Best Of

I didn't even know this update had happened, which tells you a lot about this new forum setup.

Simon - it looks like you've answered all the questions you're going to answer, so I'd like to give some wider feedback. @Kaiwan_NI - including you to pass this on if Simon's schedule is too busy to view this, because feedback is really important.

The Blog
A blog should see recent updates above the fold, not hidden at the bottom of the page in "recent content" that a user needs to click three times to find said content. It should be searchable by tags to find information easily for different types of readers.

NI's blog is none of the above. I would seriously consider a new CMS if the blog isn't able to be showcased with recent content.

Quarterly Updates
I think you should celebrate what you've achieved, but these updates have gone from a 'what's coming next' to 'look what we did!'

I get that PR & Marketing plans are there to create maximum impact for sales, but developers talk about what's coming up in many different industries. NI should be no different.

For example, I was recently the publisher of a game on Steam, handling marketing, PR influencers, etc. I limited our campaign to around six events/announcements in total from reveal to release. Sales surpassed expectations (seven figures in the first week) and I didn't have to hold everything back.

Modern marketing can be done differently if it's either disruptive, compelling or genre defining. Protectionism when promoting has been shown recently to be less effective across numerous digital product types. And, while paid media might deliver eyeballs, conversion rates are lower than ever. In my opinion, invest that pre-release drive into core audiences and evergreen customers. You have more than enough of them.

Without that upcoming information, these quarerly updates (which don't seem to be quarterly) are effectively a waste of your time, because people are asking you questions about the future. The point of your posts has become, 'look what we did,' which is immediately going to annoy users of 'X' product, because it isn't getting attention, or 'Y' product, because there's little communication from product teams.

They're also a waste of time for those asking questions, if you only answer the questions you're prepared to answer. Good media training and product plans allow Q&As to be fluid, responsive and respectful. I don't mean to be disrespectful when I say this, but having delivered media training to everyone from CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies to non-english language developers in LATAM and DACH (we're talking over a hundred at this point), I do have plenty of experience here - selective responses enrage rather than engage.

If you're trying to engage community, don't shy away from the difficult questions; just be prepared, honest, and light the direction of travel.

Q&A Medium
I get that a lot of questons are around products you don't mention, or a lot of 'whatabout my product?', but in the last two months, we've had a Discord Q&A, Instagram Live Q&A, rather than traditional forum Q&A.

Maybe that's because there's a lot of complaining in forum Q&As, but asking honestly, is your core audience on Instagram? I don't think so. Just looking at follower counts, engagement metrics of both NI and other software/hardware vendors out there, it doesn't look like it is on Instagram. Even if we just consider Traktor.

If you want to speak to your core audience (because the casual, lapsed, or hit-buyer audiences are not on this forum for the most part), choose one place and stick to it. Make it discord, and don't keep switching.

Inconsistent messaging is one thing, but inconsistent platforms are worse.

Is there any chance that Maschine software might eventually evolve into a full-featured DAW, with proper PDC and other advanced workflow features?

This is an age-old debate!

The short answer is no. Maschine is great at what is does - it's a creation and performance-focussed production environment. It is not and was never designed to be classic linear DAW. Taking it in that direction would be a lot of work, taking focus away from improvements to the use case that Maschine serves, and trying to compete with other software that's already great at those things.

So trying to make Maschine a fully-featured DAW is not our focus.

What you've seen from us in Maschine v3.0, v3.1, v3.2, v3.3 and now v3.4 is adding features that are most-requested by the Maschine community, and focussed on the unique workflow that Maschine has.

Hey everyone, several of you were vocal about not having Instagram accounts or not being able to join today's Instagram Live at that specific time and asked to keep the Q&A here on the forum. For that reason, we're shifting the session back here.

Simon is looking forward to answering your questions right here in the comment section as normal and you'll see his responses starting later today.