Well this sux…
InMusic Will Acquire Native Instruments
InMusic - where good companies go to die. And then there’s the whole burgeoning monopoly aspect of it.
As a BFD user, I know from experience.
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I always liked BFD3 but since InMusic. . . I better not wright it here
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I don’t have any real experience with InMusic – I think my only one was with one of the Cubase user freebies from a while back, and I didn’t find that particular one (or ones) worth the hassles (and the unlikelihood of using them anyway) when I moved to my Windows 11 system, so I didn’t even attempt to migrate it over.
However, I wonder if it can be worse that iZotope and NI have been lately in terms of the whole “customer loyalty” (more like “customer disloyalty”) pricing structures. As it stands now, I’ve reached the end of the line with iZotope upgrades because the upgrade prices are way more than I’d be willing to pay. My Music Production Suite is now topped out at 2004’s V6.5 because the updates they’ve “offered” since then have all been significantly more than I’ve been willing to pay.
Similarly, NI’s new KOMPLETE 26 (the previous version, and the one I have is 15, which I reluctantly upgraded to mainly to get KONTAKT 8 and their Session Percussionist) adds a lot of low end (Elements) products I’d never use since I’ve got more advanced versions (albeit older in some of the cases) and other hip-hop and EDM type toys that I’d be unlikely to use. The only reason I might have considered it was for Absynth 6, but I could upgrade to that for less than the KOMPLETE Standard upgrade price, and all the supposed “new for me” stuff added in the bigger package would just be clutter.
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yup…
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I thought some of their latest products from AKAI have been pretty cool and wide market reaching.
MPC Sample → MPC XL.
Let’s hope what they do with NI is more akin to what they did with AKAI and Moog (so far) and not BFD, AIR, Denon, and several of the many other companies they have acquired.
There’s two paths of profit in the music software/equipment industry
1.) Coolness.
2.) Cheap Mass produced stuff for hobbyists.
Some CEOs unfortunately lean into the latter not realizing it can lead to demise fairly quick.
A balance of both can be found.
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what?
Who is underwriting this? Where is the money coming from?
If you asked me I would think it would have been the other way around. But guess not. There’s something seriously off about this. I bet there’s something shady going on.
Well, RIP NI. 
This doesn’t tell a lot about them but gives you a rough over view.
This statement from it is one of the more telling about the company and how it operates:
" Musical instrument designer Roger Linn has accused that immediately following the acquisition, Akai ceased all royalty payments owed to him, and that [InMusic CEO] O’Donnell sent legal threats warning him away from attempting to collect further royalties."
I wasn’t familiar with this history (and didn’t bother looking them up because, until this news, I really didn’t care). I have to say that this background suggests the potential for more of NI drifting away from what led me to NI products in the first place, going more in the DJ, dance, hip-hop, etc. directions when what I got into them for on the front end was (and still is) mostly sampled acoustic instruments (I’m thinking my first product from them may have been the original Akoustik Piano with the Kompakt engine), with their original B4 quickly becoming a favorite (and more so than B4II and the more recent sampled organ replacements, which I rarely use, preferring the Arturia, IK, and UAD options, which come closer in spirit to B4 than the current NI offerings). Absynth was also a favorite, but most of what I’ve used from NI has been sampled instruments, along with Guitar Rig (though UAD’s Paradise Studio has mostly replaced that for me in the last little while). And, while I used NI’s sampled pianos heavily for quite a few years, I’ve mostly gone to IK’s PianoVerse in the last year or so. I still do use their Session Guitarist series a fair amount, and various third-party KONTAKT instruments.
I guess my bigger question at this point is whether they’ll end up getting iZotope back on a more customer-/upgrade-friendly track. I’d kept current on iZotope products roughly from Ozone 2 through late 2024 or early 2025, but the “customer loyalty” pricing since that point has made it cost-prohibitive for me, and the only product I tend to use very regularly is Ozone 11 Advanced (but the upgrade price to go to Ozone 12 Advanced, really for just a few more features, is $299!!! Also RX 11 for a few specific features (upgrade to RX12 from that is $129). Upgrading to the latest Music Production Suite would be $459!
The NI/iZotope upgrade pricing since the merger has really increased my appreciation of vendors like Arturia who really do off customer loyalty pricing ($29 for me to add the new Augmented Persia since I already have all the latest V Collection instruments), and I’ve also been impressed by UAD on that front ($29 to add their new Enigmatic '82 Special Amp simulator probably because of my having their Signature Edition 3, which includes the rest of their amp simulators and/or Paradise Guitar Studio).
We don’t really know the background legal details, and Roger is a bit of a character from what I gather… Whether he is actually owed royalties or not, who knows. What exactly was he owed royalties for? Was he given a share of the company? Was it a hand shake deal with the original AKAI people? Was it royalties for original designs of which have nothing to do with the new MPCs?
Obviously Roger made some of the biggest contributes not just to music technology but to entire musical genres, but that doesn’t mean he is right on the business/legal side of things.
Either way, innovators need to keep innovating in a dog eat dog world.
Here you go
There I go, one side of the story.
Why do I have a sudden urge to buy a LinnStrument? 
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OK, well here’s a third party article then giving the history of the MPC. TLDR: Roger Linn designed the thing and the MPC60 has his signature on the front panel.
"Linn was responsible not just for that interface, but for the design of the entire MPC operating system. Along with his development team in California, Linn developed the software that would make the MPC’s operation so intuitive and set the blueprint for MPC functionality across all generations.
Akai overhauled the MPC operating system in an attempt to avoid paying Linn royalties for his hardware and software design. This meant that the 2000 lacked the Roger Linn’s signature swing program. "
See the story is already falling apart. Were AKAI to never update the MPC just to continue paying Linn royalties. There was over a decade Linn designed products he was paid for before stepping away. Of course the company is going to design new products when the designer steps away.
Roger Linn was a contracted designer on IP, he didn’t own the IP.
This is just an article on Reverb, not a legal document.
On the heels of the MPC 3000, Roger Linn stepped away from Akai. The company’s first entry in the MPC line without Linn was the MPC 2000, debuting in 1997. The confusing step back from MPC 3000 to MPC 2000 is due to Akai’s incorporation of features from its s2000 rackmount sampler.
Akai overhauled the MPC operating system in an attempt to avoid paying Linn royalties for his hardware and software design. This meant that the 2000 lacked the Roger Linn’s signature swing program. The 2000 also only offered two MIDI outputs. Many considered this machine underwhelming, but the MPC 2000 still found love from Kanye West’s on his early productions.
Where is the evidence they did the overhaul to stop paying Linn royalties? There’s no citation.
Even if they did, AKAI hired Linn to design the products he designed, not to design the future of all AKAI products. With a designer/engineer gone… It’s not totally out there for a company to re-design to consolidate their IP and develop completely in-house with full self-dependence.
None of this may be evidence, but he got me when he stares into the camera and say “Jack, you’re a bastard!” 
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He does have a charm to him, he’s definitely a character.
I had inquired about getting a Linnstrument but he seemed less than pleased I wanted it to be able to have trigger pads for my entire custom groove agent libraries… as if I was inquiring to buy a cello to use as a boat. He’s that guy, don’t really hold it against him or nothing… But he would rather be less wealthy than have the Linnstrument be double purposed as an Ableton controller for example… Hence the complete absence of any Ableton/DAW control marketing from his site.
And as the article states, it sounds like he walked away from AKAI, not the other way around.
Sounds like my kind of guy 
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Yeah, my type of guy as a friend - not a business partner. Maybe a momentary collaborator.