Sonic Control.TV

Just days before Christmas 2008, AVID’s Digidesign division has released a significant upgrade to its Pro Tools product. We are now at v8. Not the vegetable cocktail, but perhaps an engine. That’s because with this significant update Digidesign has added 71 plug-ins, improved MIDI editing, created a more streamlined Logic-like interface (at least that’s how it looks to me), and added notation from its purchase of Sibelius. It’s the addition of Sibelius notation that could give Pro Tools a new competitive edge in an area people outside of Los Angeles and New York call America, because in America (like West Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, North Dakota, Maine, and so on) more people know the Pro Tools name than any other comparable music program. If the new features take advantage of the name recognition Pro Tools enjoys outside major production cities, the sleeping giant could, with the right political will, awaken and finally begin bringing the MIDI revolution to an area screwed over by Congress and Wall Street - Main Street.

Here’s how.

The alleged good news is that in v8, you just export the notation in an .sib file and move it into Sibelius for finessing. That’s a good start, but what the ad copy didn’t say, and this is key, is this: dare we assume that v8 can also import a Sibelius file, and if yes, which version of Sibelius can be imported into Pro Tools 8?

This is a serious sales question because if v8 imports .sib files, there are now tens of thousands of Sibelius users in Europe, the UK, Australia, and the U.S., available for upgrading into a Pro Tools package and a hefty percentage of those users are educators, needing to be trained in order to train a new generation of music producers.

What educators learn on, they teach. Just like in a music store, a salesman sells best what he knows best.

And those users, teachers and composers, have a particular work style. They do the notation first in Sibelius and then export a MIDI file to Logic or some other program.

Obviously, v8 has a MIDI import. So in light of what you now know about Sibelius user habits, how well does v8 import a MIDI file from Sibelius?

Another question. How much of a closed system will this be?

Back in August 2008, many of us in the industry received a letter from the new president of Avid, Gary Greenfield. In that letter he wrote: Over the last six months I have had the pleasure of visiting and talking with hundreds of customers and business partners around the world. I have learned a great deal in that short time, and heard one very clear theme: Avid needs to do a better job of listening to our customers and developing solutions that truly meet their needs.

So now the listening question, especially for teachers: How easily will Pro Tools 8 implement VSTi’s like the Vienna Instruments?

That’s also a big sales question for Avid because there are templates in place for Sibelius 5 and the Vienna Instruments Special Edition. Presumably, that’s a few more thousand units of sales potential right there (no one knows how many Special Edition users there are so I made a hopeful guess).

The other question is whose audio cards will work with Pro Tools 8? If a school has a computer lab, it’s unfortunate but true that little fingers walk off with audio cards that can’t be attached or built into the computer. For the PC, this is where the Creative Labs Fatal1ty Card was the winning ticket. Originally the Fatal1ty Card was the E-MU APS Card and its potential for music lab sales in mass quantities was unreal. Unfortunately, the APS Card was at 48K instead of 44.1. So every time a student (or composer) wanted to burn a CD of their music, it got transposed down a minor 3rd.

So the APS Card died and out came the Fatal1ty Card (bizarre kind of pun, isn’t it?) and music ed was displaced by a gamer.

Avid needs their own version of the APS/Fatal1ty card. “Oh M-Audio!”

And that’s what they should do. Go to M-Audio and get them to make something similar. Then bundle the software, an audio card and a keyboard. Make it a total solution package and get with system integrators to create DAWs for it.

There’s another market. Home Schooling.

Then bring in publishers (plural) who have curriculum. Liberate some units. Get them excited and talking about v8.

How could I forget. Churches. There are 350,000 in the U.S. alone. A solid statistical percentage will be open to this.

And then there are the tens of thousands of adult composers who went to music school and never made it as a pro who still have a heart to produce and hear their music.

That’s the sales secret. Not 71 plug-ins. There are people who hear beautiful music in their inner ear and they want to produce it to hear it. But these people need a genuine systemic approach that takes them from A to Z. And Pro Tools is dual platform. Avid to Apple: Where I’m going you cannot follow.

Yamaha could follow because of their purchase of Steinberg. Yamaha is a serious sleeping giant. They’ve got it all from pianos for the piano lab to Cubase. They’re dual platform with Cubase and Nuendo. They could make it happen in a grand way because Yamaha has a fabulous music education tradition behind it and in front of it. Avid doesn’t. They have to build a music education tradition at a lower grass roots level.

But my bet is that Yamaha won’t do it, because they’re not organized corporately to sell this way and because they lack the political will.

And that’s what it will take, political will. The Digi salesman who’s a kingmaker at NAMM will have to swallow hard and accept the new fact that he’s nothing but a serf in a professor’s office. It’s like Walmart in Bentonville. Even Jeffrey Katzenberg sits in the Walmart waiting room.

And Avid will have to accept that some professors make molasses look like Speed Racer. So there’s another toe hold. And an overwhelming majority of these potential customers won’t be spending $1200 for a Toolkit update to do SMPTE because SMPTE won’t be important to them - at least in the beginning.

I think the breakthrough is there for Digi. If they have the political will and the humility needed to effect sales breakthrough, it’s theirs. Quite literally.

But to achieve this breakthrough, they’re going to have model the Clintons’ when Hillary was running for the U.S. Senator of New York. There’s a state fair out there. A hand to be shaken. And a system requirements list that needs simple explanations.

When the industry only snobbily markets to pros, it misses the glint in the eye of the man or woman who always dreamed of recording their own music or being recorded as an artist, especially when city slicker tech salesmen snidely talk over their heads while talking down to them all at the same time.

That will have to change. New alliances will have to be formed. And that will take time. Probably five years or so, because years of snubbery will have to be overcome.

So how did Wall Street react with today’s news? (Check the chart below from Yahoo Finance by clicking twice to bring it to full size in another window.) To borrow from Jane Austen, nary a niggle in response. In fact, Avid’s stock when down a tad.  But then, Wall Street never did know anything about music.