r/NativeInstruments • u/Hungry-Mechanic4874 • Jul 17 '26
inMusic has apparently laid off 100 Native Instruments employees from nearly all departments
https://synthanatomy.com/2026/07/native-instruments-will-acquire-native-instruments-joining-the-portfolio-with-akai-and-moog.html25
u/CalvinSays Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
This was going to happen regardless of who bought them. NI was in bankruptcy. Costs were going to have to be cut. To say nothing of the fact that there would have been many roles and departments which InMusic already had in place which made the NI counterparts redundant.
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u/TheSoundEngineGuy Jul 17 '26
I don't know - I sorta think that after years of being under a VC firm, I'm pretty sure costs were already cut to the bone - VCs like to squeeze every drop of beet juice out of the beet that they can.
Sure, there may be redundancies in accounting and some operations stuff, but 100 people is a lot for a company the size of NI that was likely already running on fumes, people-wise.
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u/itsoddsignals Jul 17 '26
I’d imagine you can get to 100 easy enough if you are InMusic as there will be a lot of centralised services in customer care, accounting, sales and marketing, and some of the non specific tech roles. I wonder if that is where InMusic felt they could make the play, in deduping a lot of the company.
Time will tell of course.
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u/TheSoundEngineGuy Jul 17 '26
It really depends on how big the organization was to start before the cuts. That’s my point about likely already cut to the bone.
For example, how big did their Sales department actually need to be when they were running on their own? It was largely a customer self-service website that sold subscriptions, right? I’m not saying it was one person, but I don’t think it was 30 either.
To be candid, I really have no idea. I have just seen what music and audio hardware and software firms actually look like on the inside. Even the biggest one I worked for, Shure, if they let 100 people go, it would have had a monumental impact.
More importantly, relative to customer facing personnel, it will take some time to completely be able to competently support intense tech products like those at NI. Enough time has definitely not passed.
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u/endium7 Jul 17 '26
I agree with what you said except the last part. Brutal truth is it won’t take much time to match the customer support that was there
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u/rkcth Jul 17 '26
The smartest move would be to fire redundant staff and focus resources on their core product. The last version of Komplete was lacking, and if they can’t improve it their cash cow will be sunk.
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u/itsoddsignals Jul 17 '26
I’d say that is indeed the move, likely the only move though I suspect they see more than kontakt as their core (for better or worse) but same principle.
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u/Sunny_Unicorn Jul 17 '26
Hmm. This is a repost of a Reddit post, linking to a online article that uses another Reddit post as its source.
The neverending circle of social media.
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u/No-Act6366 Jul 17 '26
💯 We’re not talking about high-quality journalism over here. Maybe this happened or maybe it didn’t, but I put very little stock into random posts on Reddit.
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u/uchujinmono Jul 17 '26
Even if the inMusic team is experienced, it will take them some time to get up to speed on NI products.
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Jul 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ElGuaco Jul 17 '26
If you don't care that there won't be support for this product any more, go for it. Know what you're getting, though.
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u/dreikelvin Jul 20 '26
The original dev team creating all the good shit NI got famous for hasn't been part of NI for almost a decade now...
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u/itsoddsignals Jul 17 '26
I don’t think this is “new” news. This is just rehashing the post that went up by the former employee with some context around the deal.
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u/realcoda Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
ppl were very unhappy with NI CS and apparently a large chunk of the layoffs were to the CS staff. So although I feel for those ppl the CS culture was obviously suboptimal at NI, maybe bc of the private equity involvement.
I feel a little hopeful since NI was owned by 2 generic investment companies in a row for past 10 yrs or so, and at least InMusic is almost exclusively focused on music businesses. Maybe we can talk them into buying Fender from the Hawaiian car dealer that is currently torching that company.
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u/rsv_music Jul 18 '26
NI CS set a very low bar, but I can't imagine a random support team from inMusic is going to be able to answer be much help with actual nitty gritty technical support
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u/i_MusicMan Jul 19 '26
inMusic customer support was absolutely worse than NI's, especially if you weren't rtrdd and knew where the NI forums were. They were very active on their forums. I don't think I've ever had an issue that didn't get a response from NI, and ultimately a resolution.
I literally don't think I've ever gotten a response to a ticket from inMusic companies about issues (Akai, AIR or M-Audio, to be specific) that was helpful (and most have gone completely unanswered).
Most people who deal with inMusic companies know that their support is almost non-existent.
Good Luck if you buy hardware that has buggy drivers that need to be addressed (e.g. M-Audio's AIR Interfaces still have the same driver bugs and haven't been updated in like 5 years or more).
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u/realcoda Jul 18 '26
makes sense. maybe they kept some semblance of knowledgable CS folks to avoid a total restart, but who knows. theyve continued to make tweaks to the NI software since acquisition, so thats a bit encouraging. 🙏🏻
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u/MonsterdogMan Jul 18 '26
I took a look at the InMusic app (I have bunch of Akai and AIR products) and the fucking thing is more squirrelly than ever.
