Brainworx, iZotope, Plugin Alliance and Native Instruments will merge under the roof of Native Instruments. Have a look:
Which means I will never buy anything from iZotope again. Anything you’ll buy from these companies has to be installed by using the Native Access in future, which doesn’t even work on my computer (I tried it a couple of years ago when I was interested in getting inSIDious), not even the workaround you can find in the web. So these news suck. But maybe someone here is interested nontheless and likes the news. I know there are a lot of NI fans out there, even though I don’t get it.
The only reason I keep NI Access installed is for FM8 which i do enjoy the sound of - but I’d replace it in an instant for something more intuitive. I love the look of F’Em by Dawesome/Tracktion, when i can get it for a good price I will ditch FM8. I quit Izotope ages ago, as well as anything else insisting I install iLok. I couldn’t feel more ambivalent about the merger if I tried.
Native acces isn’t so bad , it doesn’t run in the background and you don’t need to be connected to utilize the programs …iow it doesn’t phone home .
Just run native acces , install the programs and close native acces …DONE !
So you’ don’t understand why some people like N.I. ?
One word : Reaktor .
I think that something we dont know (yet) is going on behind the global financial scenes. Reddit, with its limitations, Moog acquired by conglomerate inMusic, joining Akai and Alesis. And now This… All happened almost this week.
It seems that we need to withdraw all our funds from bank accounts asap before they grab them under a next artificial pretext.
Its less a global conspiracy to steal our money, but more of a consolidation in all markets. Microsoft buying up gaming companies left and right, Sony doing similar to a smaller extent. Spotify and streaming decimating the music industry and forcing those who remain to consolidate. Vodafone just bought Three mobile in the UK, Virgin Media and O2 about to merge as well. Asda (grocery store) just bought a whole load of petrol stations.
Eventually a handful of people will own everything, which will kill competition and then they wont need to rob your bank account, they will be the only place to spend money instead.
Late stage capitalism bro, nearly time to form a resistance to fight for a better alternative.
Didn’t know this. Thank god i’m not with either company any more.
From what i can understand it’s mostly to do with debt. Rising interest rates mean that when an old loan held by a company is coming up for renewal it will be subject to huge increase in monthly interest repayments. As most companies are financed almost exclusively through debt, along with the rest of the monetary system, then even a small increase in interest rates will have serious consequences, especially coming after a decade of near zero rates. Selling out removes that pressure.
Market consolidations come from the fact that the group of companies could not cope with the financial burden, and now it needs a supporting financial supplier. I worked with one licensing company for almost ten years. This year they went bankrupt “according to my calculations and the data provided to me” and slammed several major artists, not paying them tens of thousands of euros “including me”. So, I can just indirectly warn about such things. What seems to be a “remake” of the market often hides thousands of bankrupt initials, which were simply bought out by larger companies just to keep their buts in a stable floating condition.
It’s probably a good idea not to jump to conclusions based on very limited information. This merger already happened about a year ago, this news are just to inform the public that the merger is no longer called Soundwide, or whatever then name was, and it is simply going to be all under the Native Instruments brand. That’s all for now. Nothing catastrophic is happening, and it is possible that any changes that come out of this will also not be catastrophic. I’m sure there will be some things that we would have to get used to, but it won’t be the end of the world.
I use FM8 - I find it intuitive, I like Guitar rig a lot, I rely on a very tiny fraction of Kontakt libraries, Reaktor is great, I love Traktor, there are a few effects that sound amazing to me, and I can even run these things on Linux without issues - even through Native Access, albeit v1 since v2 doesn’t seem to work well, but that’s a Linux issue.
N.I and iZotope merged last year already. This, getting a single installer / account (Native Access), is just a logical conclusion of that merge. A cosmetic change more than anything else.
No different than say when a super market chain merges. Eventually the chain that got bought out is going to have to change it’s name and house style to fit with the new owner.
It’s the same like every other installer like for example the one from Softube or whatever.
That’s exactly what doesn’t work. The first version doesn’t want to run, especially not the normal way, but also the workaround sucks, and the second version is a bug fest. I don’t want to mess around with buggy crap.
That’s exactly what I don’t like. Maybe Reaktor is convenient for people who want to create an own plugin, but for the users it’s shit. If you want to run a plugin you have to install 3 different programs, You need the buggy installer, you need the crappy player and you need the plugin. What kind of shit is this? I’ll never use plugins that need a player to be able to run.
