Native Instruments enters into insolvency proceedings

https://www.engadget.com/audio/native-instruments-enters-into-insolvency-proceedings-leaving-its-future-uncertain-183206826.html

by elevaet • 6 months ago

116 32 6 months ago

engadget.com

adzm• 6 months ago

This is crazy to hear. They also own izotope and several other brands. Imagine if the licensing servers go down.

aspectmin• 6 months ago

Not only do we need right to repair legislation across North America (and the world), but we also need right to continue using - as in - they fold, the code (e.g. licensing server) becomes open source, or something similar, so people can continue to use these products.

ronsor• 6 months ago

If we removed DMCA section 1201 and the "anti-circumvention" nonsense, this would be a non-issue: people would legally reverse engineer the licensing system.

snowpid• 6 months ago

is there a common legislation in Mexico, USA and Canada that "North America" is mentioned ?

vitaflo• 6 months ago

It’s not all that crazy if you’ve paid attention to what NI has put out recently or rather what they haven’t. Their hardware has been incredibly dated forever and much of their software has been too.

They have not looked like a healthy company for years.

smrtinsert• 6 months ago

I would really like to see them split the businesses. The software dept shouldn't take nearly this much time to release new versions. I get moving UIs to a reasonable resolution was a big task but they felt so dead for so long

vunderba3• 6 months ago

Hardware wise, I really wanted to like their Kontrol S61 MkIII midi controller - it's got a pretty decent semi-weighted Fatar keybed in it, but their QC is atrocious. Hot notes (particularly on the accidentals) meant that even a perfectly even glissando had inexplicable velocity spikes.

adamnemecek• 6 months ago

That is very sad to hear.

drdator• 6 months ago

this was not on my bingo card for 2026 ... :/

ahartmetz• 6 months ago

Oh damn. I know some people who used to work there, and not very closely some who still do.

vunderba3• 6 months ago

Wow. As a pretty heavy user of the Kontakt sampler, that's sad to hear. I've gotten so much mileage out of libraries like Analog Dreams and The Gentleman...

maxverse• 6 months ago

The Gentleman is my go-to piano library to mess around! I have Noire and a few others, but have always loved its sound.

But also, yeah, NI is to music what... VS Code is to devs, right? Everyone uses/makes Kontakt libraries at some point.

sheepscreek• 6 months ago

But also, yeah, NI is to music what... VS Code is to devs, right? Everyone uses/makes Kontakt libraries at some point.

IMO that would be Ableton Live. I have the MK3 finger drum and was thinking about buying a keyboard controller next. This makes me sad.

vunderba3• 6 months ago

It's got just a nice warm tone to it. Noire is great too - I can play on that felt piano for hours!

4d4m• 6 months ago

+1 Komplete has been a godsend

bryceneal• 6 months ago

I guess I can look forward to all of my plugins breaking in some way in the near future.

ChrisArchitect• 6 months ago

Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46781466

anigbrowl• 6 months ago

A much more detailed and better-linked writeup: https://cdm.link/ni-insolvency/

As noted, the company has been in decline since going into private equity in 2020. Pro audio users have felt it was less and less about innovation and more about selling preset packs and slim-value upgrades, as well as increasingly onerous license management. At the same time people are distressed because the firm has a very impressive history of software and hardware products.

Inmusic (which owns Akai, Moog and several other premium pro audio brands) is a potential buyer to acquire them as they already have some product crossover in the form of NI plugins available exclusively on Akai hardware. However this would mean two flagship products that compete against each other (NI's Maschine and Akai's MPC, two very advanced drum pad/sequencing powerhouses). That would mean abandonment of Maschine, whose development was already stalled, and disappointment/bad feeling from many owners; pro audio consumers are necessarily emotional about their creative tools and tend to hold grudges.

OF course, the best of both products could be combined in a Secret Third Thing that embodied the best features of both, but the reality is that Inmusic has just released new flagship Akai MPCs (the 3rd generation of the current design paradigm), and they're such a big upgrade upgrade in both hardware and software terms that they're steamrolling their direct and indirect competition. Those flagship units (and some lighter-weight entry level units to come) have a ~5 year sales life before being replaced, and the latest software still runs well on the Gen 1 machines from 2017, albeit more slowly and without the fancy additional hardware features. So Inmusic is positively basking in brand loyalty at the moment, because they've prioritized capital investment for product development across multiple brands. They've saved by optimizing supply chain efficiencies, manufacturing more stuff in Asia, keeping materials costs low and exploiting economies of scale, while still encouraging designers and engineers to follow their hearts which has resulted in a lot of very happy customers.

