100%. Trust is easy to lose, hard to build back up. So NI is doing some “re-structuring” financially. Welp… re-orgs are not easy… while they ran out of money (and can’t pay their current investors). Key things will be to watch which partners pull out (likely already happening while they tap the current pot to get back what money they can legally), and then fire sales to raise funds to pay their debts. IMO, NI spread themselves too thin. They have some stellar products in the market, but it’s kinda all over the place with their partners, plugins, and buggy software (that still has killer sound profiles).
I think that the downward spiral is in effect and NI will need an angel investor to pick up the pieces and apply superior management to the company or the brand/select products will get bought, rebranded and will be “NI” no more. It’s going to be incredibly interesting to see what happens as the market has a ton of amazing gear out there these days. RIP NI. :-/
I can confirm Betas are still being released…so good to see development really is is still ongoing!
The top two most likely outcomes:
- NI sells off an acquisition (PA/Brainworx is the top candidate given the greater investment in integrating Izotope) to gain liquidity but otherwise stays whole
- NI itself is acquired and certain products or divisions may be absorbed / shut down
If the latter, which product(s) get shuttered will depend on who the acquirer is. Like if they’re acquired by InMusic, Maschine is going to have a big overlap with MPC and it’s very possible the former will have some combination of the team, products, and features folded into the MPC line. If it were to be Arturia, same thing with the Komplete Kontrol line, which would likely be absorbed into KeyLab.
“If it were to be Arturia, same thing with the Komplete Kontrol line, which would likely be absorbed into KeyLab.” Arturia gonna have to buy a bunch of black paint. 
I love my keystep. It’s built like a tank. That said the keybeds on the Komplete Kontrol S series are very nice.
In my opinion there isn’t much out there to rival the the Mk3 KK, poly AT and NKS (and recently native DAW integration) make it pretty attractive…it probably would have done a lot, lot better if it had been finished on release (same with MachineX) they have had a few bum launches (Maschine+ maybe another) that only had poor initial responses on launch but greatly improved later (take note Electron!) I am sure thewy were being pushed by the VCs for fast returns, but I think this ultimately hurts sales and reputation…
Sounds like a mind boggling incomprehensibly ridiculous amount of debt.
Out of curiosity, could the private equity firm have dumped a lot of external debt onto the firm to be written off?
This one is a actually very interesting if you have the time,
https://www.youtube.com/live/J3fNs90lv8c?si=1pqs71QaEaP0wqzK
Customer services are working well too for anyone concerned. I had an issue with Native Access, which I probably caused myself and they’ve since solved it. 2 days isn’t bad with the probable extra workload.
Indeed.
I actually think this IS what’s happening.
I stopped using anything from Komplete in new projects 5-6 years ago when I figured they’d sort of downgraded ‘instruments’ to packs called instruments.
And since that time most legacy projects that still have them have been rendered to audio clips and/or replaced… or UI screenshots for replacement.
The final nail was the Mac M1 delay that told me they clearly didn’t have devs anymore… that took years and still isn’t done (still need Rosetta for one of the install/activation processes).
And the Absynth reskin and charged Mac ARM native capabilities made me chuckle a little, though I wanted it. Too little too late.
Best wishes for the employees who I’ve messaged with over the years. Doubt many of them are still there.
Find a new profession to the business folks who couldn’t remember what made NI, NI. You lot always suck at your jobs but rarely feel the burn of bad decisions. Doubt many of them are still there either.
This happened a long time ago.
I will say this - I had been a Native Instruments customer for over 20 years, but the company has repeatedly degraded in quality. They offered groundbreaking synthesis in the early years, and Kontakt was by far the most powerful software sampler on the market. Today, with Native Access being incredible buggy, many VSTs being overly resource intensive compared to industry counterparts, many of their new products being ROMpler formats built on Kontakt player, and the fact that they have turned their back on many users by discontinuing support for NI hardware that was still functional and not so old (Komplete Kontrol MKI, anyone?) in order to force upgrades to newer hardware releases, it’s not hard to see why a large amount of folks have defected (including myself) when the market is now saturated with alternatives like Fabfilter, Baby Audio, Spitfire, xFer, Arturia, u-He, kilohertz, DAW native, etc. And let’s not forget how much more fun an elektron box is compared to scrolling plugin presets. 
Other than more VC, who could take NI over?
Arturia? Too much overlap perhaps
InMusic? Maybe, would maybe end Maschine?
Apple? can definitely afford it, but single platform seriously limits sales…
Fender/Steinberg/Ableton- all in with a DAW manufacturer?
If I had to pick one personably it would be Ableton- My MK3 88 works great natively with Live, Ableton are still independent (not VC driven) and don’t have a range of dedicated keyboards (just PUSH, which can easily be a machine controller!)
Maybe it will be split up? Hardware, Kontakt, other software?
ou, was it him i saw sitting in his bond villaine cave studio beeing angry about people dont getting it a couple of years ago? that could be worst case for ni
More than likely 
It does take quite a bit to totally get rid of trust, but you are right that the current uncertainty could stop, say, people getting into Komplete 16 when that arrives in September. There are a lot of companies that have an almost daily stream of bad publicity and negative comments online, but they get more successful (for example the online shop named after a rainforest.) I’d be really interested to see what general NI users are thinking.
I do think loss of trust is happening, but more damaging is the long term slide that’s now basically a freefall. When you ask the question “when I click that thing, does it do the thing I want?” with NI products, the answer is “nope” more often than with a competitor. Discontinuing much loved products like Absynth, and putting Reaktor on life support didn’t help. Plus the underlying crusty nature of Native Access isn’t great either. Everyone else has one click, while some aspects of NI’s install/uninstall process has a long series of steps which basically turns you into a hacker. I don’t even think people want “innovation” as such, though some early adopters have fallen away too over the years. Most people I suspect would be happy with solid improvements on stuff they use daily.
For me at least the constant numbered version fatigue (Ozone 10 > 11 > 12, and Guitar Rig 6 > 7, Kontakt 7 > 8, and Maschine 2 > 3) which are often underwhelming cash grabs also add to that uncanny feeling that they’re prioritising new features/sales over reliability or usability.
Think there’d need to be meaningful improvements in these areas to get NI to a good place.
They got convenience on their side, I don’t think NI can rely on that tbh.
But I really hope they find a solution that works and doesn’t srew over their employees…