GIBSON BRANDS ANNOUCEMENT REGARDING CAKEWALK, INC.

Gibson Brands announced today that it is ceasing active development and production of Cakewalk branded products. The decision was made to better align with the company’s acquisition strategy that is heavily focused on growth in the global consumer electronics audio business under the Philips brand.
Cakewalk has been an industry leader in music software for over 25 years by fusing cutting-edge technology with creative approaches to tools that create, edit, mix, and publish music for professional and amateur musicians. Gibson Brands acquired Cakewalk in 2013.
Gibson Brands, a growing company in the music and sound industries, was founded in 1894 and is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Gibson Brands is a global leader in musical instruments, consumer electronics, and professional audio, and is dedicated to bringing the finest experiences to consumers by offering exceptional products with world- recognized brands.

I hope the forum is safe, especially the Coffee House... I'd kinda miss this place.

+1, this has been a cool place to hang out for the last 10 years or so.

The mods said that all the servers would continue to operate.  I hope that is true!

What does that actually mean? Gibson has never developed Cakewalk products in the engineering sense, but perhaps their definition of "develop" refers to marketing. If that's the case, then Gibson hasn't ever really done much for CW in that regard.
 
"Production" is a scarier word. Again, Gibson has never produced Cakewalk products, Cakewalk has. If it means ceasing sales then that's a problem. I would expect that a likelier route is they'll seek a buyer. Gibson is already rated as "junk" by Moody's due to their financial problems. It's normal for a company in trouble to shift focus back to their core strengths and concentrate on their highest-margin best-sellers, and software has never been a logical fit for a guitar company. Software is rarely a good fit for a hardware manufacturer.
 
 

Bit
Opcode?  

I take it to mean 'we're not funding Cakewalk to develop anything new'.
 
 

jamesg1213
I take it to mean 'we're not funding Cakewalk to develop anything new'.
 
 

that's what I read it as.  in other words - no more lifetime updates...as we were promised.  
 
 
and since the Cakewalk company is owned by Gibson, then when they say "we plan no further development" they mean Cakewalk will no longer receive budget from Gibson to develop new code.  It *could* also mean they have fired the development team or given them notice since they have no budget for their jobs.
 
"...and production" means they will no longer be "producing" anything under the cakewalk brand.  if there were physical CDs/DVDs then the current ones will likely be sold at a huge discount (or possibly destroyed) and they will no longer sell cakewalk downloads or physical CDs/DVDs at retailers.  

Which likely means the end of the road. It would be an odd statement to issue if they were looking to sell Cakewalk.

Ah well... The money I splashed out on Lifetime updates is gone... And, in the grand scheme of things, most of my money had gone into my plug-ins, not SONAR.
 
Let's hope that we at least are able to continue using SONAR, in its current form for some time to come.