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>The problem with this viewpoint, is that's exactly what they've been doing with Logic and Final Cut and that's proved to be a failed strategy (both of those applications have shed users for the last decade

Regarding Logic that's nowhere near the case.

Regarding Final Cut, it's more true (there's a tendency for industry editors to go to Resolve for many editors), but the doom when Final Cut X was introduced never panned out. Final Cut remains a huge player. The complains were more from/about the production studio niche (film, advertising, etc). But Final Cut caters to a much larger user base now - millions of people editing for social media, YouTube, and such.

Honestly surprised folks have been suggesting Logic hasn't been losing users, I had the perception that was common knowledge (like I've said elsewhere mainly due to the Ableton Live effect, which has cornered a subsection of the market, and my own subjective evaluation of their new features, which... give the perception of an application floundering to me). In any event, I'm going to stop saying that because I don't think those two data points are strong enough to back up my original statement.

Re Final Cut, Apple has released user numbers as recent as 2018: "more than 2.5 million seats" https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2018/04/final-cut-pro-x-up... Adobe Creative Cloud is estimated to have 33 million users by comparison https://prodesigntools.com/number-of-creative-cloud-subscrib... (not saying this means any thing for Final Cut vs Premiere, just a useful data point).

Re Final Cut, I would have agreed it was mainly just losing the high-end a few years ago, but the sheer volume of YouTube videos taking about switching from Final Cut (and Premiere) to DaVinci Resolve is hard to ignore. Final Cut seems squeezed by Premiere/Avid on the high-end and Resolve on the low end.

>Re Final Cut, I would have agreed it was mainly just losing the high-end a few years ago, but the sheer volume of YouTube videos taking about switching from Final Cut (and Premiere) to DaVinci Resolve is hard to ignore.

Many of them are real, as Resolve has had some solid big feature updates with frequency and it's also very usable free, so it has drawn people in. Some of those "I'm switching" though are the usual video market influencer promotions and/or need to change things every while.

For Logic this is not the case though. Haven't seen anything suggesting it's losing users, and in the pop space it has tons of high profile users. There are also lots of industry "market reports" that say that the overall market is growing in general.

They have moved to a subscription system in the form of logic pro for the iPad at least - I haven't personally tried it, but being able to maintain reasonable parity between the iPad version and the more full-fledged desktop version seems like it would be pretty powerful. I've also been seeing a lot of VST's with cross compatibility between iOS and Mac.

In the past, I've even used GarageBand for the iPad to mock up initial musical prototypes and then imported them into logic pro on my Mac and that's been pretty fantastic.

Anecdotally, most of my friends are split pretty evenly between either Ableton, FL studio, or Logic Pro.

> I haven't personally tried it, but being able to maintain reasonable parity between the iPad version and the more full-fledged desktop version seems like it would be pretty powerful. [...]

> In the past, I've even used GarageBand for the iPad to mock up initial musical prototypes and then imported them into logic pro on my Mac and that's been pretty fantastic.

I didn't mean to imply that syncing between platforms isn't without merit. You didn't really address the counterarguments that I listed in my post, e.g., that complex media projects require micromanaging files. E.g., syncing a Logic song between platforms doesn't really work if you many GBs of recorded takes, and using many GB third-party sample libraries.

There's a two part problem with Apple's strategy here:

1. They're breaking high-end workflows with these decisions

2. They're not acknowledging how high-end workflows drive lower-end workflows

Here is in my opinion the best piece ever written about how Apple's approach to pro apps changed pre- and post-2010/iPhone, that covers all of these points nicely https://lonelysandwich.com/post/7033868135/fcp-the-new-class but tldr: pre-2010 Apple would have done this by consulting with practitioners on the high-end to build a system they can leverage, post-2010 just builds the new system without consulting anyone and tries to force it on everyone through software releases, this ends up alienating the high-end.

What leads you to believe that Logic has been shedding users? What little information I can find on this suggests that Logic has in fact been growing slightly & has significant market share. I also think it’s a huge driver of Mac sales.

