see it more as a closed market. Leaving sonar and cubase  and studio one as the remaining market.Cubase has the history and introduction of new tech(vst) behind it...so some people will never leave because of the deep knowledge of it....those that do become disgruntled move to studio one. I also find that studio one with the more traditional release versions gets alot of free press and have used that to their advantage(web reveals of new versions).The monthly updates are great for those using the program but dont get any attention in the press or on music web sites.Out of sight...out of mind. In the last 5 years post about sonar have significantly dropped on places like gearslutz...kvr...vi-control ect.

Its interesting it ranks sonar above cubase, fl and ableton. You only have to browse the internet to see what's popular and Id bet money that there are more people using those daws than sonar. Poll is definitely skewed IMO.

nyxsoftware
The monthly updates are great for those using the program but dont get any attention in the press or on music web sites.

That's a great point.  I do think there could be a marketing solution to that that would position the monthly release for "power users" and "insiders", and still have annual events that roll up the full set of benefits delivered over the past 12 months.

That web site was created 6 months ago.

cparmerlee
 
SONAR is great, but most of the users have been immersed in the SONAR culture for many years if not decades. Things that make sense to the long-term SONAR user may be completely bewildering to a new person who happens to turn up on the doorstep.  I have no insight into Gibson's marketing plans.  But I do notice there has been a lot of attention on the first impressions.  The command center makes installation coherent.  The start page and the recent track add changes make the product more welcoming for newcomers.
 
Some have expressed a distaste for these pretty veneers, but I would suggest they are really important if the market share is to grow -- indeed if SONAR is even able to keep a critical mass.  So I hope they continue to devote resources to making the product welcoming to the new user, and then follow that up with marketing efforts to raise the awareness of the product.  There is much that can be done here, and it doesn't always require a multi-million dollar advertising budget.

Ahem one more comment.

The above is a very applicable and good comment.
We recently had a great example, the OP that was enthusiastically complaining about how hard he felt it was to get started with Sonar. Granted some come across as complaining that they have to put in any effort at all on their own (oh the travesty of it all, where will it end..hand on forehead)...

But there is a need for a "setting up two tracks with typical settings in place and only action required is to press one BIG button and record" pretty screen.

That hooks people. *Not unlike fishing magnate Zebco selling all in one package with inexpensive rod, hoods, tackle box with three lures, and bait bucket. All visual, all ready to go, for the father taking his kids fishing the first time.

Get Users invested some small way. Now, if we're talking about these actions, Cakewalk has already thought of them....this goes back to they have some type of strategy we'll never know but don't have to.

FWIW there's a service called MI Sales Trak that provides data on retail sales. That's not as relevant for software as it is for hardware given how much software is downloaded directly, but retail remains a semi-significant share of sales. MI Sales Trak's info is proprietary, copyrighted, and the subscriptions are very expensive, so I cannot tell you what the rankings are for SONAR. What I can say is they rank the top 10 selling software packages each month in terms of market share, dollar share, and by price point; suffice it to say that from time to time, reading the report makes my day. 
 

Anderton
FWIW there's a service called MI Sales Trak that provides data on retail sales. That's not as relevant for software as it is for hardware given how much software is downloaded directly, but retail remains a semi-significant share of sales. MI Sales Trak's info is proprietary, copyrighted, and the subscriptions are very expensive, so I cannot tell you what the rankings are for SONAR. What I can say is they rank the top 10 selling software packages each month in terms of market share, dollar share, and by price point; suffice it to say that from time to time, reading the report makes my day. 
 

That's cool/nice to know 

I was in one of the Big Box music stores today (I'll leave out the company name to protect the innocent, and it isn't really important.)  I was talking with the store manager about some educational initiatives unrelated to DAWs or music production.  Along the way I mentioned that they used to host monthly user groups for Protools and Cubase.  I asked how that went.  He said they discontinued it because they only had a handful of people interested enough to attend regularly.  I mentioned I use SONAR more than other DAWs.  He was diplomatic but it was clear he saw SONAR as much lower interest than the other two.
I didn't pursue the point.  Part of it probably reflects that they rarely sell SONAR in the stores.  That is part of what happens with the monthly update.  The whole thing is electronic delivery, which really doesn't fit with the retail store model.  I'm not saying that is good or bad, just that it is a fact.  The stores aren't pushing it and nobody comes into the stores asking for it.
In contrast, when I recently upgraded my StudioOne software, I DID do that in this store.