chuckebaby

mister happy
 Guitar and acoustic piano sales remain strong and the sales numbers for those categories dwarf the sales activity of electronic music devices by twenty fold.

This I don't buy for one second.
Gibson has been trying to push ukuleles more than electric guitars because of there growing popularity.
Look around you Mike. I don't know any kids that play guitar anymore. Its becoming a dying breed.
Its the reason Guitar center is in debt, its the reason Gibson is in debt.
 
I do agree with you on some things though.
 

From what I know, piano sales are down as well. Again, I agree with Chuck that Mr. Happy makes some really good points. 
 
For this little grey fox, the elephant in the room is software pirating. I do remember someone from Sweetwater telling me the devastating effect it has on Waves and Synthogy. When I find a student at work whose father pirated software, I always give the student a lecture on the effect on the industry. Mostly, however, students are too ethically bereft to get their fetid little minds around it: they just don't get it, period.
 
They still do get upset, however, when someone steals their milk money.
 
For those so concerned, this post was written before I followed the thread to its end, hence the "speaking out of turn" effect. Sorry about that!

Cakewalk had a great product before X1. Everyone who uses 8.5 (still) can attest to that. I don't think the skylight interface killed them, but what did hurt them (and Roland, at the time) was that they underestimated what it would cost to makeover Sonar and still have a stable, robust platform. X1 was persnickety in what kind of interface it would work with and you had too burn sage over your PC before it was happy. It became fairly common knowledge in the market that Sonar either worked for you or it didn't. X2 did little to change that.
 
By the time X3 rolled out, sales were falling due to this, as well as other market factors. Had X1 been a truly rock-solid DAW, with all of the features in X3, we may not be where we are now.
 
I think Craig is sincere in his belief that Gibson tried to extend Sonar's life in the hopes that it would become self-sustaining, but it was probably too late. You can't be the #9 or #6 (depending on where you look) DAW in the market with an unstable product for long.
 
Platinum finally got really great in the last 9 months or so. The rolling updates early on were a little rocky, at least for me. It's a shame that it took so long to get here and that it cost the company to make it happen.
 
Dan

dcumpian
Cakewalk had a great product before X1. Everyone who uses 8.5 (still) can attest to that. I don't think the skylight interface killed them, but what did hurt them (and Roland, at the time) was that they underestimated what it would cost to makeover Sonar and still have a stable, robust platform. X1 was persnickety in what kind of interface it would work with and you had too burn sage over your PC before it was happy. It became fairly common knowledge in the market that Sonar either worked for you or it didn't. X2 did little to change that.

 
I'll agree that the Skylight interface was great.  It wasn't really the problem.
 
The problem was partly that the first versions were less stable and more resource hungry.  The stability was not helped by Roland's attempt to modularize the product and sell parts of functionality (not just plugins) on an a la cart basis.
 
I think we saw better direction out of Cakewalk during the Gibson years than the Roland years.  I don't think either company did much to create synergies, though.

I wouldnt say the money was wasted gibson have had some good promotion from cakewalk. I found cakewalk looking for Roland products.

Well, please check out the zillions of killer kid guitar players, male and female on the internet. Guitars are not dying, imo they are growing. Just not the $$$ stuff. everybody and their grandmother plays guitar these days and writes also. 
BTW, to say "I don't know any kids who play guitar" means just that, YOU don't know any kids that play guitar. I mean that generally, not to anyone in particular.
 
I do not say this because I am a guitar player. I say this because everywhere I loo I see some kid shredding somewhere...once again. male and female.
Not my cup of tea(shredding and metal) but it is booming and probably one of the most popular genre of music today. Or right up there at least. Metal=Guitar
 

Guitar center is dying because of the INTERNET. Not because guitar sales are down.

They do nice guitars. My next deal im buying the speakers, if i get lucky again im buying the Guitar lol

stratman70
Guitar center is dying because of the INTERNET. Not because guitar sales are down.

GC has a big Internet business.  But the point is valid.  It is hard to believe many people would buy a high-end guitar from the Internet, but maybe starter guitars.  The big issue is all the little accessories that can easily be bought on the Internet.  They have a high margin.
 
I don't deny the Internet puts a lot of pressure on all local retailers.  That is obvious.  Nonetheless, I get a creepy feeling every time I go into a GC store.  They seem so dark and cramped.  And at least one of the stores I am familiar with has a big platform inside the front door where the "greeter" can look down to spot shoplifting.  Whenever I see that, I think of a guard tower on a prison wall.  It just doesn't seem like the kind of place I would want to shop.

mister happy
Hello,
Disagreeing with my statements is easy.

If anyone really wants to take on the subject they may refer to actual data.

For example;
 
http:\\www.goo.gl/SqDznR
 
NAMM members may access more recent info but this 2014 data is available for anyone. to read through.