Yeah, this is mainly based on Ableton Live clearly eating everyone's lunch on the electronic music front, and myself following Logic's new features added over the last five to ten years (e.g., combination of copying Live-style looping/sampling features, and the ML session player stuff). Just from my observation these new features have been hitting very lukewarm with their audience. Logic (and Cubase) seem stuck between Pro Tools for live music recording and arranging, and Live for electronic music. The one area Logic still seems super strong to me is composing and arranging sample-based instruments, e.g., like you might do for a soundtrack. But that just seems like a small market.

Curious if you have any counter information here? There's definitely a ton of room for me to be wrong on this.

I think we both have a lot of room for being wrong! There seem to be no reliable sources for DAW market share, and I imagine all of these companies consider it in their interests to keep the number of active users of their software to themselves. So anything I have to say here is purely anecdotal.

From my vantage point (Brooklyn-based creative music-maker regularly recording & performing), it’s a growing market and both Ableton _and_ Logic are doing pretty well. Ableton has some obvious strengths—its scene-based workflow & M4L in particular—but it’s also got a very opinionated UI & is a bit less intuitive/fluid for editing (at least from my perspective as a Logic user!). I know many people who use Logic to make creative music that involves both live recording and electronic instruments, and a lot of those people have switched away from Pro Tools because of its hideous UI, the subscription pricing, & the annoyance of iLok. I even know several professional, touring musicians who perform with MainStage & swear by it.

In other words, I think that Logic has found a pretty broad audience of creative musicians who straddle the songwriting & electronic music worlds (which is more & more people every day).

What makes you think that Ableton is eating everyone’s lunch in electronic music? I mean, I don’t think you’re wrong, honestly, & I’d in particular point to their purchase of Cycling ‘74 & successful hardware products like Push & Move, but I’m curious to hear details from your perspective.

Definitely hoping that Gruber is wrong here & Logic stays the fantastic loss-leader it’s been for the last decade or so.

Thanks for sharing your perspective!

> What makes you think that Ableton is eating everyone’s lunch in electronic music? I mean, I don’t think you’re wrong, honestly, & I’d in particular point to their purchase of Cycling ‘74 & successful hardware products like Push & Move, but I’m curious to hear details from your perspective.

This is purely just from reading opinions of folks online, they seem to think Live has advantages for being more tailored for electronic music, and Logic is more dated, and some of the more entry-level features (e.g., ML session players) rub people the wrong way.

Also awesome to hear the love for Cycling 74! Max is perhaps my personal favorite piece of software ever, and that same group I follow I mainly see actually complaining about it in Live! I maintain a couple of Max for Live plugins:

https://github.com/robenkleene/sidewinder

https://github.com/robenkleene/thwomp

Ableton is king for electronic music, but isn’t a very strong DAW for general audio work outside of that.

there’s a lot of genres out there and Logic is still considered one of the best for general DAWs out there.

Feel you on the entry-level features making people worried that Apple is prosumer-izing their baby. I worry about that sometimes.

Yes, Max is amazing. Thanks for sharing your instruments! Sidewinder looks particularly cool.

I also got into building in there for a while (& still do sometimes), though not specifically M4L: https://github.com/flats/max-instruments. Even wrote a couple of externals back in the day.

What I _really_ want is some sort of a hybrid between a DAW and something like Csound—fully graphical but also fully scriptable/automatable. Live w/ M4L is _kinda_ close, but we’re not quite there yet…

>Logic (and Cubase) seem stuck between Pro Tools for live music recording and arranging, and Live for electronic music

Which is the best place to be to do both - which is what a huge number of musicians need - not just (or ever) recording 16 channel drums and 10 musicians in some big studio like with Pro Tools, nor doing just EDM and working off just a laptop (as with Ableton).

High end studios will use Pro Tools for legacy reasons. EDM and electronica musicians will usually opt for Ableton (and many for FL too, hugely popular as well).

But the 10s of millions of people recording and producing music however, will either be fully electronic and opt for something like Live, or will be (even more common) in the place you descrive Logic and Cubase being stuck in (Studio Pro and Reaper too).

That's "stuck place" between the two case is a much bigger market. The Pro Tools market is tiny in comparison. Which is perhaps also why the go from bankcruptcy to bankcruptcy.