Bandlab has announced that they will discontinue the free Cakewalk digital audio workstation, replacing it with Cakewalk Next and a new version of Sonar.
Good things always come to an end, or so the saying goes. Unfortunately, it seems that we will soon need to remove Cakewalk from our list of free DAWs.
BandLab announced it will end support for the free Cakewalk DAW in favor of a new pricing structure. While users who have downloaded Cakewalk will be able to use it indefinitely, it will have zero product support going forward.
Instead, BandLab will debut Cakewalk Next (which will be a paid product, according to our sources) and bring back Sonar.
Details aren’t available on what the new version of Sonar will be capable of or even when to fully expect it. Cakewalk Next is available for beta testing for Windows and Mac users alike, however.
This decision comes as a bit of a shock, especially given the rocky circumstances which led to BandLab acquiring Cakewalk in the first place. BandLab assures the pricing structure for both will be competitive and meant to address the needs of producers.
Where this leaves things is rather murky, however.
You certainly can keep using Cakewalk as it stands right now, but there aren’t many options available for free. Cakewalk had the advantage of being a feature-rich and mature DAW with the added bonus of a minimal price tag.
The plus side is I can wistfully hope we’ll see new versions of the legendary Rapture and Z3ta synthesizer plugins. Still, it is always a bit disappointing for developments like this to occur.
BandLab has been rather steady in its support of Cakewalk. Hopefully, Cakewalk Next and Sonar will be able to successfully iterate upon the last five years of development put into the platform.
If priced competitively, it could very well find a niche among users, as any DAW typically does. Given the somewhat cluttered landscape of feature-rich DAWs, it must make quite a splash.
I’m curious to see where this goes, as I’m sure most music producers are, especially those using the free version of Cakewalk. While I mourn the loss of freely available software for music producers of all social strata, I’m trying to see the silver lining behind it.
You can find more details regarding the announcement readily on BandLab’s landing page for Cakewalk. If you’ve got it currently installed, you might want to figure out a way to back up the installers, just in case.
Visit: Cakewalk (Explore Cakewalk Next & Cakewalk Sonar – Coming Soon!)
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