[Shell rant] So who should buy the R studio?

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ShelLuser
Posts: 358
Joined: 25 Aug 2019

30 Jan 2020

Hi gang!

I apologize for what could be perceived as a gloom post, it's honestly not my intention to spoil your mood, but this topic did got me thinking. For reasons I'll explain... As we all know the Propellerheads are no more, and it's a rotten shame if you ask me. We now have "Reason Studios" which, obviously, is fully evolved around Reason. Of course the inside story here is different: the company has been taken over by an investors firm which - generally speaking - cares for one thing only: (quick) profit. It's more or less inevitable that at some point the company is going up for grabs :puf_unhappy:

Context: I'll have to be honest for contexts sake, I kind of already bailed the bandwagon. That's not saying I started disliking Reason (heck no!), but truth be told I'm having a hard time believing that I'll ever upgrade beyond Reason 10 (I got a license to use 11 but... no thanks). If anything I'm sooner seeing an upgrade to Komplete 13 in the works.... maybe....

Even so... Reason is still a solid part of my workflow... for me Live + Reason (and Maschine....) is still the power combo.

Alas... Investment firms want results aka profit. So it's not unreasonable to assume that if another "multimedia based company" would make an offer then they could add Reason to their own setup.

But that raises the question: which firm would you think is most suited for this?

Editorial (I'll try to keep it short!): I somewhat experienced this whole thing (from the sideline (and without knowing what was going on)) with Ableton (the company behind Ableton Live) and Cycling '74 (the company behind the Max visual programming language). Ableton & "Cycling" started working together more intensively and that resulted in "Max for Live"; a full blown multimedia programming environment embedded in Live. Yah, there's a reason I got to favor this so much :cool: I''ve also been experimenting with Reason + Reaktor and well... as awesome as the combo is (no joke!) it's not the same...

Anyway, eventually Ableton actually bought Cycling '74 and now there're basically part of the Ableton. Yet still their own company.

Now... I'm an outsider on all of this, I suppose a spectator at best, but I have invested in both companies and well... Being both a Live & Max user... I think this is a solid setup.

But that also got me speculating... which company would you think is best to take over Reason Studios (if any)?

No poll.... if I would do a poll I could only name companies within my own "bubble" and that's not helping. Please leave a comment if you'd like...


My take? Honestly? (warning: lots of bias follows!): I'm secretly hoping that Ableton goes shopping here. I sincerely doubt this is ever going to happen but... oh man... There is a reason why I added Reason to my Live setup 10 years ago and to this date am still using. Not only is Reason's workflow completely different than that of Live (which in itself has a different workflow compared to "regular" DAWs), Reason also has a strongly defined sound (this is coming from someone who, until Reason 10, only bought Prop Rack Extensions).

I suppose I'm a die-hard Live fan, considering my setup. But even I cannot deny that, when it came to sound quality, Ableton relied on plenty of others. A.A.S. for instruments like Electric and Tension, Cytomic for the Glue compressor and of course Softtube for Amp.

And although Live's Wavetable is one heck of an instrument, there's also something to be said for RPG8 or even Dual Arpeggio, all done by the Props themselves (Alligator & Pulsar anyone?!).

Honestly though: in my biased opinion Reason & Live can really complement each other. I've been doing this for 10 years now. Which is why I came to my opinion above. Also because as of now Cycling '74 seems to still operate on its own (from an outsiders pov). No forced merging or such, which I really admire.

But... I already mentioned bubble... Seriously? If I had to present choices then I would provide: Native Instruments, JBL (don't laugh please ;)), Casio (...), Steinberg, Yamaha and of course "another" investment firm.

Not the kind of stuff you'd put in a poll without laughing :ugeek:

SO I ask you guys: assuming we're right about the "eventually upcoming" takeover, which company would you prefer (and why!)? If any of course... for all we know there's an audiophile within said investment firm and things go into wild new directions (one can hope, right?).

Thanks in advance for your input!
--- :reason:

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SynthGang
Posts: 100
Joined: 21 Jan 2020
Location: Canada
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30 Jan 2020

Very interesting post! It's nice to hear different perspectives. One of my best friends and somebody I/we (we as in me and the guys in our group) produce with all the time is an avid Live user who initially hated Reason. I'll never forget one of the first times he actually sat at my computer and tried using Reason: we had just recorded a bunch of parts and then wanted to go through and sort of edit/pick and choose what we wanted to use - he kept complaining "oh my god!! you can't do THIS in Reason??" :lol: He did eventually come around and even bought a "Lite" license a couple years back and has used it quite extensively in conjunction with Live (I think Thor really got him hooked).

