Avid to be Acquired for $1.4 Billion

[Geoff Grace]

It looks like Avid found a buyer:

 

Avid Technology Enters into Definitive Agreement to Be Acquired by an Affiliate of STG for $1.4 Billion

 

Hoping for the best...

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[zephonic]

I kinda hated how they replaced my paid mid-tier Sibelius First with a free version that has much reduced functionality, and my only other option is to pay monthly for the full version.

 

Sibelius is great, but I have little goodwill for Avid.

Good luck to their users.

[Mark Schmieder]

Hah, that's even wordier than the Mix Online article that I almost posted, and says just about as little in terms of anything we can make sense of regarding future direction.

 

We'll just have to wait and see.

[nursers]

25 minutes ago, zephonic said:

.Sibelius is great, but I have little goodwill for Avid.

Good luck to their users.

Could not agree more. I know I'm not the key demographic as a home user but Avid turned me from loyal Pro Tools enthusiast to a disgruntled form user in a matter of a couple of years. Hopefully the new owners make some sort of diffference.

[Docbop]

When working at the church we were a all ProTools for audio including full end to end 64  channel console FOH system.   Avid nickel and dimes us every chance they could and even trying to get service and parts for the console.   Screw Avid and seeing it's an investment type firm buying them I see more price gouging in the future.

 

     

[ElmerJFudd]

“STG is a private equity partner to market-leading companies in data, software, and analytics.”

 

great. 🤪

 

There’s sure to be new schemes to squeeze the existing user base for more money.  Here are some better ideas where to focus their resources…

 

Other DAWs can change their Playback Engine without restarting the software.  
 

Other DAWs can have more than one session open at a time.
 

Other DAWs (Logic, Nuendo) have Dolby Atmos integrated now.  Pro Tools’ still uses the standalone Dolby Atmos Renderer.  

 

Avid needs to update Pro Tools GUI for 4K monitors.  It can only do up to 1920 x 1080 without distorting.  

[Nathanael_I]

And Avid still has the best workflow and hardware support in the industry.  I've got a full HDX/MTRX system, and it is the best audio recording system I've owned.  The hybrid mode works beautifully and allowed me to remove two producers' racks of gear, a digital mixer, etc.  I am thrilled with the system and hope that it continues to thrive.  There is a world of audio production (as opposed to writing/creating) where ProTools remains the lingua franca and the default way to exchange information. 

 

I still have and use Nuendo and Ableton.  But ProTools remains relevant, powerful, and in almost daily use here.  It is my standard recording environment for acoustic instruments and I am very pleased with it. 

 

I'm not sure a generic private equity house will likely be a good home for a creative business.  I think that with chip shortages, etc, they got into a bad place with the cost of hardware manufacturing and needed capital.  It's not a great time to need capital, so the options weren't great.

[Kawai James]

I'm not sure if this was posted previously, but it's relevant to this overall topic...even if his prediction for AVID was a little inaccurate:

 

 

[bill5]

11 hours ago, Docbop said:

When working at the church we were a all ProTools for audio including full end to end 64  channel console FOH system.   Avid nickel and dimes us every chance they could and even trying to get service and parts for the console.   Screw Avid and seeing it's an investment type firm buying them I see more price gouging in the future.

 

Pro Tools is a classic case of being one of the early emerging leaders in a technology, gaining a large audience...and then getting so smug and complacent in their market dominance that the product got worse while the pricing went through the roof. They're a joke and their so-called "industry standard" tag thankfully seems to finally be going away and I am shocked and repulsed that they are considered worth that much money. I would not be surprised if they dumbed themselves out of existence eventually. I've tried almost every DAW under the sun and theirs was one of the worst. I wouldn't use it for free. 

[ElmerJFudd]

1 hour ago, bill5 said:

Pro Tools is a classic case of being one of the early emerging leaders in a technology, gaining a large audience...and then getting so smug and complacent in their market dominance that the product got worse while the pricing went through the roof. They're a joke and their so-called "industry standard" tag thankfully seems to finally be going away and I am shocked and repulsed that they are considered worth that much money. I would not be surprised if they dumbed themselves out of existence eventually. I've tried almost every DAW under the sun and theirs was one of the worst. I wouldn't use it for free. 

Avid hasn’t done well with marketing ProTools as a composition and production tool to younger, next generation artists.  But that’s on them - as they are always dead slow to keep up with new features, to offer consistent and  affordable entry points with uncrippled software, and provide  competitive instruments, fx, and loops.  They rely a lot on third party plugins to fill the gaps.  
 

That said, as an audio editor, mixing and mastering suite in wide use at professional facilities in music production, film and television.  I don’t believe that industry and the educational institutions that feed that industry have much interest in switching to another product.  Adobe Audition, Nuendo and others have been clawing at that for many years.  

