Comments on: Native Instruments Insolvency – Should Composers and Musicians Be Worried?

By: hwigeland

hwigeland — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:19:41 +0000

Gee, I sure hope so… we’ve got a big investment in libraries from Native Instruments ever since ’06 (good times), more dough in products from IZotope, even more in stuff from Plugin Alliance, and even more than that in third-party Kontakt libraries, over the years…! Oh, and we also have two or three NI controllers, as well… I sure hope ‘perpetual licenses’ actually means the licenses are perpetual, LOL…

What about the boutique library producers, though? Kontakt has been the go-to for cottage-industry library producers for over a decade, now, and I’ve no idea what platform could fill the gap for them if Kontakt becomes unavailable or too expensive… and anyway, who has time/money to convert current nks libraries to less-proven platforms when you’re trying to keep your small-scale software company above water (especially in the face of potentially lower demand during all this uncertainty)? Ouch.

Still working on believing NI could go broke… what’s next, I wonder?

By: Peter D

Peter D — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:51:37 +0000

Well, having taken a good look at what’s going on with Native Instruments (and written a blog post on LinkedMusicians about it), based on the numbers supplied by CDM that show a debt‑to‑EBITDA ratio of about 12.7x, far above the 4–5x range that many lenders already view as aggressive leverage, how Native Instruments will emerge from this is certainly not a sure thing. But it is virtually certain that NI will not remain the same company as go through the insolvency process. Their debt far exceeds the value of their holdings and it’s in the hands of the insolvency administrator at this point, not NI senior management. And you can fairly say that it’s in the hands of NI creditors, as the administrator is working in their best interests. Creditors won’t want a fire sale, as they won’t get back much of what’s owed to them. My guess is that recent acquisitions like iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx will be sold off, as well as NI’s DJ product lines, and they’ll keep NI focused on Kontakt, the Kontakt ecosystem, and Kontakt related products, as that’s their best hope of getting as much of what’s owed to them as possible. But even if there’s a fire sale, Kontakt is the one NI product that’s virtually certain to survive. The only question is how well whoever buys it manages it.

I wrote a blog post about this on LinkedMusicians a community for music producers I launched around April of last year. (LM is an Audio Plugin Deals affilate and I’m also a customer and sample library and plugin addict!).

By: Will Fisher

Will Fisher — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:00:53 +0000

This is BAD NEWS. I have had various companies do this and unfortunately the NEW OWNERS did not offer any support for existing product. Some went to freeware (Sonar for instance, now back as subscription only) some disappeared and the money spent gone. This has happened to a lot of software companies they buy other companies only to over extend themselves and the next thing u know they file for bankruptcy protection. The new owners want U to buy more products but don’t bother to keep older software running. The need to acquire more & more is getting software companies under One ownership is getting out of hand. Consumers just keep getting screwed so that the ‘Fat Kats’ can get a bit richer. I have a major investment in NI Software & Maschine hardware, iZotope, and others compatible software and was considering purchasing a NI controller, That is now on hold till this mess gets sorted out.

This makes me remember Roland a few years ago when they obsoleted ALL there 32 bit/Win 7 software, hardware & MIDI controllers, when Windows 10 came out and couldn’t care less making there software Win 10 x64, or there hardware upgradeable to Win 10/x64, Hundreds of hardware models of Synthesizers, MIDI controllers & Mixers went by the wayside. They dropped Cakewalk & Edirol products. As such I’ll never by another Roland product. Now it’s all about subscription from the cloud. It’s all about Greed.

WiLLi & the MusicMachine
Canada

By: Greg Savage

Greg Savage — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:07:39 +0000

In reply to Jerry Payne. Right? Definitely not something I was expecting to see pop up as I was enjoying my morning coffee.

By: benpluck

benpluck — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:03:20 +0000

OVER REACH
Considering Absynth 6 has just been released which is a pretty big landmark it seems odd. Also considering the size of the portfolio of products its odd. But as mentioned here, there has been some over reach buying up other products for the sake of it instead of focusing on the core business.

STAYING RELEVANT
NI is probably one of the biggest companies and generally easy to get on with products out there. But my criticism would be the heel dragging when coming to support long standing products like Kontakt and Reaktor in particular for scaling on improved screens, the companies doing well seem to the the ones updating their stuff. Kontakt 8 for me didn’t really improve anything and in terms of use and I have to use the classic view to navigate it properly with my extensive library.

CONTENT LEAD
I know I had to wait to buy some Kontakt libraries in the very beginning as I needed the paid version to run them. I think the smarter companies make the player free to encourage more people to buy content, where the money really is. That said the trend of making existing customers pay to update the apps in the same way is flawed as it can stop people buying newer content, which is counter productive.

By: Greg Savage

Greg Savage — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:59:43 +0000

In reply to David Stephenson.

“I have no doubt they will move everything to a subscription model”

Man, I hope not. I’ve thought about purchasing a board or two…Never pulled the trigger. Probably won’t at this point.

By: Greg Savage

Greg Savage — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:57:55 +0000

In reply to inkagustavsson. I still have to do a manual search for sounds Kontakt says I don't have that are right there on the drive. Doesn't always happen often but shouldn't happen at all imo. SoundPaint looks very interesting, looking into it now. I have so many friends and colleagues speak highly of them.

By: Greg Savage

Greg Savage — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:52:33 +0000

In reply to chris.ankin. I hope it's more focused as well. I don't use too many NI products, but what I do use, I enjoy and really would love supported moving forward.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 12:39:40 +0000

Once they started buying up things like Izotope, it became pretty obvious they were over-reaching themselves. And it all became a big mess of different products, many of which did pretty similar things. They need to concentrate on the core platforms such as Kontakt, updating them for the AI age – although I accept that much of the success of Kontakt is that it stuck to the ongoing code, so independent dealers old and new understood what they were working with.

By: r.k-4656

r.k-4656 — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 12:38:10 +0000

Wer NI kennt und schon besucht hat weiß das eine Menge Einsparungen alleine im Bereich Mitarbeiterschlaraffenland zu tätigen sind! Ich hoffe das einige die vergessen haben das ein Kunde König statt Bettler ist endlich extern wieder auf Schiene gebracht werden oder den Arbeitgeber gegen Anstellung bei Bund, Ländern und deren Behörden findet.

Da ich auch Presonus Studio One und Samplitude nutzte ist mir ein Updatevergleich möglich! Da liefert NI hinter Samplitude und Presonus schlechter ab in Preis und Inhalten!

Nur bei Neuprodukten und Preisen die auch die Hardware beinhalten sind sie Top!