But I mention this story because I think it's telling. On one hand Reason is very unique and creative in it's approach to music creation software, but on the other hand we are talking about a company that has consistently fallen behind the curve in many ways and that I think has been detrimental to Reason's success as a platform. Having said all that, I strongly believe that a company like iZotope, Waves or Native Instruments, would all be great picks because I think these are all companies that have a large amount of focus on making products that are high-quality and innovative. iZotope for instance does quite a bit of its own R&D and has long had a focus on quality and I think these are values that would be essential to have in any partnership/ownership change with Reason Studios.

I don't usually enjoy engaging in hypotheticals but I must say this is fun to think about :lol:

jlgrimes
Posts: 661
Joined: 06 Jun 2017

30 Jan 2020

ShelLuser wrote:
30 Jan 2020
Hi gang!

I apologize for what could be perceived as a gloom post, it's honestly not my intention to spoil your mood, but this topic did got me thinking. For reasons I'll explain... As we all know the Propellerheads are no more, and it's a rotten shame if you ask me. We now have "Reason Studios" which, obviously, is fully evolved around Reason. Of course the inside story here is different: the company has been taken over by an investors firm which - generally speaking - cares for one thing only: (quick) profit. It's more or less inevitable that at some point the company is going up for grabs :puf_unhappy:

Context: I'll have to be honest for contexts sake, I kind of already bailed the bandwagon. That's not saying I started disliking Reason (heck no!), but truth be told I'm having a hard time believing that I'll ever upgrade beyond Reason 10 (I got a license to use 11 but... no thanks). If anything I'm sooner seeing an upgrade to Komplete 13 in the works.... maybe....

Even so... Reason is still a solid part of my workflow... for me Live + Reason (and Maschine....) is still the power combo.

Alas... Investment firms want results aka profit. So it's not unreasonable to assume that if another "multimedia based company" would make an offer then they could add Reason to their own setup.

But that raises the question: which firm would you think is most suited for this?

Editorial (I'll try to keep it short!): I somewhat experienced this whole thing (from the sideline (and without knowing what was going on)) with Ableton (the company behind Ableton Live) and Cycling '74 (the company behind the Max visual programming language). Ableton & "Cycling" started working together more intensively and that resulted in "Max for Live"; a full blown multimedia programming environment embedded in Live. Yah, there's a reason I got to favor this so much :cool: I''ve also been experimenting with Reason + Reaktor and well... as awesome as the combo is (no joke!) it's not the same...

Anyway, eventually Ableton actually bought Cycling '74 and now there're basically part of the Ableton. Yet still their own company.

Now... I'm an outsider on all of this, I suppose a spectator at best, but I have invested in both companies and well... Being both a Live & Max user... I think this is a solid setup.

But that also got me speculating... which company would you think is best to take over Reason Studios (if any)?

No poll.... if I would do a poll I could only name companies within my own "bubble" and that's not helping. Please leave a comment if you'd like...


My take? Honestly? (warning: lots of bias follows!): I'm secretly hoping that Ableton goes shopping here. I sincerely doubt this is ever going to happen but... oh man... There is a reason why I added Reason to my Live setup 10 years ago and to this date am still using. Not only is Reason's workflow completely different than that of Live (which in itself has a different workflow compared to "regular" DAWs), Reason also has a strongly defined sound (this is coming from someone who, until Reason 10, only bought Prop Rack Extensions).

I suppose I'm a die-hard Live fan, considering my setup. But even I cannot deny that, when it came to sound quality, Ableton relied on plenty of others. A.A.S. for instruments like Electric and Tension, Cytomic for the Glue compressor and of course Softtube for Amp.

And although Live's Wavetable is one heck of an instrument, there's also something to be said for RPG8 or even Dual Arpeggio, all done by the Props themselves (Alligator & Pulsar anyone?!).

Honestly though: in my biased opinion Reason & Live can really complement each other. I've been doing this for 10 years now. Which is why I came to my opinion above. Also because as of now Cycling '74 seems to still operate on its own (from an outsiders pov). No forced merging or such, which I really admire.

But... I already mentioned bubble... Seriously? If I had to present choices then I would provide: Native Instruments, JBL (don't laugh please ;)), Casio (...), Steinberg, Yamaha and of course "another" investment firm.

Not the kind of stuff you'd put in a poll without laughing :ugeek:

SO I ask you guys: assuming we're right about the "eventually upcoming" takeover, which company would you prefer (and why!)? If any of course... for all we know there's an audiophile within said investment firm and things go into wild new directions (one can hope, right?).

Thanks in advance for your input!
I'm also a heavy Live+Reason user.

They do complement each other.

Live has a great workflow, but its stock sounds aren't IMO as good as Reason Studios.

Live has some great synths though on paper.

Operator, Wavetable.

