dubdisciple
ps i forgot one more thing in the whole big brand thing you mentioned. In the software world the big names are still enjoying success and there sems to be no direct correlation to piracy. Adobe, a company with products arguably pirated as much as any is far more profitable than many of the big names with much less piracy. Even looking at music plugins, the Gibsons and Fenders of that world seem to do well or not so well regardless of protection.  Again, not trying to say piracy is good,just that it seems to have no quantifiable relation to to sales of this kind of product. People DO find a way to buy what they want, but that is the key phrase; "what they want".  I doubt the kid who downloads Fl stufio has the same kind of want that the kid who has ben dreaming of a Les Paul Custom has and is much more inclined to do without

Good points - especially that the big brands own the smaller guys and knock off. I guess that that does put things in a different perspective. 
 
Maybe a better comparison would have been the dozens of folks I know who build boutique pedals and custom guitars and parts. If people could take their products without paying, I have a really, really tough time believing that it wouldn't affect their sales. 
 
If Fruity Loop wasn't available for download, maybe many kids still wouldn't buy it - but I can tell you first hand that there are dozens of guys who would have to buy it or something else.
 
I can't tell you how many "DJ's" I met who made money with a cracked copy of FL or Reason. I also know many studio owners who would have to buy those Waves plug-ins or accept not to be "competitive" (in their own eye).

If the free alternative wasn't there, I'm sure some of those kids would prefer to put that $10 on an album than on a flashy baseball cap or whatever else. That's the reason why my friends and I had so few things when we were kids - we put whatever money we had on music. 
 
Given the option to have music for free, it would have been pretty tempting to put money on other things we wanted. To say the least.
 
 
If only 1 out of those 10 kids who download FL would have bought it, that's still 1 lost sale. If the 9 others are regarded as irrelevant one way, it has to go both ways - the fact that the majority wouldn't pay doesn't mean that there isn't a loss of profit.

Rain, I see your point.   I think they would have to find a way to eliminate the alternatives completely.  Fl studio was not always popular with the wannabe hip-hop set.  In late 90's and early 2000's the MPC ruled hip-hop and then the Yamaha Motiff when the Neptunes sound was big. Software based production in hip-hop was pro tools on high end and Reason on lower end. fact, I suspect it was Reason's increase in security that helped boost the popularity of FL.  More of the kids I come across using cracked software tend to be using older versions.   
 
I work with a lot of urban youth and always steer them towards legal alternatives.  Another reason FL Studio is big among these kids is you can create a usable "beat" in one sitting using just the demo.  You can't save project files but you can export a finished stereo track with full use of instruments and effects.  It's a crappy but fully legal option to stealing. 

On a related note, I think Spotify and Pandora are a greater threat to the music industry under the current model than outright piracy because this is a case where willing customers are leaning more towards this route and the payoff to artists so far is very low.

.

 So when Cakewalk bought out products they really haven't made improvements.  Aren't those Sonitus plugins still only 32 bit?   That is usually the case when most products by another developer without hiring the developer.
 
 I wonder if this is a situation where they were bought out and told to keep quiet. There could also be a legal infringement.   Maybe the development team had a falling out.
 
 I hate the speculation. Well Cakewalk is still here.
 

The Sonitus DirectX plug-ins were ported to 64bit some time ago.

dubdisciple
On a related note, I think Spotify and Pandora are a greater threat to the music industry under the current model than outright piracy because this is a case where willing customers are leaning more towards this route and the payoff to artists so far is very low.

Absolutely.
 
 
 

kitekrazy1
 So when Cakewalk bought out products they really haven't made improvements.  Aren't those Sonitus plugins still only 32 bit?   That is usually the case when most products by another developer without hiring the developer.
 

 
Before Rene left, The RGC products were improved and new products were under development. Dim Pro and Rapture were created after acquisition. Z3ta also got  a new version after Rene left.  Hard to know what would have happened if he had stayed. Going into hypothetical land, I assume Camel Audio is more than pone person, so the same scenario would be less likely.

dubdisciple
 
 One of the things that drives me nuts about software companies going out of business is it seems to awaken the amatuer mathematicians that go on rants about how piracy did the company in. I have already read several and I have yet to see one person show any evidence that pirates suddenly begin buying products they were pirating if they can no longer pirate.

  There was thread on the Image Line forums where admitted crack users eventually bought the software.  Why did they stop? It wasn't because they could still crack it.  Once they saved the money they bought it.  Having excellent support was one of the reasons they went legit. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

scook
The Sonitus DirectX plug-ins were ported to 64bit some time ago.

 Do these only work in Sonar?  I tried loading them in a VST host.  Is DirectX 64 bit capable?