BandLab Gets $65 Million Investment from Paul Allen - Will this Affect Cakewalk?

[Anderton]

Here's the info. And that's not all - another recent backer is Dutch technology investor Prosus Ventures. So...what will this mean for Cakewalk? I have no idea, but it certainly can't be bad to be owned by a company that's rolling in cash, and getting major traction on social media.

 

Interesting thing about Cakewalk is when it got jettisoned by Gibson, even after BandLab resurrected it, their forum traffic was waaaaay down. I'd scan the topics from time to time, and if a thread had 0 replies (which was often), I checked it out to see if maybe I could help.

 

Well, these days, it's almost impossible to find a thread with 0 replies. This implies to me that more people are going to the Cakewalk forum, which means more people are using it. It's pretty clear Cakewalk is far from dead. I suspect the investment is more about BandLab itself, but that could have an effect on Cakewalk as well.

[spokenward]

We need diagrams or something like it.

 

The strategy seems to be evolving. The naming seems to be in flux. Maybe too many relatives are involved.

 

I discovered a new tool in the process of looking. This rockpaperscissors.biz site is aggregating Trade press, news items and Press releases over here:

https://bandlab.rockpaperscissors.biz/

 

In December, Bandlab, NME and Vista Instruments were rolled into the Caldecott Music Group.

https://variety.com/2021/biz/asia/kuok-meng-ru-bandlab-technologies-caldecott-music-1235122713/

 

"Caldecott Music Group is a global music industry investor and innovator with a vision to connect the world of music."

https://caldecottmusic.com/ 

 

They refer to Bandlab as a portfolio company.  Bandlab doesn't mention them on their site but their PR blog redirects to Caldecott.  https://blog.bandlab.com/press/

 

 

Vulcan, the company founded by (the late) Paul Allen and his sister Jody, are mentioned in a December 2021 press release as investing 53M in Bandlab. So they have been on board since December. This announcement with Prosus joining seems to be the news. Prosus is part of Naspers (South Africa) who is Tencent's largest investor.

 

[For maximum naming confusion - Vulcan also made a significant investment in Epic Games in 2018 and in March 2022 Epic Games acquired Bandcamp.]

 

[Anderton]

Thanks for the clarification of what seems rather unclear...

 

Bottom line: it sure looks like people have put bucks into BandLab, but I'm still not sure what this means for Cakewalk.

[RABid]

To be honest, I'm not sure what Bandlab is. I know they picked up Cakewalk when it was abandoned. But is it a social media site for musicians and groups? A place to publish your music? A news outlet? A source for samples and loops? It looks like a cross between MySpace and Facebook.

[Anderton]

Think of it as social media for hobbyist/semipro musical collaboration instead of bitching about politics

[Notes_Norton]

11 hours ago, Anderton said:

Think of it as social media for hobbyist/semipro musical collaboration instead of bitching about politics

The off-topic 'coffee-house' section has a few delightful and silly people to hang with.

 

Notes ♫

[JohnG11]

1 hour ago, Notes_Norton said:

The off-topic 'coffee-house' section has a few delightful and silly people to hang with.

 

Notes ♫

 

Yea, there's even some weird guy who keeps contributing his idea of humor (that's different from humour, which is funny) to the puns thread, and even starts threads with lame music cartoons in them.

Now, what's his moniker?

 

...

 

oh!

Whoops.

[ElmerJFudd]

Paul isn’t short on funds and likes to play guitar. I’m going to guess he’s a Cakewalk user and is throwing money around to keep it going? 

[KuruPrionz]

31 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Paul isn’t short on funds and likes to play guitar. I’m going to guess he’s a Cakewalk user and is throwing money around to keep it going? 

Paul Allen passed on October 15, 2018.

[ElmerJFudd]

Just now, KuruPrionz said:

Paul Allen passed on October 15, 2018.

I JUST remembered that! Too quick for me. Cancer right? 

[KuruPrionz]

2 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

I JUST remembered that! Too quick for me. Cancer right? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen

 

"Allen was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2009. He died of septic shock related to cancer on October 15, 2018, at the age of 65."

[Greg Mein]

For many years Cakewalk was my favorite. I spent a fair amount on upgrades dating from the MIDI only days up through Sonar 7 (I still have the disc for that so it was probably the last version that I owned). Most of my recorded work was done with it and I still have backups on optical media. Sometime in the 2000's I switched to using Macs and transitioned to Logic and DP.

 

I was sad to see Cakewalk fizzle out although I hadn't used it for a while and currently don't expect that I'll go back to recording with a PC. I always enjoyed using it however; was real happy with all it's features and knew my way around it pretty well.

[Anderton]

11 minutes ago, Greg Mein said:

I was sad to see Cakewalk fizzle out although I hadn't used it for a while and currently don't expect that I'll go back to recording with a PC. I always enjoyed using it however; was real happy with all it's features and knew my way around it pretty well.

 

I think the biggest difference with BandLab taking over is that there's been a major effort to squash the various legacy bugs, but there have also been improvements like an arranger track and better stretching. So it seems to be doing well.

[Notes_Norton]

Since most of my work is done in MIDI, I still use Master Tracks Pro.

 

In the past I tried Cubase (disliked it for me) and Cakewalk version 8 I think.

 

The original, bug-free MTPro no longer works on Windows starting with Version 10. When GVox bought it, they introduced some bugs, most of which were eventually fixed, and the ones that are left are no big deal, and easy to deal with.

 

I got the free Cakewalk as insurance and messed with it a little, but I found the interface to be more complicated, due to the addition of audio in addition to the MIDI. In MTPro, every dialog box is one click away from the menu, and everything snaps to immediately (for all practical purposes). I suppose if the new MTPro ever quits working, I'll have to get used to Cakewalk or some other, and if something comes up with better MIDI features that I want, I'll learn something new.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[Anderton]

On 5/3/2022 at 8:23 AM, Notes_Norton said:

I got the free Cakewalk as insurance and messed with it a little, but I found the interface to be more complicated, due to the addition of audio in addition to the MIDI. In MTPro, every dialog box is one click away from the menu, and everything snaps to immediately (for all practical purposes). I suppose if the new MTPro ever quits working, I'll have to get used to Cakewalk or some other, and if something comes up with better MIDI features that I want, I'll learn something new.

 

Acquaint yourself with Cakewalk's "lenses" feature, which enables you to strip away parts of the program you don't want in your workflow. It does take a little time to set up what you want (not as difficult as the "environments" in old versions of Logic, though), but then you can save that lens and invoke it when you want.