"MakeMusic Confirms Receipt of Proposal from LaunchEquity Partners, LLC" - Garritan?

[Raymond62]

Yes, interesting. Wait and see.

Raymond

[passagio]

Avid itself is in trouble, so unloading Sibelius was probably aimed at self-preservation. just a few weeks ago, I was working at another firm in the same building as their US headquarters , when word reached us that a 20% layoff of the parent company was under way. So it's not just Sibelius.

I just finished reading an interview in Wired magazine in which Marc Andreesen (he who invented the browser, thus making the internet possible) was broadly suggesting the days of the $600 killer app are over - and cloud sourced processing, storage and subscriptions are the next wave. I think this is one factor involved in the LE buyout (one hopes they'll take it private, so they can get off the quarterly report hamster wheel and get some space to change the business model). Another factor is the cutbacks in secondary and higher education, which has to be a monster consideration for notation software. Schools, universities and conservatories are where students are taught the intricacies of durable music composition, and have the time to begin creating their own. Absent such an experience, we face not just the loss of notation software, but a draining of the deep end of the talent pool as well.

[maiki]

I am not sure how anyone can expect anything positive from a buyout by LE, corporatists who have no concern for music, music education, or musicians.

The announcement says something about LE's plans are to "liquidate the assets". Doesn't that mean to close the company?

I don't know what a company would gain by buying a company only to shut it down, but it looks like that is their goal. They probably only bought those shares to get a large say to sell to themselves.

They do not own a majority of shares though, so all other shareholders should vote against the plan.

I wasn't comfortable with Garritan being bought out by MakeMusic, and now this is far worse.

We should all be writing to the heads of MakeMusic and encourage them not to make that sale.

There is an online petition to AVID protesting the closure of Sibelius, should we have such a petition about Finale, Garritan, etc.?

It would be quite unfortunate if there is no further development of Finale, Sibelius, etc. And for us--the Garritan libraries! (And even if one of the notation programs shuts down--that affects the other--as without competition--no reason to grow and improve.)

I recently became aware of another troubling fact of the music industry. I'm not sure how many are aware of this yet. Are people here aware that most of the major online music retailers have been bought up by one company--Guitar Center? When you buy something from Musician's Friend, Music 123, Woodwind and the Brasswind, etc., you are really buying from Guitar Center. (They still pretend they are separate companies, but they are not.) (I think there are more than the three I mention, but those are the ones I recall for sure at the moment.) GC also owns Harmony Central now. (So I doubt I could write about this at HC!) And guess who owns Guitar Center now---? Bain Capital! Yes, that Bain Capital with their mitts ;-) into everything, closing down companies all over the place, etc. What ever happened to antitrust in this country? Competition is essential for capitalism to work well for the consumer. Why was it allowed for one company to monopolize the industry? (Have you noticed in the last few years, when you search online for the best price for a piece of music hardware, all the online retailers list the exact same price? Sound like price fixing? Not hard to do, when one company monopolizes the industry.)

I was unhappy too with the buyout of Steinberg and Cakewalk-12 tone by the Japanese mega corporations Yamaha and Roland, respectively. But at least those are music hardware corporations. (Well, Yamaha is many other things as well, but the musical instrument part of it is important.) I would not be unhappy at this point if Yamaha and Roland were to buy out Sibelius and MakeMusic, at least a better result than being liquidated by corporate gluttons who care nothing about music.

[fastlane]

The announcement says something about LE's plans are to "liquidate the assets". Doesn't that mean to close the company?

I think they just want to buy out the other shareholders.

Once upon a time there was a company called Opcode who came out with a great sequencer for the Mac called Vision that later became Studio Vision Pro which had audio recording capabilities. Studio Vision Pro was the best DAW on the market for working in a song format. It's only real competition was Digital Performer which was probably better suited for classical structure.

About 1999 things looked pretty bleak at Apple and Apple software developers were in survival mode. Opcode was bought buy a larger company and then shortly it was shut down with no explanation. The interesting part of the story is that the company that bought Opcode and killed it wasn't a Bain Capital but Gibson Guitars.