LinkedMusicians Magazine and Podcast feeds contain a wealth of third-party content resources, all free to read, watch, or listen to. It's one of the great areas of content on the site that our deal-focused members have overlooked. As LinkedMusicians.com re-focuses as a content resource and place for musical collaboration projects, please consider checking out this section. I think you'll find it valuable.

It includes feeds from top music tech and production publications like Sound on Sound, Mix, TapeOp, and MusicTech. The podcast/YouTube Feeds let you view the last several videos or podcasts from each selected resource. all in one place.

The benefit? You won’t have to spend time fishing around the web, search engines, or YouTube trying to find relevant content or depending on algorithms to show you what it wants to show you. These content sources have been curated especially for our community, so you get vetted resources all in one place, so you can quickly look through the content to zero in one what interests you most. It's not only a huge time saver, it helps you have more knowledge of the various content available so you can quickly find what interests you most.

Music Production

Publications include Mix Magazine, Sound on Sound Magazine, Tape Op Magazine, and Music Tech. YouTube channels include Pensado’s Place, Rick Beato, Produce Like a Pro, Mix with the Masters, In the Mix, The House of Kush, White Sea Studio, Guy Michelmore, and Sonic Scoop.

Music Theory

YouTube channels include 12Tone, Adam Neely, David Bennett, and Andrew Huang.

Songwriting

Magazines include American Songwriter Magazine and Songwriting Magazine. Podcasts include Songwriter Theory, Song Exploder, The Working Songwriter, and Songtown on Songwriting.

Music Industry News

Stay up on the latest music industry news from great sources like Billboard, NME, Alternative Press Magazine, Music Row, and Music Business Worldwide.

Music & Culture

Stay up on the latest happenings in the indie and other music scenes with publications like Consequence of Sound, Stereogum, Spin Magazine, and NPR’s All Songs Considered.

https://linkedmusicians.com/magazines-podcasts/

Hi everyone,

I wanted to make you aware of some changes coming to the r/LinkedMusicians subreddit July 15/16, 2026. [EDIT: After speaking with Fretman, we're moving up the date today July 5, 2026.]

Moving forward, we will be using this space primarily as a notification feed for the resources and tools we are developing at LinkedMusicians.com. You can expect regular updates on:

• Free Resource Updates: New additions and revisions to the Best Free Kontakt Libraries list and our other free lists.
• Curated Recommendations: A monthly (or bi-weekly) list of high-value gear deals, as well as updates to our glossaries and guides.
• Research & Tools: Updates on our gear research engine—which aggregates professional reviews from sources like Sound on Sound, TapeOp, and others—alongside tools like our Mixing & Mastering Problem Solver.
• New Content: Announcements regarding new blog posts, collaborations. The collaborations section of LinkedMusicians will be a significant focus of the site.

How to stay in the loop: To receive these updates automatically, please ensure you have clicked the "Join" button at the top of this page. If you would like to be notified of every new post, click the bell icon (notification settings) and select "All posts."

This change is about ensuring I can focus my time on what I love most: building and refining high-quality resources for this community, without the need for daily moderation.

Thanks for being part of LinkedMusicians.

Best,
Peter

I am aware of CWP2Song. from the developer AZSlow for converting Cakewalk Project files over to Fender Studio Pro, but candidly, I have yet to set aside the time to try it. I was wondering if anyone here is using it -- I know that Bapu has -- and if so, do you have any advice for using it? Do I need to set my expectations to anticipate what the conversion software cannot do?

There are too many signs from BandLab that Sonar is merely providing donor organs for its other products. If BandLab saw a future for Sonar things would be very different. If Sonar were really intended to be the step up DAW for BandLab, it would certainly have a Mac version. But the traffic and activity at the Cakewalk Discuss forum is a ghost town and that's surprising for a software company valued at $450 million USD. It seems the only people staying with it are change-resistant, very older users, and that's not enough to sustain the product. Even micro-influencers have abandoned Sonar and third-party plugin developers no longer bother to test for it. I have probably 100 unfinished projects in Sonar and see the frequent crashes from Kontakt and Superior Drummer 3 that have been frequently mentioned at r/Cakewalk. So, the writing on the wall is clear. I don't want to be stuck with project files I can't open, but I admit that the instructions for CWP2Song. are intimidating.