Reason though synths are much more user friendly with great presets. Even Subtractor which is very basic but very easy with a wide range of presets. Much more extensive than Abletons devices.

I actually enjoy the UUMPH Drum devices even more as Rack plugin devices as they generally are more "vibey" type of devices with interesting effects, compared to Ableton's more utilitarian Drum Racks which are more tweakable/modular but requires more programming to do what the UUMPH devices can do.

If they develop the plugin more, they can have a pretty good system on their hands. Midi out is a great start as the players are some cool devices that need to talk to devices outside of the Rack plugin.

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jam-s
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Location: Aachen, Germany
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30 Jan 2020

Imho Behringer should buy Reason and then develop a top notch hardware integration with their gear.

Proboscis
Posts: 1004
Joined: 28 Aug 2019

31 Jan 2020

My thoughts have been that it would become part of the Yamaha group of companies. But now I'm starting to wonder, if the game plan is to sell Reason in the future to an existing DAW company, for it to be integrated exclusively in to another platform.

Whatever the outcome, Reason is nothing more than an asset in transition. I will give it 1-2 years tops before the investment company owners dump it, after they've squeezed some quick profit out of it, to make it appear as a high profit potential. They'll open source the code to anyone who wants to tinker with integrating it into another DAW for viability, and the Reason we know & love will become a relic of the past.

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ksniod
Posts: 125
Joined: 05 Jan 2019

31 Jan 2020

Reason Studios / Teenage Engineering would make an interesting combo

Busta US
Posts: 160
Joined: 26 Oct 2019

31 Jan 2020

ShelLuser wrote:
30 Jan 2020
Hi gang!

I apologize for what could be perceived as a gloom post, it's honestly not my intention to spoil your mood, but this topic did got me thinking. For reasons I'll explain... As we all know the Propellerheads are no more, and it's a rotten shame if you ask me. We now have "Reason Studios" which, obviously, is fully evolved around Reason. Of course the inside story here is different: the company has been taken over by an investors firm which - generally speaking - cares for one thing only: (quick) profit. It's more or less inevitable that at some point the company is going up for grabs :puf_unhappy:

Context: I'll have to be honest for contexts sake, I kind of already bailed the bandwagon. That's not saying I started disliking Reason (heck no!), but truth be told I'm having a hard time believing that I'll ever upgrade beyond Reason 10 (I got a license to use 11 but... no thanks). If anything I'm sooner seeing an upgrade to Komplete 13 in the works.... maybe....

Even so... Reason is still a solid part of my workflow... for me Live + Reason (and Maschine....) is still the power combo.

Alas... Investment firms want results aka profit. So it's not unreasonable to assume that if another "multimedia based company" would make an offer then they could add Reason to their own setup.

But that raises the question: which firm would you think is most suited for this?

Editorial (I'll try to keep it short!): I somewhat experienced this whole thing (from the sideline (and without knowing what was going on)) with Ableton (the company behind Ableton Live) and Cycling '74 (the company behind the Max visual programming language). Ableton & "Cycling" started working together more intensively and that resulted in "Max for Live"; a full blown multimedia programming environment embedded in Live. Yah, there's a reason I got to favor this so much :cool: I''ve also been experimenting with Reason + Reaktor and well... as awesome as the combo is (no joke!) it's not the same...

Anyway, eventually Ableton actually bought Cycling '74 and now there're basically part of the Ableton. Yet still their own company.

Now... I'm an outsider on all of this, I suppose a spectator at best, but I have invested in both companies and well... Being both a Live & Max user... I think this is a solid setup.

But that also got me speculating... which company would you think is best to take over Reason Studios (if any)?

No poll.... if I would do a poll I could only name companies within my own "bubble" and that's not helping. Please leave a comment if you'd like...


My take? Honestly? (warning: lots of bias follows!): I'm secretly hoping that Ableton goes shopping here. I sincerely doubt this is ever going to happen but... oh man... There is a reason why I added Reason to my Live setup 10 years ago and to this date am still using. Not only is Reason's workflow completely different than that of Live (which in itself has a different workflow compared to "regular" DAWs), Reason also has a strongly defined sound (this is coming from someone who, until Reason 10, only bought Prop Rack Extensions).

I suppose I'm a die-hard Live fan, considering my setup. But even I cannot deny that, when it came to sound quality, Ableton relied on plenty of others. A.A.S. for instruments like Electric and Tension, Cytomic for the Glue compressor and of course Softtube for Amp.

And although Live's Wavetable is one heck of an instrument, there's also something to be said for RPG8 or even Dual Arpeggio, all done by the Props themselves (Alligator & Pulsar anyone?!).