Fretted Products $ 1,323,190,000
Wind Instruments $ 521,800,000
Printed Music $ 518,330,000
Percusion $ 381.570,000
Acoustic pianos $ 292.810,000
Stringed Instruments $ 109,000,000
Institutional Organs $ 29,000,000
Home Organs $ 13,000,000
Total = $3,188,700,000
 
 
Computer Music Products $ 360,000,000
used by both traditional musicians and electronic musicians

What you will notice is that despite popular stories of the demise of the music industry, the numbers were stable year to year and most categories posted small gains. Upon inspection you may notice that the highest profile businesses seem to spend so much being high profile that they often times not on the winners podium, but there are winners and music is being made by musicians with instruments that they continue to buy.

As I sit and watch the Thanksgiving day parades I am struck by the fact that the numerous marching bands have yet to be replaced with a few DJs riding on floats.

If your anecdotal evidence leads you to believe that young people no longer play music on instruments you might ask yourself "why is it that I do not know any young people that play traditional music".

If you do not care about this idea, that is absolutely fine, but if you purport to seem concerned or informed that the practice of making traditional music has disappeared you may want to figure out what it is about you that makes this perspective a part of your personal reality.

In the meantime, succeeding generations of musicians are actively continuing to pass along the knowledge and skills related to making music, These ideas will continue to benefit practitioners of all forms of music making.

This is certainly not the full story, at least not in the context of how instrument sales are related to DAW sales. The real question is: of the overall set of people who are spending money on musical instruments (either traditional or electric), which ones are buying DAWs? 
 
People who buy traditional instruments and form traditional bands aren't necessarily the biggest DAW customers. Just because kids are still joining bands, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're setting up home studios and recording themselves. Recording traditional music with real instruments at home requires a significant financial outlay (microphones, cables, stands & other accessories, soundproofing, room treatment etc). Not to mention a spare room in which to do it. How many kids and young adults have the space to set up guitar amps, drum kits and mics? Plus there's a significant knowledge barrier. Learning how to mic and record real instruments takes a lot of learning and practice. 
 
Contrast this with the kids who have dreams of becoming the next deadmau5 or Tiësto. They can set that dream in motion with a very modest financial outlay. You can put together full radio-ready productions with nothing more than a laptop, along with some small speakers or headphones. You can do it with the stock instruments and effects in Ableton, or spend a little more for Sylenth or whatever. Even something like Komplete is within their grasp. No need to mic anything up, no need for cables everywhere, no need for soundproofing or room treatment (although they might get into that later). No, they install the software, watch a few tutorials on YouTube, and away they go. Why mic a drum kit when you can download thousands of pristine drum samples for your electronic productions, absolutely free? 
 
Some will have their parents buy them Ableton, mess around with it for a while, and then get bored of it (or realize there's more to it than they thought). Ableton doesn't care - they still got the sale. What these kids have not been doing, is asking their parents for Sonar. 
 
Electronic music is by no means the most popular genre in the world. Rock and country outsell it many times over. But although I don't have any figures which relate DAW sales to genres, I'd be willing to be a large sum of money that DAW sales do not reflect music sales in terms of genre. 
 
The same goes for production tutorials on YouTube. Regardless of instrument sales, a vastly disproportionate number of the music technology tutorials you come across online involve electronic music of some sort. 
 
So who's recording real instruments at home? From my observations, it's usually the older geezers. Their kids leave home for college and they're using their disposable grownup cash to turn the spare room into the home studio they've always promised themselves. Or they've been doing this for years and have built up a collection of studio equipment over time, along with the wisdom and knowledge to use it. But I would guess that there are far fewer old geezers buying DAWs to record the album they've been fantasizing about for 20 years than there are kids who get into electronic laptop production on a whim. 
 
Meanwhile the kids who form bands are rehearsing in practice rooms or garages, and when it comes time to record themselves, they're booking time in the local cut price recording studio. 
 
Of course there are exceptions to all of this on all sides. Nonetheless, I think your assertion that Sonar's downfall had nothing to do with it failing to cater to the electronic kids is entirely wrong. You only have to look at the audio production communities on Reddit. The EDM production Reddit currently has close to 206,000 subscribers. The largest general audio production Reddit is WeAreTheMusicMakers with 211,000 subscribers, but a sizable chunk of the discussions on there involve electronic/sample based music production as well. 

Classic case of an argument loaded with dissonance from all sides. Lots of people still play instruments. Unfortunately, there is a glut of lowcost instruments that are not nearly as profitable as in the past. Odds are very good there are actually more people playing instruments of some sort than people using strictly electronic means. However, it is a totally unreasonable compatison because sales, charts etc clearly show which is dominating the culture of youth. This year a reality tv character had one pop hit consisting of literally 3 notes and a trap beat and is now worth 4 million. I guarantee no guitarist, pianist, flutist, etc will come out of nowhere to generate that kind of buzz or income so quickly. It sucks, but it is what it is. Aside from the bigtime film scorers, the Metro Boomin's, Deadmaus' of the world are dominating both pop and underground dance scenes. Timbaland commannds 1 million per song to produce. It doesn't mean acoustic instruments are dead. In fact, it's the opposite. Even these electronic based producers rely heavily on musicians and inspire young musicians to play. Their goals are just different. In the past that kid picking up guitar wanted to front a band. Now ge wants to create hybrid sounds to send to his laptop to manipulate.