[jeffincltnc]

I had a really great run working for them from 1993-1999 as a reseller of Media Composer and used to build/install Avid nonlinear editing suites and Softimage compositing workstations into tv stations, post production houses, ad agencies and corporate marketing departments.  It was a great product and had very little competition back then.  I made a pretty good living at it given my younger age at the time.

[bill5]

20 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

I don’t believe that industry and the educational institutions that feed that industry have much interest in switching to another product.  Adobe Audition, Nuendo and others have been clawing at that for many years.  

Oh I think the music industry is wising up...the total % of studios that use it appears to be steadily falling, and among home studios, it's not even the most popular.

[AnotherScott]

I think Avid's market is the professional houses, I don't think they have much interest in the home/"prosumer" market or selling to individual musicians, which I think used to be a decent part of the Pro Tools market. Now they are content to be a proverbial big fish in a little pond, if it's a lucrative pond.

[Docbop]

22 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Avid hasn’t done well with marketing ProTools as a composition and production tool to younger, next generation artists.  But that’s on them - as they are always dead slow to keep up with new features, to offer consistent and  affordable entry points with uncrippled software, and provide  competitive instruments, fx, and loops.  They rely a lot on third party plugins to fill the gaps.  
 

That said, as an audio editor, mixing and mastering suite in wide use at professional facilities in music production, film and television.  I don’t believe that industry and the educational institutions that feed that industry have much interest in switching to another product.  Adobe Audition, Nuendo and others have been clawing at that for many years.  

Avid was the big dog in film video world when they brought ProTools under the Avid umbrella they started looking at ProTools the same way and forget the large base of home and small studios using ProTools.  Avid saw the loss happening and has tried to scramble to get the home an small studio back but there are just too much competition now.    

 

I think these days the thing keeping ProTools going is studios require files to be delivered in ProTools.   So a lot of composers have switched to Logic, Cubase, and other DAWs, but then transfer to ProTools just to deliver the files. 

[ProfD]

Pro Tools was perfectly positioned and became industry standard when studios went digital.

 

That price tag is awesome especially for the Avid investors looking to pull the string on their golden parachute. 😎

[Mark Schmieder]

If Gibson hadn't destroyed OpCode, I wonder if ProTools would have taken off the way it did?

[ProfD]

7 hours ago, Mark Schmieder said:

If Gibson hadn't destroyed OpCode, I wonder if ProTools would have taken off the way it did?

 I think so. Pro Tools has a better *ring* to it and was marketed brilliantly.😎

[ElmerJFudd]

21 minutes ago, ProfD said:

 I think so. Pro Tools has a better *ring* to it and was marketed brilliantly.😎

Opcode called their sequencer Vision, if I remember.  Not Pro.   Had they called it Pro Vision or Vision Pro things may have been different.  

[zephonic]

I think the difference was that every other DAW started as MIDI sequencing software, whereas SoundTools (ProTools’ progenitor) was the first audio editing software.

That also explains why their user base was different, engineers needed audio tools, composers/producers needed sequencers.

 

The sequencers added audio recording, and ProTools eventually added MIDI. Fun fact, for the longest time Logic was the only approved MIDI sequencing software for Digidesign (Avid) hardware, as ProTools was audio-only. That stopped when PT became MIDI-capable.

 

 

 

[Markay]

I suspect the $1.4 billion has all to do with Avid's revenue from their systems that run TV broadcasters and Protools is a side show. During lock down in 2020 I got to spend some time with a contractor who was setting up Avid sourced stuff for new studios for one of our National broadcasters. When you are embedded in a mission critical situation like that it is rivers of gold for life.

[Mark Schmieder]

On 8/11/2023 at 11:30 AM, zephonic said:

I think the difference was that every other DAW started as MIDI sequencing software, whereas SoundTools (ProTools’ progenitor) was the first audio editing software.

That also explains why their user base was different, engineers needed audio tools, composers/producers needed sequencers.

 

The sequencers added audio recording, and ProTools eventually added MIDI. Fun fact, for the longest time Logic was the only approved MIDI sequencing software for Digidesign (Avid) hardware, as ProTools was audio-only. That stopped when PT became MIDI-capable.

 

 

 

 

I don't believe that's true. When I first started using Digital Performer around 2002, MOTU had a tight relationship with Digidesign (this is also before Apple bought eMagic), and it was still thought of as the MIDI front-end for Pro Tools. Previously, before adding audio, the MIDI-only Performer relied heavily on Pro Tools for back-end audio integration. This is also why the SD2 format (Sound Design) was used for the audio file format for so long.