Honestly though: in my biased opinion Reason & Live can really complement each other. I've been doing this for 10 years now. Which is why I came to my opinion above. Also because as of now Cycling '74 seems to still operate on its own (from an outsiders pov). No forced merging or such, which I really admire.

But... I already mentioned bubble... Seriously? If I had to present choices then I would provide: Native Instruments, JBL (don't laugh please ;)), Casio (...), Steinberg, Yamaha and of course "another" investment firm.

Not the kind of stuff you'd put in a poll without laughing :ugeek:

SO I ask you guys: assuming we're right about the "eventually upcoming" takeover, which company would you prefer (and why!)? If any of course... for all we know there's an audiophile within said investment firm and things go into wild new directions (one can hope, right?).

Thanks in advance for your input!
This is really sad news....Was seriously considering completely switching to Reason...shoot....Didn't know the company has been bought...

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orthodox
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31 Jan 2020

Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
This is really sad news....Was seriously considering completely switching to Reason...shoot....Didn't know the company has been bought...
Just don't listen to them. They gathered here to talk about the upcoming alien invasion from outer space.

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chimp_spanner
Posts: 2908
Joined: 06 Mar 2015

31 Jan 2020

Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
This is really sad news....Was seriously considering completely switching to Reason...shoot....Didn't know the company has been bought...
Speculating about the business has been a favourite past time around here ever since people found out what 'Venture Capital" is ;) If you want to switch to Reason, do it. They're as enthusiastic as ever about their software, and the rack VST (IMO) is gonna get a lot of people interested in Reason as a whole who might not've been otherwise. I'm still doing like, 90% of my writing and sound design work in it.

Busta US
Posts: 160
Joined: 26 Oct 2019

31 Jan 2020

chimp_spanner wrote:
31 Jan 2020
Speculating about the business has been a favourite past time around here ever since people found out what 'Venture Capital" is ;) If you want to switch to Reason, do it. They're as enthusiastic as ever about their software, and the rack VST (IMO) is gonna get a lot of people interested in Reason as a whole who might not've been otherwise. I'm still doing like, 90% of my writing and sound design work in it.
orthodox wrote:
31 Jan 2020
Just don't listen to them. They gathered here to talk about the upcoming alien invasion from outer space.
:lol: :lol: You guys seem like you're so used to these rants :lol: :lol:

Thanks for reassuring me. Man I love Reason so much I'm literally spending most of my time in it and barely opening both Logic or FL Studio, despite its lack of workflow features here and there.

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chimp_spanner
Posts: 2908
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31 Jan 2020

Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
chimp_spanner wrote:
31 Jan 2020
Speculating about the business has been a favourite past time around here ever since people found out what 'Venture Capital" is ;) If you want to switch to Reason, do it. They're as enthusiastic as ever about their software, and the rack VST (IMO) is gonna get a lot of people interested in Reason as a whole who might not've been otherwise. I'm still doing like, 90% of my writing and sound design work in it.
orthodox wrote:
31 Jan 2020
Just don't listen to them. They gathered here to talk about the upcoming alien invasion from outer space.
:lol: :lol: You guys seem like you're so used to these rants :lol: :lol:

Thanks for reassuring me. Man I love Reason so much I'm literally spending most of my time in it and barely opening both Logic or FL Studio, despite its lack of workflow features here and there.
People are interested in what's coming next; I do get that. Realise I probably sounded quite dismissive. My RE list is *absurdly* long so I'm very much invested in the platform. I'm in the same boat as you though! I have licenses for Studio One 4 Pro, FL Studio 20 and Cubase Pro 10. I still click Reason every time creativity strikes.

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EnochLight
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31 Jan 2020

ShelLuser wrote:
30 Jan 2020
As we all know the Propellerheads are no more, and it's a rotten shame if you ask me.
Curious... How do you equate a simple company name change - with the exact same employees aside from a new CEO - as being "no more"?
Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
This is really sad news....Was seriously considering completely switching to Reason...shoot....Didn't know the company has been bought...
The company has NOT been bought - at least not yet. They simply changed the name of the company (from Propellerhead to Reason Studios) to rebrand and focus on their flagship (only) product: Reason. It's the exact same employees aside from a new CEO, which was a long time coming anyway. That said, the old CEO sits on the Board of Directors and actually does have some input into what happens in the company.
Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

