Cakewalk Deactivating the free Cakewalk by Bandlab (CbB) DAW - Bandlab Released free editions of Sonar and Next DAWs

[Jim Fogle]

Cakewalk is a subsidiary of Bandlab Technologies.

Cakewalk announced July 01 that if you are using the free Cakewalk by Bandlab DAW during start up you should be seeing nag notices that the program's last activation will be August 01, 2025. After that activation runs out Cakewalk by Bandlab will no longer be able to save projects or export files.

Concurrently Cakewalk announced Cakewalk Next and Cakewalk Sonar each has a free tier. here is a link that describes each DAW and compares the features of the two. https://www.cakewalk.com/

As with many software products, Cakewalk has a download and installation manager. Here is a link: https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/arti ... uct-Center

I've downloaded each and here are my thoughts. Cakewalk Next is a from the ground up new DAW. It is a streamlined DAW that is easy to record on. It also is easy to use with midi and audio loops and many loops are available for free from Bandlab's website. Sonar is a continuation of Cakewalk by Bandlab just like CbB was a continuation of Gibson's Sonar Platinum edition.

The really good news is Cakewalk Sonar is backwards compatible and able to open all song project files that were created by prior Cakewalk or Twelve Tone products.