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Comment by iainctduncan | Hacker News Reader

They do exist, but yeah they are rare. Both Ableton Live and Reaper refuse to take outside investments or sell. The Live owners are famous for telling them to screw off. Major reason I use both of them. The music tech business is getting rocked by acquisitions recently.

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It's worth noting, though, that Justin can afford to not take outside investments for Reaper because he already "sold out" by selling Nullsoft to AOL for ~$50 million. I say this not to throw shade or anything like that -- I really like and respect Justin and am literally developing an extension of the Reaper API and a product built off of it as we speak -- but in the context of this discussion, it's worth noting that often the financial freedom to do awesome stuff and not sell out is enabled by wealth made somewhere else first.

Reaper rocks. I love that the installer is so small, shows that nothing is in the code but what's essential. I also love that they allow scripting within the DAW, and that they ported to Linux, and I love the payment model, and and...

Just an amazing company all round.

Worth noting here that the main guy behind Reaper is Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp - would seem like he doesn't really need or want outside investment.

I am really worried about Ableton. Feels like music production industry is going through a consolidation stage (NI/Izotope) and Live is absolutely the prime real estate in the business.

You can find interviews with them talking about this, they really don't like that side of the business. I don't know what happens if the owners die mind you, but I'm not worried about them changing their minds.

Good point. I don't know if Robert Henke still has a big stake in the company. If he does - the company is safe.

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