Originally Posted By: Pat Marr
John, I'm not trying to be obstinate here, but I'm afraid We're still not communicating.

I'm trying to make points above and beyond the GUI. Your main point appears to be that the GUI needs to change or BIAB is doomed. I'm saying there are lots of reasons besides the GUI that make people buy software.

1) LOTS of music teachers use BIAB, and their students are introduced to it that way. I'd guess that most young people who use BIAB are trained musicians who started using the software through their parents or teachers.


2) PGMusic already has a huge market penetration... more than Sonar or FLStudio according to the last report I saw that included PGMUSIC. Since most software owners tend to upgrade rather than buy new, their large customer base will provide plenty of income even if they never sell one more new copy of BIAB


3) But they WILL sell new copies because PGMusic has an international presence. They did the work early to get BIAB translated into all of he most common languages. That is huge!


4) PGMusic is at all of the music trade shows like NAMM and MUSIKMESSE. They aren't sitting around waiting for phone calls, they are doing all the right things in terms of global marketing.


5) Years ago most of the major music software was MIDI based, and they were all pretty similar. Most of those programs poured resources into their interface, but their core capability remained approximately the same from one company to the next. PGMusic used their resources to come up with innovations that nobody else has. That is huge.. to be the only kid on the block with most of BIAB's features puts them in a unique position. If you want what they have, the only way you can get it is by buying BIAB.. whether you like the GUI or not.



If your concern is that PGMusic is going under because of the GUI, you can relax because that ain't gonna happen any time soon... probably not in our lifetime. They have too much global momentum, too large a customer base, too unique of a product, and a customer base that is rabidly faithful to buy upgrades every year.

In my opinion, the biggest threat to BIAB isn't the GUI.. it is the fact that desktop PCs are becoming dinosaurs. If I owned a software company, I wouldn't be wasting resources to make my software look better on soon to be obsolete machines. All my resources would be geared toward putting my product on the cloud in a format that could be accessed by small devices that don't have storage space for the huge installation as it exists today.

If you really want PGMusic to survive, don't push to redirect their resources to solve problems that are about to become irrelevant.

my two cents.

Pat, you make good points but you'll never change my view that the user interface is one of the most important parts of a software program like this. Yes, those RealTracks are really something but then again, I find I am starting to use them less as my library of samples for MIDI grows and I am finding that with a little more effort I can create RealTrack quality backing tracks in MIDI. AND I get to control every note! I recently purchased a MIDI program that works a lot like BIAB by using a huge predefined library of musical phrases and chord progressions and drum patterns, etc. And I can simply hook up my VSTis to it and get really great backing tracks that I can edit! I still love BIAB of course but the BIAB interface is so clunky after using so many great GUIs on my other tools.

So, we'll just agree to disagree! Lots of really exciting tools coming out every year and with some of the new MIDI tools and samples I would not assume PG's RealTracks will provide a strong enough advantage over newer, easier to use programs.