The Sound Board

BandLab, the quickly growing investment group behind an expanding range of music making hardware and software lines, has today announced the acquisition from Gibson Brands of 'the complete IP of Cakewalk Inc'.

This follows Gibson's decision to cease development on all Cakewalk product, including the well-established Sonar DAW, last year, and the group's recent response to widespread reports of its worsening debt problems.

“We have been monetizing assets like stock holdings, real property and business segments," said Gibson Brands CEO Henry Juszkiewicz in a defiant statement earlier this week, and this deal looks like a first step along that road.

BandLab themselves seem to be travelling in the opposite direction, having recently acquired and relaunched brands including DJ streaming platform Chew, and cult guitar marques brands Harmony Guitars and Teisco.

Good news
The obvious good news is that the deal removes any doubts around support for Cakewalk products in the short term. In the medium to long term, it will be interesting to see if and how BandLab intends to integrate Cakewalk's software and tech into its own online music creation platform.

CEO of BandLab Technologies, Meng Ru Kuok said, “We are very excited to be bringing Cakewalk Inc’s products into the BandLab Technologies stable. Cakewalk has been an industry leader in professional music software, delivering cutting edge technology that has empowered producers and artists alike around the world for more than 30 years. We have immense respect for Cakewalk’s legacy and the incredible community of people who love the brand and rely on its products in both their personal and professional lives.

“The teams at both Gibson and BandLab felt that Cakewalk’s products deserved a new home where development could continue. We are pleased to be supporting Cakewalk’s passionate community of creators to ensure they have access to the best possible features and music products under the BandLab Technologies banner,” he said.

The deal includes only the transfer of Cakewalk Inc.’s assets and intellectual property. No other details of the deal have been released. More information will be shared about product roadmap and future features in due course.

https://cakewalk.bandlab.com/

Fantastic news - just as with the collapse, I didn't see this coming either. Hope all the employees get migrated across.

Update
This just in from BandLab CEO, Meng Ru Kuok via the Cakewalk forums:

Hello everyone :-)

I hope you don't mind me jumping in and writing a note to everyone here. The positive messages (with many questions of course!) have been really kind and I believe I speak for everyone on the BandLab team in saying thank you. This community is really incredible and we're honoured to be here and to be part of building the future of Cakewalk and SONAR.

We're now in the process of transition and migration of data, trademarks, build processes and other fun administrative things that are necessary when deals like this happen - but it's important for you all to know that we feel that the people in the community (especially the lifetime fans and users of the product) are the reason this incredible product has been around for more than 30 years and will live on many more into the future, so I'll try and stop in personally as much as I can to say hello and make sure questions are answered about the transition where possible.

An important thing we strongly believe in is to be as open and transparent as we are able to be - once the product roadmap and more information on our plans are ready within the new establishment, you guys will be the first to know. We'll keep updating the Announcement FAQ as often as we have something to update, but I quickly wanted to address a key concern I saw in and amongst the threads so far and immediately reassure everyone that even though the suite of Cakewalk & SONAR products is now within a new company, our steadfast goal is that former SONAR owners (of all versions) will not need to spend any money to cross-over/cross-grade to the future flagship product.

As you can imagine, there is some complexity in this, and I am currently personally working through all of the agreements that have a $ per unit or % dollar amount and negotiating to remove them on the go-forward to ensure this is possible. We only have 2 left to go - they are specific replaceable bits of code and are a nice to have, but hopefully this moves quickly. If it's not something that can be achieved, we'll replace them with either our own technology or work with other partners who want to be part of future releases.

This may be TMI, but I thought it may be valuable for you guys to have some insight on what's already going on outside of changing passwords and rebuilding tables.

----

In other news, I'm also very happy to let you guys know that Noel Borthwick and Ben Staton will be joining our engineering team and we're actively looking for talent to expand our team further (PM if interested!).

I was very fortunate to get to know Noel through the process, and as our conversations developed I was very pleased to find someone whose experience and personal vision on the world of music creation matched the aggressive one that our team has here at BandLab Technologies. It didn't hurt either that he promised to teach me jazz guitar...

With Ben, his passion for the project and personal story of joining Cakewalk from having started off as being a superfan really resonated with us and I'm very much looking foward to working with him too. We strongly believe that the best products come from thinking solely about what one would want as a user/consumer - it's a huge advantage to be one yourself.

There's a lot more we'll be able to share soon, and reading through all the posts here and around the web - I've seen nothing but love (famous last words ) for Cakewalk, SONAR and the community that has supported it over the years through good times and bad.

I think I'd better not say anymore, we'd rather under-promise and over-deliver, than over-promise and let you guys down. I hope you'll give our team a chance to earn your respect and for us to make great music together for many years to come.

With sincere regards,

Meng

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=3730905&fp=1

Awww, that's nice.

I really hope this works out for everyone. I still have a great fondness for Sonar even though I only ever use it for accessing archived projects.

I think this is excellent.

Add me to the list of folks anxiously awaiting word on what comes next.

I've been a Cakewalk customer since Pro Audio V5 or 6, can't even remember. I was a member of the honorary society of crash test dummies for over ten years (through most of the Sonar period). It's a wonderful tool set.

While it might sound odd, Gibson's misstep did cause me to consider other platforms more seriously. I was able to narrow it down to DP and Studio One, and I've decided to take on Studio One a little more seriously. It compliments what Sonar can do. If I could find one platform that did everything that would be awesome, but that does seem a little far fetched, and now I have a much more robust toolset. So in an odd way Gibson did me a favor. (And I may still go back and revisit DP, it is a pretty cool platform as well, but how many can one learn?)

I wish you all the best of success, and tell Noel it is nice to see him back at the helm!

This is great news.

If nothing else I dont have to have a contingency if a Windows update caused something to break in Sonar in the lab at school. Im the only one who knows how it is setup.

I am cautiously hopeful. The more healthy competitors in this space the better for all us users.

Agreed, JBacal.

Very promising. I would like to see such a response from a new company taking over Avids ProTools IP. ;-) (one can hope)

fingers crossed... glad someone scooped it up... would hate to see people thrown off a ship they've grown to know and love.

Conceptually, I think it's great. But speaking as a composer who really needs to invest in a DAW that feels properly backed by a healthy, stable, company with its' finger on the pulse of the digital composer industry... sorry, Cakewalk, that ship has sailed for me.

I reinvested my time with Digital Performer, and also loaded Studio One, to explore and have as a backup. I just can't trust Sonar in its' current state, with active projects, etc. going on. Honestly, I probably should just switch to Cubase, but I just can't get into their workflow and GUI.

Grumpy Ol' Farkle... here for the weekend.

Mike

Hey Grumpy - I spent some time with the trial version of DP for Windows - I was severely underwhelmed by a bunch of problems and a general instability. If you did not experience the same I'd love to compare notes!

I've been using Studio One on and off since V1, and I'm still not comfortable with their approach to MIDI and virtual instruments, but for tracking and mixing audio I think it is fantastic.

For now I'm sticking with Sonar for MIDI/VI's, but I am on the lookout for a replacement too.

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Feb 23, 2018 1:19 pm Awww, that's nice.

I really hope this works out for everyone. I still have a great fondness for Sonar even though I only ever use it for accessing archived projects.

Yeah same here, as a previous Sonar user before moving to Cubase I still like Sonar a lot and I was quite shocked when I read the news. I hope this pans out great for everyone.

...just seen that. in fact, Pro Tools Ultimate has just been released! Annnnd.... it's just the new name for Pro Tools HD. 2014.4 is a bug fix release otherwise.