It’s already like that, but it’s getting worse of course. And if cash gets abolished one day so that there’s only digital currency left, and politics doesn’t like your opinion, your account is getting blocked and you can spend no more money in general. That’s the future of 100% transparent persons that we’re about to become. Future sucks, so enjoy what you have had and still have.
So, anyway, I wonder if future products of the new NI group will also need the Reaktor player.
This just makes no sense. As I read, NI is a very precarious situation, that’s what the NI developers themselves write in their forum. They barely have capital and developer resources, that’s why everything takes eons… And now they are fusioning once again?
I think we can expect only nonsense products from now on, with a lot of marketing and very few practical profit for the users.
I think as a German, you are actually allowed to install the cracked versions then, which do not require NI access. As long as you are doing this privately, do not spread cracks and have licenses.
I don’t use cracked music software on principle because I want good developers to continue developing good products.
But anyway, I’m absolutely not interested in NI products because of the player requirement.
But here we don’t have good developers, just investors. And good products? NI mostly brings sample libs, Ozone didn’t do a new product for about a decade, Plugin Alliance stuff mostly are plugins which you already have seen in twenty other variants. Personally I wouldn’t really care if all of these were bankrupt, since they offer absolutely nothing interesting to me. It was very different ten years ago, but that’s another story.
Also they have now more managers than devs. Makes no sense at all.
Though FM8 is very lightweight on cpu, and F’em is a desaster here. Old NI guys knew how to code, an ability which was lost then.
Same here. But the recent actions by multiple software vendors (I don’t say devs, cos it’s the fault of management, not the people writing the software) have made me question the sense of paying money to companies that will only shaft me down the line unless I spend more to get back what once worked just fine. Thinking specifically of Reason here. I’ve spent a lot with them and now they are going to shut off activation servers for older versions. My preference is to find open source alternatives, even to build my own, but when all else fails I may just set up a sandboxed machine for warez…
P.S. Not Renoise of course. They deserve every penny.
I the think I’d be most concerned about is… plugins as subscription based services. IIRC, Waves plugins just did this and you gotta think these large companies are looking to mimic the model. It’s a way to have a steady revenue stream, and usually well in excess of your “buy it once and own it forever” current model.
Personally I wouldn’t care either. The only iZotope product that I paid for is VocalSynth2, but I’ve barely used it. And a long time ago I was interested in Ozone, but not nowadays. I just think the more companies disappear, the worse for the users. So I don’t like to see companies in the music business disappearing.
That’s a big problem nowadays, indeed. The same shit happens for example in the gaming industry. Personally I simply don’t buy, because there’s no way I’ll reward greed and crappy and/or unfinished products.
Right, that’s another problem. I ignore every subscription model there is, even though I would love to check the Roland VSTs. But there’s no way that I’ll subscribe anywhere, not even to Roland. I won’t let anybody rob me. As long as there are sincere and fair alternatives it’s ok and I’ll gladly spend my money elsewhere. But if one day subscription is the only way to use anything, then it’s time to rethink the principles.
Mmm. Yeah, I honestly think this is an inevitability. MBA brain says, as long as this model (subscription) provides the greatest profitability over the longest time, it’s what a business will decide to do. As as more and more companies become subsumed, more and more things will end up within this superstructure.
However, I could see the homogenization of all this stuff leading to a backlash effect, where you end up having devs etc. who make unique/quality products wholly separate from the subscription models. And people being willing to pay a premium for those things because a)the quality b)hating the subscription model c)it mught just cost you less overall to buy 3-4 things that are really amazing and own them for life than the subscription fee for a bunch of mediocre things.
Perhaps thats not too dissimilar from where we are already. I have a few specific products that i absolutely adore, are incredibly high value products, but are from fairly niche companies that Im not sure would ever end up as part of these models anyway. Renoise is one of them by the by.
Im already at that stage, D16 Group, Audiothing, Audio Damage, Renoise and U-He are companies I will fully support. They fit that criteria of being quality products, sold for a fair price and without any hint of moving to anti-consumer business models. None of them insist on iLok or similar invasive DRM.
Edit: Kilohearts offer a subscription to all of their stuff, but offer a €100 voucher for every 12 months you subscribe to redeem against their products, its almost like a finance arrangement at that stage, not that ill ever subscribe personally.
The subscription model worries me deeply. From getting locked out of your old projects because you no longer subscribe to that company, or they simply stop supplying those products. To bleeding lots of money to pay for the various services. All the way to eroding a sense of ownership.