Busta US
Posts: 160
Joined: 26 Oct 2019

31 Jan 2020

EnochLight wrote:
31 Jan 2020
ShelLuser wrote:
30 Jan 2020
As we all know the Propellerheads are no more, and it's a rotten shame if you ask me.
Curious... How do you equate a simple company name change - with the exact same employees aside from a new CEO - as being "no more"?
Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
This is really sad news....Was seriously considering completely switching to Reason...shoot....Didn't know the company has been bought...
The company has NOT been bought - at least not yet. They simply changed the name of the company (from Propellerhead to Reason Studios) to rebrand and focus on their flagship (only) product: Reason. It's the exact same employees aside from a new CEO, which was a long time coming anyway. That said, the old CEO sits on the Board of Directors and actually does have some input into what happens in the company.
You are right indeed. I'm reading this article. And it seems only new investors are in to strengthen the mobile side of Reason and expansions (I guess they mean the REs in this case)

https://www.reasonstudios.com/press/263 ... bile-focus

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EnochLight
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31 Jan 2020

Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
And it seems only new investors are in to strengthen the mobile side of Reason and expansions (I guess they mean the REs in this case)
..and Reason Rack Plugin as a VST, very likely. ;)
Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

Busta US
Posts: 160
Joined: 26 Oct 2019

31 Jan 2020

EnochLight wrote:
31 Jan 2020
Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
And it seems only new investors are in to strengthen the mobile side of Reason and expansions (I guess they mean the REs in this case)
..and Reason Rack Plugin as a VST, very likely. ;)
Oh yes good point!

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xboix
Posts: 281
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31 Jan 2020

EnochLight wrote:
31 Jan 2020

The company has NOT been bought
Oh but it has. It was bought by Verdane, venture capitalists, in 2017 and it will be bought again by the company they sell it on to.
When? Probably within the next year or so.
Why? Because that's what VC's do.

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moneykube
Posts: 3447
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31 Jan 2020

my offer has increased... I will take it for my increased reward points... 47... is that enough? or do I need 50 points
https://soundcloud.com/moneykube-qube/s ... d-playlist
Proud Member Of The Awesome League Of Perpetuals

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Raveshaper
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31 Jan 2020

There is a certain hurdle involved in making a profit off of purchasing RS; namely that the buyer would be paying for the concept but not necessarily the execution.

Lesser efficiency and lower performance with each reputed rewrite of the code so far hints that a new implementation would need to be designed from scratch to fulfill the same vision as the original concept.

Regardless, other offerings have a far better execution of the same idea of "emulated modular gear", making third party products strong competition from the beginning.

The much faster drop-down menu version of routing in Live makes modular routing ala Reason seem baffling as a sales pitch in that context. Work slower? What?

Generally all hosts outside of Reason would present this conundrum, so the downside risk is in convincing people it's a feature people may want or need.

That's a hard sell when so many are able to produce so much at such a fast rate without having to use slower emulations of modular routing, meaning the execution of that concept -- the bulk of what the buyer would be purchasing -- would need to be entirely rethought to allow producers to work fast in a visual way.

A relevant question would be to ask why nobody rushed to try and compete with Reason's core strengths. Nobody went in a heavy skeuomorphic direction as a visual graph option for routing within their host. Not to any extent that could be considered competition on a level similar to Reason. Even Bitwig chose to imitate Live for the bedrock of their modular implementation.

That question inevitably leads to two more: "who is this for", and "but why". Even if the competition (and RS themselves) so far hasn't been able to answer these, thereby justifying the release of something considerably similar to Reason in concept (or dramatically increasing the market share of Reason in the case of RS), producers have mostly answered these questions with their wallets and chosen something faster and more modern as their host of choice.

Of course all of this doesn't even get into the loss incurred by having to scrap all of the logistics behind the nightmarishly paranoid authorizer DRM, including tossing out the incredibly sparse in-house server that would need to be upscaled to a load balanced rack space in a data center to prevent downtime and boost parallel download speeds (say nothing of having to rebuild the shop -- complete with working search pages -- and/or authorizer related code).

At best, the concept of the rack would be tucked away as an advanced optional feature for tweaking specific behavior.

At worst, the buyer would have to sink so many resources into bringing the intellectual property of RS up to current standards that it would be cheaper to just shut it down and write it off.

EDIT: all of this could realistically combine to result in the risks of such a purchase outweighing the rewards, leading to the platform becoming vaporware without a buyer. Should a situation arise where a buyer is needed, I think vaporware is the most likely outcome.

That's worth thinking about: REs are third party products built using software as a service and distributed through a platform as a service, meaning it wouldn't be legal to make a third party contractor's products free in the event of the platform's collapse -- because they were designed and built by sole proprietorship or small companies not owned wholesale by RS. It infringes on a separate entity's right to profit.

In the event that a buyer is needed and isn't found, every product that relies on the platform disappears along with it. As it stands though, purchasing RS would be a tough sales pitch to land even with RRP.
ShelLuser wrote:
30 Jan 2020
Hi gang!

