Interesting thread, also a very old and been there, done that thread. These ideas go back 10-15 years. I think Sixchannel represents the vast majority of current users. It's hard to come up with a number but my gut tells me it's like 80-90%. Iow, nobody cares about all these high level enhancements.

They want it simple, they're not studio pros, they're just having fun at home making some music. The more stuff that gets added the less the average user wants it. Standard users don't want or need a stupid DAW! How many users on the forums comment they've never even looked at RB and don't use a DAW? Many, many of them. Biab as it is is plenty good enough.

This is the way it has been and is the way it is now. However, what about the future? That's a very good question and I have talked about that many times. It was mentioned that S1, Cakewalk and Cubase is the majority of DAW users. I doubt that but can't prove it. I know at the pro studio level Pro Tools still has that market locked up. I watched a two hour vid about 4 years ago launching Ableton Live 9 and they were congratulating themselves for reaching the 7 million user mark. They were bragging they were the largest home studio DAW worldwide but of course that's the company saying that so who knows? 7 million is a lot of users.

That got me into investigating exactly what Ableton Live is and how it's used. It's all about live DJ's doing huge live shows remixing existing hit song tracks given by other stars specifically for that purpose. What us grandpa's don't get is they're not remixing at home and simply playing the track at a show. No, the remixing IS the show! That's what the audience came to see. One DJ doing his take on those tracks. Another DJ will do it totally differently and that's the show. That kind of thing is about as far from what users use Biab for as you can get.

As much as I've tried I cannot see any kind of way Biab could be used for that kind of EDM, Hip Hip, Trance remixing kind of stuff. Ableton was purpose built for that. The plugin could be useful to create some new source tracks but man, the kids already have an incredible pool of possible source tracks already, I kinda doubt they need Biab for more. As for popularity, when I go on trips to resorts a couple of times a year, I check out the clubs in the resort, in town or on a cruise ship. It's all that kind of EDM dance music. I mean 100%.

I will specifically talk to millenials about this because they know I'm a musician and if I express a sincere respectful interest and not have an attitude, they will open up and talk about it. I can even name drop some famous DJ's and discuss them. When they say they're going to a dance club, EDM and current pop music is all there is, period. When we say on this forum there's no more venues to play, they've all dried up that's true for us. Not true for them. There are tons of dance clubs all over the place, just not our kind of dance clubs.

My opinion about Biab? I think PGM has a great niche in traditional songs using traditional instruments. That market is small in percentage when compared to the huge overall music market but still large enough to have a viable business going forward. There is enough of those types of songs on the current Billboard Top 100 to make Biab useful to younger people. Here's the problem though.

Young people think Biab is being used in nursing homes or something. All it's good for is for grandpa to mess around with ancient music styles in his retirement. If a 25 year old visits this forum what do they see? Exactly that, a whole bunch of retired grandpas talking about 50 year old music.

Somehow, at some time in the future the GUI must be modernized like we've all said. I completely agree the plugin is the future not RB. I think RB is pretty good, I don't see all the issues others talk about and I use it a lot but I'm definitely in the minority there.

The website must be modernized to feature modern styles and all the demos must be modernized to reflect modern musical tastes and feature young people creating modern songs. They can still talk about all the classic styles we all love but it can't be the primary focus, the modern styles must come first. That will completely alienate all of us grandpa's out there who hate most modern music.

That's the tightrope PG is walking right now and that's my heavily discounted 2 cents.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.