[HN Gopher] Native Instruments enters into insolvency proceedings
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Native Instruments enters into insolvency proceedings
Author : elevaet
Score : 81 points
Date : 2026-01-28 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| adzm wrote:
| This is crazy to hear. They also own izotope and several other
| brands. Imagine if the licensing servers go down.
| aspectmin wrote:
| Not only do we need right to repair legislation across North
| America (and the world), but we also need right to continue
| using - as in - they fold, the code (e.g. licensing server)
| becomes open source, or something similar, so people can
| continue to use these products.
| ronsor wrote:
| If we removed DMCA section 1201 and the "anti-circumvention"
| nonsense, this would be a non-issue: people would legally
| reverse engineer the licensing system.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Cory Doctorow suggests every other country should start
| doing this now. Every other country only has this law
| because America pressed for it, threatening tariffs or
| invasion if it wasn't the other country's law. Well, here
| we are and in 2026 this does not prevent that.
| jujube3 wrote:
| Native Instruments is a German company, not American. It
| seems unlikely that Germany wants them to fail or lose
| their IP, regardless of whether the US "threatens to
| invade" (?)
| snowpid wrote:
| is there a common legislation in Mexico, USA and Canada that
| "North America" is mentioned ?
| vitaflo wrote:
| It's not all that crazy if you've paid attention to what NI has
| put out recently or rather what they haven't. Their hardware
| has been incredibly dated forever and much of their software
| has been too.
|
| They have not looked like a healthy company for years.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| I would really like to see them split the businesses. The
| software dept shouldn't take nearly this much time to release
| new versions. I get moving UIs to a reasonable resolution was
| a big task but they felt so dead for so long
| adamnemecek wrote:
| That is very sad to hear.
| drdator wrote:
| this was not on my bingo card for 2026 ... :/
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Oh damn. I know some people who used to work there, and not very
| closely some who still do.
| vunderba wrote:
| Wow. As a pretty heavy user of the Kontakt sampler, that's sad to
| hear. I've gotten so much mileage out of libraries like Analog
| Dreams and The Gentleman...
| maxverse wrote:
| The Gentleman is my go-to piano library to mess around! I have
| Noire and a few others, but have always loved its sound.
|
| But also, yeah, NI is to music what... VS Code is to devs,
| right? Everyone uses/makes Kontakt libraries at some point.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| > But also, yeah, NI is to music what... VS Code is to devs,
| right? Everyone uses/makes Kontakt libraries at some point.
|
| IMO that would be Ableton Live. I have the MK3 finger drum
| and was thinking about buying a keyboard controller next.
| This makes me sad.
| bryceneal wrote:
| I guess I can look forward to all of my plugins breaking in some
| way in the near future.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Some more discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46781466
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A much more detailed and better-linked writeup:
| https://cdm.link/ni-insolvency/
|
| As noted, the company has been in decline since going into
| private equity in 2020. Pro audio users have felt it was less and
| less about innovation and more about selling preset packs and
| slim-value upgrades, as well as increasingly onerous license
| management. At the same time people are distressed because the
| firm has a very impressive history of software and hardware
| products.
|
| Inmusic (which owns Akai, Moog and several other premium pro
| audio brands) is a potential buyer to acquire them as they
| already have some product crossover in the form of NI plugins
| available exclusively on Akai hardware. However this would mean
| two flagship products that compete against each other (NI's
| Maschine and Akai's MPC, two very advanced drum pad/sequencing
| powerhouses). That would mean abandonment of Maschine, whose
| development was already stalled, and disappointment/bad feeling
| from many owners; pro audio consumers are necessarily emotional
| about their creative tools and tend to hold grudges.
|
| OF course, the best of both products could be combined in a
| Secret Third Thing that embodied the best features of both, but
| the reality is that Inmusic has just released new flagship Akai
| MPCs (the 3rd generation of the current design paradigm), and
| they're such a big upgrade upgrade in both hardware and software
| terms that they're steamrolling their direct and indirect
| competition. Those flagship units (and some lighter-weight entry
| level units to come) have a ~5 year sales life before being
| replaced, and the latest software still runs well on the Gen 1
| machines from 2017, albeit more slowly and without the fancy
| additional hardware features. So Inmusic is positively basking in
| brand loyalty at the moment, because they've prioritized capital
| investment for product development across multiple brands.
| They've saved by optimizing supply chain efficiencies,
| manufacturing more stuff in Asia, keeping materials costs low and
| exploiting economies of scale, while still encouraging designers
| and engineers to follow their hearts which has resulted in a lot
| of very happy customers.
|
| Native Instruments _had_ all this, with a very deep software
| stack and very well-engineered hardware offerings that operated
| perfectly together (ie no synchronization issues, no or minimal
| manual configuration required for hardware user interface mapping
| etc). But the product line got more and more bloated, the license
| management more of a pain, and development on the hardware
| stalled. When they were taken over by their existing PE owners in
| 2020 they seemed not to have any innovation or investment ideas
| of their own but were more focused on how to squeeze more money
| out of existing IP. This lead to a series of missteps - low value
| 'upgrades', abandonment of beloved software flagships, and the
| absence of any discernible roadmap for the hardware side of the
| business. This really matters in the pro audio space because as I
| mentioned above creative people are passionate about their tools.
| It's not unusual to see people who have the latest and greatest
| sequencer or audio interface hooked up to a 45 year old
| synthesizer and/or a slavish modern clone of that older design
| with additional features. music tech buyers want the heritage of
| the past to be maintained, but also to be excited with a steady
| supply of new music technology, and NI's private equity owners
| have completely failed to deliver the latter,w ith no significant
| hardware developments since 2019. The company went from arguably
| having the best hardware offerings in its niche (in terms of
| capabilities, ergonomics, firmware reliability, software
| integration, consumer loyalty) to seeing those edges disappear to
| their primary competitors one by one.
|
| It's hard to guess what happens from here. Good managers could
| revive the company and build it back to its previous greatness,
| but the market has already seen it wrecked once by private equity
| and is wary of getting/staying invested in a product ecosystem
| that may not have a long term future. Music tech people are also
| acutely aware of the impact of tariffs and AI on hardware
| component pricing and product design. Currently the mood about
| NI's long term future is pessimistic; people are already talking
| about preserving existing setups as museum pieces, ie maxxed out
| as much as possible and then disconnected from the internet so
| they can be maintained in working order but otherwise frozen.
| moogly wrote:
| Whatever happens, I hope it'll result in being able to finally
| run Kontakt on Linux... I have so many instruments. I do have
| Komplete but could live with all those other things going away.
| Kontakt is the important one.
|
| But I'm not holding my breath.
| peteforde wrote:
| A silver lining to this unfortunate situation could be the
| possibility that Kontakt is sold to someone who will be a far
| better steward of that ecosystem.
|
| Yes, there are a lot of amazing software instruments that live in
| Kontakt. However, there is a darker side to it; companies that
| author libraries often describe it as being in "Kontakt jail"
| because they pull all of the same tricks Apple does with their
| iPhone app store. In fact, it might be worse because they coerce
| people into signing exclusivity agreements in exchange for
| slightly better terms.
|
| Meanwhile, the Kontakt VST itself keeps coming out with new
| versions that somehow still don't support no-longer-new features
| like MPE. If you want to use MPE with a Kontakt library, you need
| to run 8-10 instances of it and use a 3rd-party hack to round-
| robin your notes. It's not awesome.
|
| I feel badly for the people who might lose their jobs, but the
| people at the top are not doing the products any favours.
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