Propellerhead Software Names Niklas Agevik as CEO

[qn5]

I hope this isn't like when Sonic Foundry sold ACID to Sony who then sold it to Magix. Absolutely ruined the software and most users bailed.
Fingers crossed this isn't a play to make a bunch of free iOS apps to increase userbase and sell it off to the highest bidder. We've all invested a shit ton of money into this platform with RE's, upgrades and it would suck to see this great DAW drive off a cliff for stock options. Nervous, but trying to remain optimistic.

[Jackjackdaw]

Does anyone have a story of when something like this turned out well?

[MikeMcKew]

Thank you Ernst, for everything you've done!

[sdst]

hope the new CEO, make Reason great again

[diminished]

Not really related, but
Sequential Circuits -> Yamaha -> DSI -> Sequential Circuits maybe.
But this is from another period of time when the music industry was something else and it's a story about hardware.
A good one though - enjoy Alex Ball:

How about we give Niklas a warm welcome, the benefit of doubt and let him work for a few years. That he's not "industry" is probably a good thing too, he's gonna let the experts do their job and focus on what he's good at while taking care of everyones needs, like Ernst did.

[MattiasHG]

I just hope they don't pull a Blizzard move and have something like the Diablo Immortal fiasco: alienate their user base, ignore the products that made them big and focus on mobile for that quick cash - development outsourced to a chinese company. The company that innovated and made the games you loved is long gone..

Interesting! I'll just talk personally now because this has pretty much nothing to do with Propellerhead, but I am interested in gaming!

I'm a huge Blizzard fan, have been since Starcraft and Diablo II. I think they're a company that has consistently improved, reached new target audiences and not alienated their fans. As far as I can tell, Diablo Immortal didn't really affect that. It was more a roar of frustration from people waiting on Diablo IV and didn't get it. Blizzard made the mistake of building the announcement up, talking directly to Diablo fans and then showing a game not made for them on a convention where only those fans were. But the product? A Diablo-game on smartphones is sweet. It won't be exactly the same, but I'm sure it'll be good fun for loads of people that might then even get into Diablo III (or will it be IV?).

Remember Hearthstone? When that was announced it was almost as crazy with angry fans as Diablo Immortal. "Blizzard has abandoned the hardcore gamers!". A couple of years later, it's a cornerstone in their business that even old players love. It built the Warcraft brand, it interacted with their other games (I use my Hearthstone card mount in Heroes of the Storm!) and was a truly fun game. Personally, I don't like the payment model at all but it's a really good game.

But importantly, next to all this, Blizzard is still releasing expansions for World of Warcraft. And I'm absolutely sure they're working on new games for their IP targeted towards their long-time fans. They never made a shift, they made an expansion.

[MannequinRaces]

I'm now going to sit back and enjoy the speculation.

Congrats on the semi-retirement and thanks for everything so far! It’s gotta be hard handing your baby over to somebody else. Glad you’re still involved and on the board.

[antic604]

...It was more a roar of frustration from people waiting on Diablo IV and didn't get it. Blizzard made the mistake of building the announcement up, talking directly to Diablo fans and then showing a game not made for them on a convention where only those fans were. But the product? A Diablo-game on smartphones is sweet. It won't be exactly the same, but I'm sure it'll be good fun for loads of people that might then even get into Diablo III (or will it be IV?)

I'm sure the analogy isn't random

[QVprod]

Thanks for al your work Ernst!

[fullforce]

I wonder what he thinks of the current sequencer. Does he even know what that is?

[diminished]

I agree with you that Immortal could have been announced on the down low and everything would have went smoothly, noone would have batted an eye! I mean sure, some fun on the subway, why not? But the way they announced it (during blizzcon, lol), discussed it afterwards ("don't you guys have phones?") and then went radio silent after the backlash speaks volumes in terms how detached from their user base they have become. The Blizzard stock price mirrors exactly how much trust there is left in this company.
It was all accompanied by Mike Morhaime stepping down and later on disappearing from the company completely, which essentially made the Blizz/PHeads connection in my brain (and both make products I absolutely love and adore for almost two decades).

