Latest Realignment at Avid Raises New Concerns

The post-NAMM hangover is hitting some harder than others, as Avid employees this week were forced to endure more pain.

The future of audio is intertwined with Avid — but can the company correct its course?

Anxiety about the company’s long-term viability and customer commitment is swirling anew, with word quickly spreading on Wednesday about a fresh round of firings at the company. According to an article on Pro Tools Expert, the Pro Tools, Venue and “wider audio teams” were all affected by the moves, with layoffs happening in the Product Management, Beta and QA, Applications Engineering and Marketing divisions.

While the company would not confirm or deny layoffs, an Avid spokeswoman said in a statement to SonicScoop, “As Avid enters the final phase of its previously announced transformation process, we’re focused on aligning our resources and investments around the world to focus on the biggest challenges facing the industry. This includes making sure that we have the right people with the right skills in the right locations to best serve our customers. We’re doing what’s needed now to solidly position ourselves for sustained growth and profitability, and prepare for completing our transformation in mid-2017.”

While layoffs and staff adjustments are a fact of life at all multinational companies across a range of industries, any negative ripples at Avid, such as the ones that arose from a 20% workforce reduction in 2012, make the recording and audio post industries worry. Despite an optimistic launch of Avid Everywhere for Audio at NAMM last week, the company’s long-term commitments to audio remain hard to read – no small cause for concern, since Avid’s Pro Tools is the undisputed DAW of choice throughout the business.

A look at Avid’s stock price, which is traded on NASDAQ, doesn’t ease the butterflies: Their stock is down 45% over the 12-month period. This despite the fact that the North American Music Merchants (NAMM) has tagged recording equipment as the greatest gainer in music product sales – that vertical was up 213% in 2014-2015, going from $31 million to $97 million in real cash money.

Since Avid is actively involved in media production realms beyond audio – everything from video editing to 3D graphics – the disparity would take some time to disentangle. But the unfortunate fact is that Avid’s pool of human resources devoted to audio is growing ever smaller, as the multinational corporation that once employed Pro Tools’ caretakers keeps sliding. For users of the bedrock software in sound, the disquiet must unfortunately continue.

• David Weiss

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