I got an email from Pluginboutique “Welcome Native Instruments”. I know NI was on a shopping spree, rather their new owner, some private equity company - see the iZotope acqusition. Would be ironic, as much as we’ve mentioned NI instruments in the context of Scaler. Do @davide and @ed1 have to relocate to Berlin now? LOL
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To me it looks like NI is just selling through PiB. But Time will tell.
Yeah, it still could happen anyway. Didn’t PiB just merge with another company also? I read somewhere that the music software industry is consolidating, even though the market of bedroom producers is expected to grow…
See Beatport acquires Loopmasters, Loopcloud and Plugin Boutique | MusicTech
This is why @davide mentioned he was doing his livestream for Beatport as an audience, I’d assumed. That means if he were to relocate, it would be to the USA …
PIB has a company in the UK. You can see their accounts etc here PLUGIN BOUTIQUE LIMITED - Overview (free company information from Companies House)
If you check under ‘filing’ and look at the last ‘confirmation statement’, you will see it’s now 100% owned by Beatport LLC.
Loopmasters accounts make much more interesting reading. PIB actually lent them GBP 3m in 2019, and I suspect they were on a dollar for dollar basis more profitable than Loopmasters. They have charges up to the hilt from loans/ credit from a US outfit, so I was looking to see if there was any collateral pledged for Scaler, and although there are many pages of software products pledged, Scaler was not one them.
They capitalised goodwill and software development, which I was always against, in spite of my spending millions of shareholders funds on new product build. It makes the numbers better and the performance less bumpy, but it can mask underlying weakness from a competitive shock.
The trouble with Private Equity ad Venture Capital is the often short termism (quarterly figures met or else) and sweating assets, so product evolution, other than that deemed necessary for generating short term cash is what @ClaudioPorcellana would call “conservare domani”, or in Britspeak, Jam tomorrow.
All in all, I would say that Scaler looks safe at this time, given @davide is driving the bus.
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Thanks for posting this news. I wish all involved good luck and hope the new entity has the good sense to let Scaler’s team continue developing Scaler. 
All good guys. Scaler is 100% owned by Scaler Plugin. We are an independent development team. We have an exclusive arrangement to sell through PIB. They are a great team full of great people so the symbiosis works well.
And yes Beatport has acquired PIB.
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Ah, so as I surmised. I’m really impressed with what I understand of your business activities as a whole and the technical team, and it goes without saying that with your huge credentials in the music business, I’m sure scaler will continue to go from strength to strength.
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I really like iZotope’s products for mixing and mastering. Quite a lot of AI which gives the amazing results that can already be more than acceptable. Then, if you want to experiment, you can fine tune the AI result to your liking. I hope they will continue their excellent job. Anyways, not everybody is born to be mastering or mixing engineer.
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I love izotopes as well, and I only miss their vocal plugin
(but I sing very rarely so it’s not very useful)
Nevertheless, I must admit that using my MIDIMIX as a mixer is a lot of fun, at the point I forgot its use with my VB3