When I founded LinkedMusicians, my goal was to create a positive, independent, and non-toxic space for semi-pro musicians and hobbyists to connect, learn, share their music, speak honestly about the tools they use without censorship when sharing negative experiences, encourage one another and discover tools to help them create. Each member had their own profile page where they could share their musical bio, links to social accounts, stream their music, post dates of shows, if relevant, and share if they were looking for collaborators and more. A number of people commented that LinkedMusicians.com was kind of like a mix of social media platforms like Facebook Groups, MySpace, BandCamp, and legacy forums -- and those were all influences. It was a place for music creators -- even hobbyists to share their musical profiles and music with the public for no cost. To be really candid, I was very surprised I was able to build the site on my own with a budget or a bit over $3,000 USD when a site like this easily could cost for more than 20x that or more using a firm. When I found Katchi, a very talented developer who took what I had built and was able to make everything I wished could be part of the site happen, it really was unbelievable what we were able to accomplish -- and that's coming from someone who has managed and led websites and digital at companies with budgets that went as high as tens of millions or more annually. And Katchi, like myself, did everything for free, because she believed in the ideals and her great love of making music. There weren't even ads on the platform because I was funding all of it. But that also meant it was an immense job to maintain and grow the platform, as well as costly.

I realize that it seems like there's already a bunch of platforms that do the different parts of that, but it's nearly impossible to find one that's also independent and not obsessively monetizing every aspect of the platform. Look at the legacy forums in this space. They're either owned by developers who have no interest in creating a place for open discussion or ensuring a non-toxic environment, or they're engaged in e-commerce or hyper-focused on serving the needs of advertisers or ec-ommerce partners over community members and actively censoring posts sharing anything but positive experiences with the products they or their partners sell. Even subdreddits, Facebook groups, and blogs in this space are so heavily monetized and comprised by clear profit motives in the influencer economy and affiliate marketing that finding places that genuinely advocate for music creators over those who sell to music creators is nearly non-existent. You can easily prove this by sharing a negative experience with a developer at one of these platforms or sharing a better deal on a deal site driven by affiliate marketing revenue and quickly find yourself banned. Even more, there's an underlying fact in social media that is the reason the toxicity on these platforms isn't addressed: toxicity is profitable. It results in higher engagement -- more page views, more frequent visits, more word of mouth/opportunities for going viral, and that translates into more revenue. As someone whose expertise is in digital, who also loves music, and wanted to separate the self-interests of platform owners from the interests of music creators and make something that truly benefits for and advocates for consumers / music creators, I thought my background would be ideal for solving this problem. Although, yes, I do realize the irony of a marketing expert who is known for digital marketing leading a site that pretty much goes against all of the digital marketing foundations for monetizing and optimizing a platform. That's because I did all of this as a music creator for the music creator community, and only sought to fund the operation with affiliate commissions and member contributions, but unfortunately, ended up needing to continue to fund the project myself.

At the heart of it, the LinkedMusicians project has been a tribute to the music-educator-led household I grew up in, the family band I played in, and my own past life as a working musician. It is a deeply personal endeavor.

Over the past year, it has been rewarding to see the community grow, with the platform reaching over 20,000 active users in its peak month. As the platform has evolved, it became clear that the platform succeeded as a destination for deal discovery, digital gear research, and curated resources, but not as the social hub for creators it was intended to be or a place to discuss and share our musical endeavors. Even as we moved away from integrated forums and social media groups on LinkedMusicians.com to focus on being a great free music creator's resource, it is heartening to see that the site continues to serve roughly 10,000 active users each month.

Running a self-funded platform of this scale requires an immense amount of time and resources—from site development and technical maintenance to email administration to content creation and management to legal/regulatory compliance to the daily moderation required to ensure a consistently healthy and productive environment. Given these demands, I have made the difficult decision to sunset the LinkedMusicians subreddit at the end of this month.

This is not goodbye to the mission. The LinkedMusicians website will remain active and continue to evolve as a high-quality resource for music creators, offering the guides, glossaries, mixing and mastering tools, music review search engine, curated lists of free plugins and sample libraries you rely on, and much more. I am currently exploring new ways to collaborate with other musicians through the site and share our work - from the beginning I wanted to do something like what "Playing for Change" is doing, I just haven't had the time to work on it and now, after taking a break for a bit, I may refocus on that project, which candidly, is something I would derive great joy from. Wherever all of that leads, I look forward to continuing our journey in the music production space together.

Thank you to everyone who has participated, shared, and were a positive part of the journey. It didn't lead to the place I had planned, but we ended up creating something special and made new friends along the way. I hope you will continue to use the site as a go-to hub for production tools.

Best,
Peter

The full version of Kontakt is required for this sample library.

https://www.inletaudio.com/pages/unlock-freebies

I started LinkedMusicians as a social media platform with an acute awareness that legacy plugin, composer, and music tech forums (e.g, KVR, VI Control, etc.) are in significant decline. For more than a decade, legacy forums have been struggling to maintain their aging base and failing to attract new and younger users. Basically, they're clinging to their very older users and not growing. But 2026 has been a really stunning year of decline. The latest figures are especially worth noting:

Monthly Organic (non-paid) Search Engine Traffic: 
Gearspace: 144,600
KVR: 25,400
VI-Control: 26,600
Cakewalk Discuss Forums: 4,900

Source: Ahrefs

By contrast, while we opened LinkedMusic as a non-toxic social media platform for music creators in 2025, we were seeing from 12k to 20k+ active users per month (that's not the same as the above metrics, which are only from organic search engines and don't include repeat visitors; so if you've bookmarked a site, it's not included in the above numbers; their total visitors of these established platforms are significantly higher. But look at the forum we grew out of, Cakewalk Discuss and compare their average views (publicly shown). Cakewalk Discuss Forum threads average less than 100 views. Even our small but growing subreddit's average post sees between 200 - 300 plus views and we're consistently growing and are on track to see the same amount of registered users we had on the site within several weeks.

