Our job is to report on what is already present on the technology market.
Sometimes, as in this case, we risk forecasts based on analyzes that, starting from the company history, try to shed light on a series of previews that the company itself puts into circulation.
The year between summer 2013 and 2014 saw AVID also leave the NASDAQ New York (the measurement index of technology stocks). The same company, just a few months earlier, had abandoned many of its related brands such as M-Audio, AIR, Pinnacle System, etc. After a rather stormy fiscal and corporate year, which suggested the definitive collapse of the American company, AVID, today the parent company of the only ones (so to speak) ProTools, Media Composer, Euphonix e Sibelius, has reorganized its marketing by first embracing compatibility with third-party hardware which, we hope, will definitely get it out of the box whereby its software products could only work with proprietary hardware: MBox, HD systems, and so on.
The first announcements of partner ship with Apogee cards they already suggested something new; then, the announcement of ProTools First at NAMM in January opened up new scenarios for music users; in a few days, the announcement that Sibelius is also ready for a remake of its system. On all the philosophies of the "Cloud" and "Sharing".
For some years Apple, thanks above all to LogicProX, had inexorably removed ground under the feet of the ProTools platform and the like, and this must have brutally moved the AVID management consciences that, thanks to the ICON e VENUE, they had somehow standardized and monopolized the pro audio market.
Since the last decade, the DAW war has been fought on the Consumer (Home Recording) and Prosumer (Project Studio) markets to define what will later become the techno-musical scenarios of the future.
Faced with a substantial spread of the Apple platform, the AVID executives have completely rescheduled their market.
Outcome:
12 ProTools that, in the face of almost no system innovation, it extends its operations to sharing via the cloud;
ProToolsFirst: free, probably starting from the next MusikMesse, which will once again have to sow the seeds on the most performing DAW platform for audio mixing;
Sibelius 8: announced in this page.
As a ProTools starts its production process with notational sharing, as well as welcoming the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet for a faster and more immediate musical writing (will it be the end of the paper and the pencil? Take a careful look at the video demo and then we'll talk about it);
Sibelius first which, most likely, could become free, thanks to the new Avid business philosophy.
When all this?
12 ProTools is already available; otherwise we will have to wait a few days for the doors of MusikMesse to introduce us to the near future of digital music.
Good music and prosperity!