I apologize for what could be perceived as a gloom post, it's honestly not my intention to spoil your mood, but this topic did got me thinking. For reasons I'll explain... As we all know the Propellerheads are no more, and it's a rotten shame if you ask me. We now have "Reason Studios" which, obviously, is fully evolved around Reason. Of course the inside story here is different: the company has been taken over by an investors firm which - generally speaking - cares for one thing only: (quick) profit. It's more or less inevitable that at some point the company is going up for grabs :puf_unhappy:

Context: I'll have to be honest for contexts sake, I kind of already bailed the bandwagon. That's not saying I started disliking Reason (heck no!), but truth be told I'm having a hard time believing that I'll ever upgrade beyond Reason 10 (I got a license to use 11 but... no thanks). If anything I'm sooner seeing an upgrade to Komplete 13 in the works.... maybe....

Even so... Reason is still a solid part of my workflow... for me Live + Reason (and Maschine....) is still the power combo.

Alas... Investment firms want results aka profit. So it's not unreasonable to assume that if another "multimedia based company" would make an offer then they could add Reason to their own setup.

But that raises the question: which firm would you think is most suited for this?

Editorial (I'll try to keep it short!): I somewhat experienced this whole thing (from the sideline (and without knowing what was going on)) with Ableton (the company behind Ableton Live) and Cycling '74 (the company behind the Max visual programming language). Ableton & "Cycling" started working together more intensively and that resulted in "Max for Live"; a full blown multimedia programming environment embedded in Live. Yah, there's a reason I got to favor this so much :cool: I''ve also been experimenting with Reason + Reaktor and well... as awesome as the combo is (no joke!) it's not the same...

Anyway, eventually Ableton actually bought Cycling '74 and now there're basically part of the Ableton. Yet still their own company.

Now... I'm an outsider on all of this, I suppose a spectator at best, but I have invested in both companies and well... Being both a Live & Max user... I think this is a solid setup.

But that also got me speculating... which company would you think is best to take over Reason Studios (if any)?

No poll.... if I would do a poll I could only name companies within my own "bubble" and that's not helping. Please leave a comment if you'd like...


My take? Honestly? (warning: lots of bias follows!): I'm secretly hoping that Ableton goes shopping here. I sincerely doubt this is ever going to happen but... oh man... There is a reason why I added Reason to my Live setup 10 years ago and to this date am still using. Not only is Reason's workflow completely different than that of Live (which in itself has a different workflow compared to "regular" DAWs), Reason also has a strongly defined sound (this is coming from someone who, until Reason 10, only bought Prop Rack Extensions).

I suppose I'm a die-hard Live fan, considering my setup. But even I cannot deny that, when it came to sound quality, Ableton relied on plenty of others. A.A.S. for instruments like Electric and Tension, Cytomic for the Glue compressor and of course Softtube for Amp.

And although Live's Wavetable is one heck of an instrument, there's also something to be said for RPG8 or even Dual Arpeggio, all done by the Props themselves (Alligator & Pulsar anyone?!).

Honestly though: in my biased opinion Reason & Live can really complement each other. I've been doing this for 10 years now. Which is why I came to my opinion above. Also because as of now Cycling '74 seems to still operate on its own (from an outsiders pov). No forced merging or such, which I really admire.

But... I already mentioned bubble... Seriously? If I had to present choices then I would provide: Native Instruments, JBL (don't laugh please ;)), Casio (...), Steinberg, Yamaha and of course "another" investment firm.

Not the kind of stuff you'd put in a poll without laughing :ugeek:

SO I ask you guys: assuming we're right about the "eventually upcoming" takeover, which company would you prefer (and why!)? If any of course... for all we know there's an audiophile within said investment firm and things go into wild new directions (one can hope, right?).

Thanks in advance for your input!
:reason: :ignition: :re: :refillpacker: Enhanced by DataBridge v5

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ShelLuser
Posts: 358
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31 Jan 2020

Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
This is really sad news....Was seriously considering completely switching to Reason...shoot....Didn't know the company has been bought...
I fail to understand why this would have to stop your plans? Despite the above I upgraded to Reason 10, bought heavily into several Rack Extensions and well... I'm good ;) Although I don't see myself upgrading to versions beyond Reason 10 I do see myself continuing to use Reason for many years to come.
EnochLight wrote:
31 Jan 2020
ShelLuser wrote:
30 Jan 2020
As we all know the Propellerheads are no more, and it's a rotten shame if you ask me.
Curious... How do you equate a simple company name change - with the exact same employees aside from a new CEO - as being "no more"?
Good question!

The drive behind the company. It's not just a CEO change, there's also an investment firm pulling the strings right now and their goals are plain out different from those of the original company founder. Someone who made the company would generally make decisions that benefit the companies main interests the best, maybe even at the loss of revenue. But investors - generally speaking - don't give anything about the company or its legacy, all they care about is revenue and profit so those get priority.

