Good news and bad news just in from Native Instruments HQ

Industry giant, Native Instruments, has just announced 20% workforce layoffs alongside plans for a new “unified music production platform”.

Last week rumors surfaced about massive layoffs within Native Instruments, now Native Instruments has responded with some clarification and a rather exciting roadmap for future projects. Despite growing revenue over the past two years, Native Instruments attributes the much need reshuffle to the increasing cost structure of the company’s previous divisional approach.

“This was the most difficult decision we had to make in our entire history, as our past successes have been enabled by the work of some of the best and most passionate people in the music industry. We thank all employees for their commitment, hard work, and their high degree of loyalty to Native Instruments. We are fully committed to doing all we can to take care of our employees impacted during this difficult time,” said Daniel Haver, Native Instruments CEO and Co-Founder.

The industry is evolving rapidly, we’re seeing more DJ software introduce music production elements, as well as DAWs stepping into the DJ sphere. NI’s prior multi-brand approach was creating redundancies within the company, and the new strategy aims to create a much more focused workforce.

The new unified and fully integrated platform…

“To make this transformation successful, we needed to adapt our strategy, including a centralized functional setup that can support our vision of ‘One Native’. Unfortunately, this also means we had to make some tough decisions and part ways with a number of employees. This has been the hardest part of this transformation “added Daniel Haver.

I’m pretty sure this means we can expect an all-in-one software platform that supports every aspect of music creation, performance and DJing. Whether it will live up to the hype or whether it will be the very short-lived Stems all over again, only time will tell.

NI have also announced that they’re expecting to release a new Traktor controller in the coming year, whether this will be part of the new unified system or not, we will have to wait and see.