Now, there are many reasons for all of this. The first is,Reddit is the evolution of legacy forums and is consistently one of the most popular sites on the web. Combine that with the fact that the audience is already on Reddit and when you're at Reddit, it's very easy for people to find other subreddits. Contrast that with the significant decrease all sites are seeing from search traffic and LLM (AI search) traffic is even more elusive. In short, you need to be where the people are at and the trend away from legacy forums have long been fighting merely to retain their users and not seeing growth -- it's clear that they're fighting a losing battle. I was looking at the trends for these sites in 2026, and it's a much sharper decline than ever. Out of all of them, Gearspace is doing the best at retaining its position, but it isn't growing.

It's easy to explain. Legacy forums in this space are retaining older users, largely Baby Boomers who have been using the forum UI for decades and are a group that is solidly resistant to change. Millennials and younger generations regularly use platforms like Reddit, Discord, and Instagram, where they have been enjoying various types of content and see the outdated forum UIs as from a bygone era. You could make the case that younger generations are using what is familiar to the early web generation forums their parents used.

On another level, because the big social media platforms have a wide range of content, even older generation users end up trying them out, and when they do, they sometimes will find more active, vibrant communities that can end up replacing the legacy forums they've used in this space -- that's why there's no safety for these legacy forums. For a quick example, for those of us from the Cakrwalk Discuss Forum, take a look at the Cakewalk subreddit, which isn't managed by BandLab, so it's not the heavy-handed environment where any mentions of the company's competitors are censored and even LinkedMusicians, a hobby site, is considered a competitor. While all social media connected to Cakewalk is, to be candid, are ghost towns for a software brand with a value of roughly $450 million USD, the Cakewalk subreddit is much more active than their own Cakewalk Discuss Forum and the subreddit clearly is much more diverse and not regularly making political and bigoted posts that regularly occur in the Cakewalk Discuss Forums.

Elpiano models 10 vintage electrocmechanical pianos and sounds really good to my ears (check out the demo). From Klevgrand.

• 10 different piano models
• 5 different cabinets, with mono- and stereo configuration
• 50 various presets
• Plenty of effects with smart functions (Reverb, Room, Delay, Chorus, Phaser, Tremolo, Vibrato)
• Traditional vintage EQ
• Drive control

Sale ends July 5, 2026.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/64-Virtual-Instruments/14570-Elpiano?a_aid=66fd59ee09bb9

[affiliate.]

NI's CEO gives insights on the company's various brands under the company's new, inMusic ownership.

This is a summary from an NI employee:

>Maschine has its own path. Maschine and MPC are different tools for different approaches, and they're going to stay that way. Jack is clear that Maschine deserves, and will get, its own focus and investment.

>Traktor fits right in. inMusic has serious roots in DJ hardware through Denon DJ, Rane, and Numark. Adding Traktor to that family just makes sense, and Jack is excited about where that goes.

>Kontakt is opening up. There's a strong vision for a partner-friendly Kontakt, one that gives more recognition to the incredible instrument builders who make the ecosystem what it is.

>NI’s heart stays in Berlin. Berlin’s culture and its connection to music are a big part of what makes NI what it is — Jack gets that, and it's not changing.

Here's the discussion about it in NI's forum:

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/51121/inmusic-shares-more-about-the-positive-future-for-native-instruments

Here's the discussion about it in the NI subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NativeInstruments/comments/1ucrgbb/inmusic_shares_more_about_the_positive_future_for/

Someone claiming to be an NI employee posted in r/NativeInstruments claimed to be laid off along with a lot of other former employees. Not a surprise for a newly acquired company.

​

https://www.reddit.com?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=android\_app&utm\_name=androidcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=1

This group is far too quiet. Let's change that. Say hello. Tell us what you're up to musically.

I didn't create LinkedMusicians to be about obsessive purchasing. I created it to be about a love of making music, not a love of buying stuff. Too often, people obsess about buying more and more gear instead of enjoying playing.

Since moving the social end of LinkedMusicians to this subreddit, I've begun finding a little time for music again, and, of course, I appreciate that. I still have to finish a collaboration I started on at the beginning of the year. I'm going to start a regular post to share our music and get feedback on songs/compositions/mixes.