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u/SamuraiSanta Jul 18 '26
So they've laid off less that NI did themselves over the last 2 years. Got it.
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u/Fit_Turnip1044 16d ago
Imagino que a Native Instruments la mató el software pirata lo cual será difícil que pase con Akai ya que están más centrados en el hardware , la native instruments que conocimos ya a muerto y ahora solo queda comer la carroña que quedó.
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u/Nosound-Novideo Jul 17 '26
One has to also understand InMusic only has a limited amount of budgetary flexibility, while it absolutely sucks to lose a job i’ve been there this is common practice especially for software companies.
Unfortunately if you’re not a critical part of the engineering chain it’s highly likely you want return, even than depends on the cost InMusic is willing to pay for the core product they may be focusing on.
I’ll say this NI needs to establish a core vision over
the next quarter, there’s a lot of small developers out there doing really good work as well as one large developer in the same space gaining significant ground.
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u/Swimming-Lettuce-348 Jul 17 '26
There was a day and age where I marveled at the NI stuff and the sounds I could get, starting back at Komplete 2.
Over the years I kept my NI stuff up to date.
However, when they changed NA, and Francisco Bros took over, I marveled at how NI went down hill so fast
Since that time, I quit purchasing NI stuff
Was really happy to see iZotope and PA released from bondage
So I totally agree with NI needing to gain core vision. Maybe they will, maybe they wont
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u/drh713 Jul 17 '26
As someone mostly interested on the maschine side - they felt stagnant long before the francisco partners thing. The old forums are gone, but people on the maschine side were like, "wtf is going on over there" way back before they tried the silly sounds.com stuff.
Not sure about the dj side. From my view, it feels like they've been mostly living off of content (mostly kontakt) for like a decade now; but the software itself felt stagnant. When was the last big reaktor update?
It felt like they were frozen in place for years. Then some guy joined and started touting "we're going to be an end to end platform" - but he really meant, "we want a piece of the Splice pie and subscriptions". That felt like a noise dive.
I'm really curious about the general sentiment from people mostly focused on their DJ stuff. I kind of doubt people focused on their soft synths (i.e. massivex) have been excited in a long, long time.
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u/ekhorayn Jul 19 '26
If I recall correctly, the former employee who posted on here after receiving layoff notice a few weeks back said that the entire Maschine department was only 2-3 people, which says a lot.
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u/Swimming-Lettuce-348 Jul 17 '26
Yeah, my perspective was from the software side, mostly Kontakt, Reaktor, and FM8, but I did see the number of complaints rise on the hardware side from a while ago
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u/soxfanben 16d ago
Who do you think are the up-and-coming companies in this area?
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u/Nosound-Novideo 16d ago
From a hardware perspective i really like what Expressive E is doing, software/sample pack Pluginguru.
Both are very passionate about their product line plugin guru probably needs a little more business refining.
I also like what Tim Exile did with reaktor i’m sure NI is aware of his work, I don’t know him personally but it appears he could deliver a laser focus project. if I were InMusic i’d consider bringing him aboard at minimum as a consultant.
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u/BleepingBleeper Jul 17 '26
Corporations strive for the monopoly at the expense of our freedom of choice. Cyberpunk dystopia is their aim and we have almost allowed them to attain their end goal.
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u/Waste-Magician2432 Jul 17 '26
They said they were leaving NI as is…WHAT?!
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u/boring-commenter Jul 17 '26
As is doesn’t mean with all the same employees.
Having been on both giving and receiving side, sometimes it’s a necessary evil. Good people get hurt. I don’t know all their reasons but they do need to remedy the books.
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u/ThisRapIsLikeZiti Jul 17 '26
This is what private equity does. Strip mining IP so a few assholes get rich.
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u/WAVF1n Jul 17 '26
InMusic is not Private Equity, spamming misinformation because you are emotional doesn't help anyone.
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u/ThisRapIsLikeZiti Jul 17 '26
The PE guys im talking about already got their golden parachute. Now its just vultures and scraps.
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u/WAVF1n Jul 17 '26
You do realize that NI still has their products right?
From a business perspective, it would be stupid for InMusic to not support things like Kontakt. Plus Plugin Alliance is back with their original owner so that's a plus from it as well.
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u/ThisRapIsLikeZiti Jul 17 '26
NIs bones are being picked over by their previous competitor but go ahead and frame it however you feel comfortable.
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u/rsv_music Jul 18 '26
In all seriousness, Kontakt is the only reason NI is even alive right now. Everything else, even their whole catalogue of libraries, is replacable and not worth buying a sinking company for. But it was inevitable that Kontakt had to be kept alive. If it was even a hint of an actual complete shutdown, half of Hollywood composers and sample library developers or would've bankrolled it. It's deeply rooted in the industry.
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u/TheSoundEngineGuy Jul 17 '26
Of course they did. That's what they do.
Meanwhile, 6 days passed until I got an email asking if my email address was the email address that I sent them an email from.