Native Instruments had all this, with a very deep software stack and very well-engineered hardware offerings that operated perfectly together (ie no synchronization issues, no or minimal manual configuration required for hardware user interface mapping etc). But the product line got more and more bloated, the license management more of a pain, and development on the hardware stalled. When they were taken over by their existing PE owners in 2020 they seemed not to have any innovation or investment ideas of their own but were more focused on how to squeeze more money out of existing IP. This lead to a series of missteps - low value 'upgrades', abandonment of beloved software flagships, and the absence of any discernible roadmap for the hardware side of the business. This really matters in the pro audio space because as I mentioned above creative people are passionate about their tools. It's not unusual to see people who have the latest and greatest sequencer or audio interface hooked up to a 45 year old synthesizer and/or a slavish modern clone of that older design with additional features. music tech buyers want the heritage of the past to be maintained, but also to be excited with a steady supply of new music technology, and NI's private equity owners have completely failed to deliver the latter,w ith no significant hardware developments since 2019. The company went from arguably having the best hardware offerings in its niche (in terms of capabilities, ergonomics, firmware reliability, software integration, consumer loyalty) to seeing those edges disappear to their primary competitors one by one.

It's hard to guess what happens from here. Good managers could revive the company and build it back to its previous greatness, but the market has already seen it wrecked once by private equity and is wary of getting/staying invested in a product ecosystem that may not have a long term future. Music tech people are also acutely aware of the impact of tariffs and AI on hardware component pricing and product design. Currently the mood about NI's long term future is pessimistic; people are already talking about preserving existing setups as museum pieces, ie maxxed out as much as possible and then disconnected from the internet so they can be maintained in working order but otherwise frozen.

mycall2• 6 months ago

The main problem with NI is all the original devs left and the organization became a shell of itself.

JBlue42• 6 months ago

Sounds like the main problem was the private equity, which probably drove those devs out.

moogly• 6 months ago

Whatever happens, I hope it'll result in being able to finally run Kontakt on Linux... I have so many instruments. I do have Komplete but could live with all those other things going away. Kontakt is the important one.

But I'm not holding my breath.

peteforde• 6 months ago

A silver lining to this unfortunate situation could be the possibility that Kontakt is sold to someone who will be a far better steward of that ecosystem.

Yes, there are a lot of amazing software instruments that live in Kontakt. However, there is a darker side to it; companies that author libraries often describe it as being in "Kontakt jail" because they pull all of the same tricks Apple does with their iPhone app store. In fact, it might be worse because they coerce people into signing exclusivity agreements in exchange for slightly better terms.

Meanwhile, the Kontakt VST itself keeps coming out with new versions that somehow still don't support no-longer-new features like MPE. If you want to use MPE with a Kontakt library, you need to run 8-10 instances of it and use a 3rd-party hack to round-robin your notes. It's not awesome.

I feel badly for the people who might lose their jobs, but the people at the top are not doing the products any favours.

alsetmusic• 6 months ago

Holy shit. I've been on the NI Komplete train for over a decade. They make some very important plugins that I've long thought of as stable and existing forever. Forever-plugins, if you will.

Related, I suppose this is why they needed a third-party to revamp Absynth.

This is a dark day for plugin junkies. It really makes me nervous about the rest of the industry because NI had all the appearances of a successful company. I mean, they weren't updating Battery for a really long time, but I always assumed something would eventually happen with it. Maybe the Absynth reveal was a much grimmer peak into their operation than I'd like it to be.

Slow_Hand• 6 months ago

I suppose this is why they needed a third-party to revamp Absynth.

What third party? Do you mean Brian Clevinger, Absynth's original designer?

nipperkinfeet• 6 months ago

Sell it to Ableton or Image-Line Software.

mycall2• 6 months ago

I love Reaktor and Traktor. So many good times with it.

So long and thanks for all the phish!

merrua• 6 months ago

"A private equity firm called Francisco Partners owns a majority stake in the company"

moralestapia• 6 months ago

Oh, this is sad for me, I grew up playing with all their software instruments.

Reaktor even made me a much better engineer.

I just hope they don't discontinue their products, they are quite valuable for music creators.

It would be amazing if they started releasing some of them as open source.

vindin• 6 months ago

Heartbreaking. They were a pioneer and laid the foundation for countless artists over the last 20 years. Especially in the early 2010s, their products like Massive played a key role in shaping what modern electronic music would eventually sound like. Ever since they got acquired and merged with izotope, they’ve been spiraling. Another textbook example of how private equity destroys innovative companies.

Native Instruments enters into insolvency proceedings

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