Small sidestep: I don't necessarily like Steve Ballmer (= previous Microsoft CEO) but I have to admit that when he claimed to love the company he wasn't kidding. At some point in time stock holders started pushing for Microsoft to break up the company and sell off several parts in order to generate more (quick) revenue. Even though the company as a whole wrote up profits, but some of those divisions did not. Ballmer blocked the whole thing because he knew that even though a division may not be profitable from a revenue p.o.v. they could still be extremely valuable with regards to research & development, stuff like that.

Ballmer made decisions which benefited the company, but not necessarily the stock holders. That is: not on a short term, in the longer run however this would definitely be more profitable.

And I honestly worry about this aspect for Reason Studios. Because I truly believe that Reason always tried to put quality before profit, sorta. The quick release cycle obviously didn't always help. But the Props always tried to think into wild new directions. Parsec, the players, Synchronous, Alligator, Pulsar (= personal favorite)....

Still, time will tell.
--- :reason:

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MannequinRaces
Posts: 1543
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

31 Jan 2020

Yeah man you gotta watch out for companies that want to make a profit, hahahahaha. :roll: :roll: If you people would spend as much time and energy actually making music instead of wild speculation the world (okay that’s a bit of a stretch), reasontalk would be a better place. :)

Yonatan
Posts: 1556
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

01 Feb 2020

As long as Reason gets improvements in workflow and new innovations comes along from RS, I do not care who owns it.
I want to see their eco-system bloom because it is such a lovely Workstation, with still so many hidden potentials ahead.


PhillipOrdonez
Posts: 3732
Joined: 20 Oct 2017
Location: Norway
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01 Feb 2020

Small comment to Raveshaper, and for those who don't know: it is possible to wire things up using drop-down menus by right clicking on the jacks on the back. One can scroll to the connected device each Jack is plugged into via the same menu. Apparently some aren't aware of this so I thought I'd bring it up.

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JiggeryPokery
RE Developer
Posts: 1174
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

01 Feb 2020

EnochLight wrote:
31 Jan 2020
ShelLuser wrote:
30 Jan 2020
As we all know the Propellerheads are no more, and it's a rotten shame if you ask me.
Curious... How do you equate a simple company name change - with the exact same employees aside from a new CEO - as being "no more"?
Busta US wrote:
31 Jan 2020
This is really sad news....Was seriously considering completely switching to Reason...shoot....Didn't know the company has been bought...
The company has NOT been bought - at least not yet. They simply changed the name of the company (from Propellerhead to Reason Studios) to rebrand and focus on their flagship (only) product: Reason. It's the exact same employees aside from a new CEO, which was a long time coming anyway. That said, the old CEO sits on the Board of Directors and actually does have some input into what happens in the company.
Some beans + some beans!

They company hasn't been sold, I'd agree, but it has effetively been bought out because there are some oddities. So while this is by no means definitive, by doing some basic research and combining it with a little critical thinking and informed speculation there are conclusions that can be drawn. Now the results of speculation can be incorrect, but often they're on or near the money. Ernst confirmed it on this very site: "Most of the speculation is wrong" equally means "some of the speculation is correct".

When he was hired, the only comment from the CEO Agevik could be paraphrased down to "Propellerhead! Oh yeah! I've heard of them!". You're confusing who runs the company with who runs the software. These are two different roles with different needs. It doesn't matter if the employess are the same. The Board is an entirely different shape now.

Verdane iirc bought 49% I think, unless they have since gained an additional majority stake, which is possible. But being on the board means cock all if the rest of the block don't form an agreeing 51% majority. And many things we're been told by RS are gaslit or disingenuous: one of those statements almost certainly being why they changed their name.

Why didn't they change their name in 2012 with the release of REs? Why not in 2016 when the RE format seems to have peaked? Note what Tim Self said on the PH blog. They felt " Our current look dates back nearly twenty years and was getting a little rusty. We felt we needed to freshen things up, modernize." I've highlighted the key word there. One can refresh the look without changing the Co name, and the reasons he later states just seem like determined justification after the fact: " when I get introduced by industry peers at conferences, trade shows, or in the bar, they often say “Meet Tim from Reason,” never Propellerhead". That just seems terribly, unbelievably unlikely. It might have happened once or twice. I bet James Bernard never went to meet and greet at a trade event and got "Hey, Bob, this is James from Propellerhead Software", "Hi James, nice to meet you. What do multi-million user Propellerhead Software do at this music software trade fair?". Tim's comments read to me like people just don't know who Tim is.