 

I can't speak to any later relationship of Logic to ProTools as I didn't pick up Logic Pro until its price dropped to $200, but certainly the general statement about DAW history being divided into two camps of audio-only and MIDI-only and eventually crossing over once CPU and memory constraints became less of an issue, is 100% accurate.

[Mark Schmieder]

31 minutes ago, Markay said:

I suspect the $1.4 billion has all to do with Avid's revenue from their systems that run TV broadcasters and Protools is a side show. During lock down in 2020 I got to spend some time with a contractor who was setting up Avid sourced stuff for new studios for one of our National broadcasters. When you are embedded in a mission critical situation like that it is rivers of gold for life.

 

Yes, even the press releases barely mention the audio side of AVID. Having worked in pro audio for two decades before switching to underwater acoustics a couple of years ago, I am well aware that the money is on the visual side of things!

[Anderton]

I agree with all the sentiments here about the video side of things being attractive to investors. Even though Logic isn't cross-platform, it keeps chipping away at Pro Tools on the Mac. A new generation of recording enthusiasts are far more attracted to FL Studio and Live than Pro Tools, and don't have the disdain for Windows that was common a decade ago so Logic may or may not matter to them. I think Studio One is doing well because it successfully straddles the home and pro studio worlds. 

 

I have a subscription to Pro Tools Artist and it does what I need Pro Tools to do. Interestingly, my tips and tricks book for Studio One vastly outsells the one for Pro Tools. I don't know if that's a sign of declining interest in PT, or newcomers wanting more info about Studio One.

[bill5]

On 8/10/2023 at 1:27 PM, AnotherScott said:

I think Avid's market is the professional houses, I don't think they have much interest in the home/"prosumer" market or selling to individual musicians, which I think used to be a decent part of the Pro Tools market. Now they are content to be a proverbial big fish in a little pond, if it's a lucrative pond.

Yes, but happily, it seems even the professional market is coming around. 

[zephonic]

16 hours ago, Mark Schmieder said:

 

I don't believe that's true. When I first started using Digital Performer around 2002,

 

I was talking 1990's. Logic was the only one besides PT officially supported with Digidesign hardware.

[Franz Schiller]

FWIW, in my day job, I am a professional video editor and producer. I can testify that Avid editing systems were once dominant and have been declining for 20 years.

 

Back around 2012, the agency I work for decided to drop Final Cut Pro. I was tasked with trying out different non-linear editing platforms, and advising on the next one. I tried out Avid and I found it to be literally the worst. It was horrifically unintuitive; it didn't make any sense, and was very inflexible. I advised we adopt Adobe Premiere, which we did, like most of the post production houses in my arm of the industry.

[Docbop]

I remember back around 2009 when working in media and still had some inside poop on Apple from my SysAdmin days the talk was Apple was seriously considering dropped both Final Cut and Logic.    Logic had be a major PIA for Apple on getting updates and things the way they wanted from the developers so Logic was high on their list to be killed off.   But seems like someone in Apple clued management into how much hardware sales FC and Logic generate and especially high end Apple computers.     Then there was long silence and suddenly Apple came out with the lower priced FC and Logic and Apples Pro apps started selling like crazy and generating lots of hardware sales. 

[Mark Schmieder]

15 hours ago, zephonic said:

 

I was talking 1990's. Logic was the only one besides PT officially supported with Digidesign hardware.

 

Oh wow, I didn't even know Logic was that old! I didn't get into computer music until around 2002.

[RABid]

When Pro Tools came out with the 9.99 monthly subscription I thought they had a good chance to push deep into the home studio market, but then they just went silent. Wooing YouTube creators and establishing a presence on user forums seems to be beneath them. Hardly anyone talks about Pro Tools and the younger market has moved on.  Major studios may be holding onto the Pro Tools requirement, but when that dam breaks it will change quick. And as more and more studios looks for ways to get business during times of decline they will start accepting other formats.

[Nathanael_I]

On 8/14/2023 at 11:00 AM, Franz Schiller said:

FWIW, in my day job, I am a professional video editor and producer. I can testify that Avid editing systems were once dominant and have been declining for 20 years.

 

Back around 2012, the agency I work for decided to drop Final Cut Pro. I was tasked with trying out different non-linear editing platforms, and advising on the next one. I tried out Avid and I found it to be literally the worst. It was horrifically unintuitive; it didn't make any sense, and was very inflexible. I advised we adopt Adobe Premiere, which we did, like most of the post production houses in my arm of the industry.

I switched to BlackMagic Resolve - brilliant software and so much faster.  It makes much better use of graphics cards and CPU than Premiere.  I find it far more intuitive.  That said, you can do the same things in both.  But I find color grading so much nicer in Resolve.  The free version is amazing.  I use the paid version to work with the Nikon RAW video up to 8k/60p.