Best Of

Was bound to happen. NI is not what they were originally. Back in the early 2000s they were innovators and actually created products for users. The likes of things like Reaktor, Battery and Kontakt were way ahead of the game and for anyone getting started and needing a good collection of starter plugins, Komplete was what you wanted even if 90% of it went unused!

NI have not listened to users for the last 10+ years and many simply spoke with their wallets taking their interest elsewhere, which there are plenty of options if you are not scared to change up your workflow. They placed far too much value in obtaining new customers without much thought of keeping the ones they have.

We all loved NI and the products of the time but it's struggled to bring these products to the modern market, even implementing VST3 support was years behind everyone else let alone implementing any user suggested features into almost ANY product. Updating their GUI support has been an ongoing slog which still users complain about. They seem to have a goal to try and coast off subscriptions which failed to work for obvious reasons but that again highlights the sheer issues they had which resulted in the shell we are now left with and another massive corporation consuming what is left of the IP.

It may work out better tho because with a whole new structure and new team not settled into a comfortable bean bag for 10 years may actually pick up on what users actually are asking for and deliver products they want to invest in again rather than just more expansion content no one actually wants. It's sad many more lose their jobs but this is the lay of the land these days, being loyal means nothing.

Must be said tho, InMusic is now becoming quite the monopoly and history suggests that is never a good thing for the competitive market.

Hmmmm,

I guess my first thought is that this beats the pants off NI going bankrupt. And that was the reality of where it was heading with its previous owners.

Selling off iZotope, Brainworx and Plugin Alliance makes sense on a 'trying to find NI's identity' basis and on a 'let's immediately recoup some of this money' basis too. It's probably sensible for each of those companies too.

There were always going to be layoffs as there is a clear set of overlaps in terms of the running of the business and the support services etc. Again that is easy headcount to shred, although properly s*** for those individuals involved.

And those type of sales, cutbacks and savings are what you'd expect any distress purchaser to do. They help stem the losses. The real trick is getting the business to be profitable again.

Kontakt is the bedrock on which all of NI's sample based instruments rest and they need to ensure that it retains its place as the key sample instrument based infrastructure. Working closer with partner developers to help them create better products.

NKS is the gateway drug for their own and third party hardware. Again they need to broaden it out. Making it a built in part of every Akai keyboard and drum pad will help. However, the wider NKS spreads, the less unique value NI's own keyboard range has.

Maschine needs a vision to separate it from the MPC - what does it do that the MPC doesn't? And that's going to be a challenge to articulate because the MPC is going to be wired ever closer into NI's software products. Is MPC the production workhorse and Maschine the live performer? Until NI determine what the point of Maschine is, it's going to be a hard sell over the MPC (and vice versa).

The challenge NI has with its midi hardware instruments (Maschine, the Komplete Kontrol keyboards) is that they're all pretty mature products. They do what they do very well on a hardware level. It's difficult to suggest what you would do to radically improve them in a way that wouldn't make the current generation of products obsolete and that would be a really bad idea. I could see the current MK3 Maschines and Keyboards being pumped out for a while. Would an XY pad or just pads or a touchscreen interface really make that much difference?

Traktor I can see becoming part of a larger, multi-brand DJ environment. It makes no sense not to. The challenge there is, does the NI hardware offer a unique way of doing DJing? If so, then there is a distinct way to separate the NI hardware from the other brands. Maybe NI is the 'modular DJ environment' hardware as opposed to the 'all in one box' versions of its competitors. Or maybe NI is the high (or low) end of the hardware market. There is probably more space for differentiation here than between Maschine and the MPC, which share the same functional space and where the high/low end of the market feels far closer.

Reaktor and Battery feel, like a lot of the hardware, like mature products, very well designed to do what they do, with less need to radically upgrade.

Massive X is a catastrophe in a market with Serum, Ana, Omnisphere, Pigments etc etc. The Play system is kind of fun, but doesn't really work with their hardware, which is a pain. And the inability to use the hardware to alter which screen you are looking at on the interface (ie the Play or Edit screen) makes serious use really hard.

So I can imagine a lot of focus on the money makers (Kontakt, Kontakt instruments and sound packs/expansions), a lot of thinking about Maschine and the keyboards, go-along maintenance for the old guard, Traktor becoming a lot less NI and the rest just quietly left to decompose.

Still a lot better than bankruptcy.

Don't f*ck this up, inMusic.

We're all in on Traktor, and have been for DECADES.

We absolutely LOVE it and desperately want to see it reach it's full potential.

Personally, I'm not married to the "name" Traktor, and wouldn't be against a rebranding.

But please don't JUST rebrand it, without fixing the long standing issues.

Funnily enough, I’ve had very positive experience with supposedly non-existing customer support over the last few days.

One of the old Heavyocity libraries which I bought from NI webshop would not install under Tahoe via NA.

I had a chat with wooden boy Pinocchio (err, Riff) who escalated my ticket to a real person named Chris. Chris (InMusic NI specialist) provided an initial solution, which didn’t work and then followed up with another, which has worked. Professional, prompt and without unnecessary back and forth.

So credit, where credit is due. Someone is working there and they are doing good job 👍

sorry… what?

Edit:

It seems talking about this:

https://synthanatomy.com/2026/07/native-instruments-will-acquire-native-instruments-joining-the-portfolio-with-akai-and-moog.html