News Analysis: Gibson to Acquire Cakewalk, Create TASCAM Professional Software

An interesting new wrinkle is about to appear in the DAW world.

Gibson is about to beef up its brand portfolio yet again.

In an unanticipated move, Gibson Brands has announced its intention to acquire Cakewalk Incorporated from Cakewalk’s current parent, Roland Corporation.

But unlike some acquisitions that have taken place across the audio industry, it appears that the Nashville-based Gibson Brands – a music and sound company with a portfolio of over 100 brands including Gibson, Slingerland, Baldwin, KRK Systems, TASCAM, Cerwin-Vega, Stanton, TEAC, and more – actually has a plan.

Following the acquisition, a new brand, dubbed TASCAM Professional Software, will be launched and tasked with supporting, promoting, and publishing all of Cakewalk’s current and future products for the professional market.

In the meantime, Cakewalk will be transitioning to a new name: Cakewalk Development. According to Gibson, the name underscores the company’s new emphasis on R&D and product development. Not only will Cakewalk Development continue to evolve the company’s flagship DAW, SONAR, but a family of consumer-oriented products will be released to the market, and continue to carry the Cakewalk name.

A Creative Combination

The pairing of the TASCAM name to Cakewalk’s professional audio software offerings seems shrewd. TASCAM’s products opened up multitrack recording to home recordists and professionals alike with their cassette-based recorders, low-cost multitrack recorders, real-to-reel tape machines and audio mixers starting in the early 1970s.

By acquiring Cakewalk, Gibson can re-launch the trusted TASCAM brand into the software world. It’s a marketing maneuver that just may resonate with producers, mixers, studios, and artists that so far have been slow to adopt Sonar en masse. They obviously expect it to fare better than “Cakewalk by Roland”, a relatively uninspiring brand statement.

Cakewalk is changing hands again — how will SONAR fare under the TASCAM banner?

However, at least one thing stands in the way of Gibson’s strategy to significantly increase DAW market share: According to the company, there are still no plans to port SONAR over to Mac.

The mind boggles at what the cost and complexity must actually be to make Cakewalk cross-platform – that would seem to be essential for any DAW looking to seriously compete in the audio industry, yet SONAR’s owners never attempt it. Apparently the return on investment — whatever that may be — just isn’t perceived to be there.

Gibson Keeps Growing

Following the acquisition, Cakewalk will continue to be based out of Boston. According to Gibson, the company will also retain its current staff and management, stressing that Cakewalk’s people were as big a draw as its products, which include SONAR, the CA-2A T-Type Leveling Amplifier, Music Creator 6 Touch, Rapture, Dimension Pro, and Z3TA+2.

Impending financial terms have not yet been specified. Hopefully, there will be no corporate casualties at Cakewalk in the form of layoffs. Typically, staffing redundancies are rooted out and eliminated following an acquisition. But Cakewalk has built up a dedicated following of professionals and artists in the music, film, broadcast, and videogame sectors, and as a result has been a solid Northeast pro audio employer for a number of years. Ideally the company will grow and expand under its new umbrella, and not contract.

TASCAM is the trifecta in this three-team trade.

Clearly, Gibson feels like it’s getting the hang of this acquisition thing. As Clive Young points out in Pro Sound News, Gibson acquired Stanton Group (KRK, Cerwin-Vega, Stanton) in 2011; bought a large stake in Onkyo in 2012; and did the same in March of this year with TEAC, which itself is the overbrand for TASCAM.

Gibson is somewhat aggressively diversifying its portfolio. At the same time, they appear to be putting forethought into each acquisition, and synching their new lines up logically with other brands that they already own or plan to acquire.

So will audio professionals and studios get more excited about TASCAM SONAR than they have so far about Cakewalk SONAR? And if they do, how will that affect the balance of power in a DAW world where Pro Tools rules, Logic is an established leader, and Steinberg and Digital Performer sport a dedicated following? We’re about to see exactly how that will sound.

– David Weiss

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