Inside Ableton, the Music Software Company Everyone Wants to Buy

The funny thing about Ableton Live, and I say this as someone who genuinely loves the program, is that it completely sucks. The UI hasn't had any meaningful changes in decades and lacks visual contrast at a glance, it's plugin support is among the worst in the industry and a single plugin crash will bring down the entire program. It's barely extensible, the keybinds are esoteric and confusing, it's automation options are lackluster, it completely lacks a usable ASIO driver for Windows and on MacOS it feels more out-of-place than a Windows 98 app.

Despite that, it's still unmatched. The workflow that Ableton enables blurs the line between jamming and arrangement, so much so that you can frequently write entire songs without realizing it. The constraints and conceits that it makes seemingly funnel your creativity onto your art, not the program, and when you're familiar with it's capabilities it can feel like invoking black magic. When it comes to performing live, the gap becomes even wider. I legitimately cannot think of an application or suite of applications that can do what Live does with such insane efficiency and simplicity. I dare say that modern electronic music performances would not exist without Ableton. It's simply that powerful, ubiquitous and loved.

Or work for, sadly stuck in the USA.