Now hearthstone, good point! It's a cool game and I enjoyed it in the beginning, but these days it's unplayable und frustrating for new players (IMHO) because you're left alone with your shitty cards. No matter how many free card packs they throw at you, "meta" is comletely unreachable unless you're a hardcore grinder. Once you've achieved something, they come up with yet another expansion. Which leads us to the payment model: an overpriced cash grab, designed to frustrate you and throw more money at the problem.

They never made a shift, they made an expansion.

I really hope this is the future for Reason and PHeads! <3

[buddard]

"Early in his career Agevik spent five years at Ericsson. After that he has been part of several fast paced start‐ups. Most recently, he comes from Instabridge, a company he founded and ran for the past seven years. The Instabridge app has 30M users and 30,000 organic daily new users. "
I don't know what he has in common with the the DAW business.. the telecom world is so different..

Well, I worked at Ericsson for 20 years before quitting and going fulltime with Robotic Bean!

[WongoTheSane]

I'm now going to sit back and enjoy the speculation.

Thanks for everything, from the bottom of my heart. I wish you a happy retirement!

[Zac]

Thanks to Ernst for all his work.

Fingers crossed for the future of Reason.

[Noplan]

But the product? A Diablo-game on smartphones is sweet. It won't be exactly the same, but I'm sure it'll be good fun for loads of people that might then even get into Diablo III (or will it be IV?).

From a business perspective, I can understand that developers are focusing on mobile apps. But unfortunately the smartphone is so limited in operation that everything you program for it feels like a step backwards. Especially in the field of music making. I don't think the smartphone makes sense for all applications.

[TritoneAddiction]

I hope the main focus for Propellerhead will be on Reason and rack extensions rather than developing a bunch of mobile apps. I personally I have no interest in those kind of things.

[BRIGGS]

All I can say is...we'll see.

[MarkTarlton]

Does anyone have a story of when something like this turned out well?

a local brewery where I live sold their mom and pop business(Lagunitas) which we all adore and love to Heineken to help with world wide distribution for tons of money, which meant Tony the CEO stepped down, but he still helps out with some decision making, we were all very worried... I haven't noticed much change, and they still help out our local music scene probably more than any other business next to my second favorite local comapny(Guayaki).

This could be a good thing and hopefully Ernst still has a seat at the decision making table.

Good luck!!

[hurricane]

I've given Ernst a lot of crap in the past but it was tough love - I love you, man! Your app basically taught me how to make music on a computer.

But yeah - I have no interest in music making mobile apps. I'm glad I've got Logic Pro X in my back pocket.

And fyi - the Cubase crossgrade deal is on 'till 6/3: https://new.steinberg.net/cubase/celebrate/

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[Reasonable man]

"Early in his career Agevik spent five years at Ericsson. After that he has been part of several fast paced start‐ups. Most recently, he comes from Instabridge, a company he founded and ran for the past seven years. The Instabridge app has 30M users and 30,000 organic daily new users. "
I don't know what he has in common with the the DAW business.. the telecom world is so different..

Well, I worked at Ericsson for 20 years before quitting and going fulltime with Robotic Bean!

And i'm sure your glad you did...as are all of us

[drloop]

I'm now going to sit back and enjoy the speculation.

Äntligen kanske du har tid för en fika...

Med vänlig hälsning,

AkaiJörgen

[boingy]

Trust me. This is the first step in the process of the venture capitalists realising their investment. VCs typically look to cash in their chips within three to five years having "added value" or "grown profits". VCs have no regard for anything other than profit.

So I predict PH will be sold in the next year or so.

[Jackjackdaw]

And fyi - the Cubase crossgrade deal is on 'till 6/3: https://new.steinberg.net/cubase/celebrate/


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I just jumped on the Cubase offer, got the Artist edition plus ignition key for £150. Not bad.

[Djstarski]

The way the world works at the moment . If the pros are not using mobile apps to make their hits , the new comers and the present user will not follow that approach . If you want to make mobile apps popular , get some top flight producers and engineers using them . Just think of Dre beats headphones . they were handing them to a lot of top celebs and bingo almost everybody wanted one after that .

my 2 cents

[Ostermilk]

Hey, I just opened Reason and it all still works! As long as that continues to happen I'm not bothered about who is dancing with who.