But here's what we know: they changed the name of Propellerhead Software AB to Reason Studios AB in 2019, notably after Verdane took over, and after something else I'll get to below, and they came out with a load of old spin like "we're known for Reason so we should be called Reason as people weren't aware Propellerhead made Reason and just called Propellerhead 'Reason""—basically saying we're all too stupid because apparently we don't know the difference between a piece of software and the company that makes it (although reading your comment above maybe it's truer than I'd imagined :puf_wink: ) as if that even particularly matters—but for some purpose, what they actually did was first create a shell/holding/umbrella company called Propellerhead Instrasser AB and then put the newly named Reason Studios AB under it.

Now, setting up a shell company for just one business is, I've been told, a little unusual as there's no obvious need for it in this scenario (the caveat here there's stuff I/we don't know ofc, so this is what I mean by informed speculation: it could be wrong, but I bet there's a least some truth to it). What is certain is that traditionally the only reasons for setting up a HoldCo are:

#1 to manage multiple companies under a single shell entity, which isn't the case as Reason Studios is a single company right? Or Verdane is now running other companies through HoldCo in their portfolio it in order to offset taxes, which segues nicely into

#2 for tax avoidance or generally dodgy accounting; I'd say this is the #1 likely reason for the name change. This is what their accountants, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Verdane's well-paid corporate lawyers are there for;

#3 to provide easier path to licensing IP; well, there's arguably no valuable IP here, but it seems unlikely it would need a new company just for this purpose given the low revenue it would probably earn;

and

#4 as a form of legal protection against lawsuits. This can be related to #2, in that settlements against HoldCo can be "hidden" from the main brand.

This last reason begs the question was the whole name change really about Verdane reacting against an actual, or a potential, claim from Native Instruments for the Softphonics scandal? It's never been confirmed there was no copyright claim (only that no copyright claim had been made at the one time PH publicly commented on it, which given that was about a day after the scandal broke for all we know NI's lawyer sent a letter the next day and the original comment would have been true, [obi-wan]from a certain point of view[/obi-wan]. But sadly my inside source had no knowledge of this, or morely likely at least that they were willing to admit ... ! It was confirmed to me by a PH insider that PH did suspect Skelton was ripping before they were first provided evidence via that infamous video, which we later became aware only went public after PH had already confronted Skelton about the allegation and the offending items had been removed.

Still, assuming NI never raised it themselves and no payments to them were made, I'd suggest this is the second-most likely reason for the creation of HoldCo, as a protective legal and financial layer against it happening again. Given Propellerhead Software didn't need a HoldCo for over 20 years, it must be true HoldCo is a direct result of Verdane now running the company, or else the Nathoorsts could have done it at any time since 1997. That said, I'd be surprised if there was no real fall-out from that scandal; I'd guess PH might have made an out-of-court payment as compensation? I just can't see $100m+ valued business Native Instruments just leaving it and saying "oh yeah, that's fine, you just go right ahead and profit off our stolen products!". I do know for a fact NI were informed by at least one company involved with producing the samples Skelton stole. FWIW apparantly raapie is looking do IDT devices, and he's publicly on record on this very site as not believing in the rules of sample copyright either. So absolutely Verdane are going to want to insulate themselves against shit birds who might want to try it on. Interestingly, the new RE SDK Eula does offer some clarification to the copyright abuse clause, although fundamentally it's not changed.

Looking at the public stats over on Allabolag for the two companies, and assuming the figures are correct and not website errors, it seems feasible at least that Propellerhead HoldCo is being used to shield losses, but it's dangerous to overspeculate here because there's a ton of things that could be going on there, half of which I won't pretend to understand the implications of anyway. IANAL, though I am anal :lol: . It just does look odd, with YoY falling revenue, slightly, the HoldCo making a $2m loss in 2018 on net sales of 9.8m, while Reason Studios somehow made a $1m profit on the exact same revenue :/ Absolutely there could be legimate reasons, I'm just saying it stands out as an oddity, because in 2017 both report different net sales ($9.1m for HoldCo against $11m for RS (which was still technically listed as Propellerhead Software AB at the time). So, surely, either the revenues should both be the same each year, or both different?

But yes, anyway. Some beans + some beans is not just a very small casserole. Reason Studios is run by Verdane.

scratchnsnifff
Posts: 1423
Joined: 21 Sep 2016

01 Feb 2020

If it wasn’t ableton. We’d get bought by waves, Logic, or some plugin developer


But I think ableton would jump on that first. They usually work with the props/they seem to be friends.

Look at the updates that come out for each version

The past 3 updates have almost gone hand and hand regarding ableton and Reason
The updates are similar enough that it’s plausible that they have talks behind the scenes

Ableton would actually implement large updates, and hopefully Reason would continue to live for ever :)


But I hope the props don’t run into this situation. I love their way of doing it all :)
Mayor of plucktown :evil:

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