inMusic has apparently laid off 100 Native Instruments employees from nearly all departments - July 16, 2026

inMusic, the new owner of Native Instruments, has apparently laid off around 100 individuals from nearly all departments.

The great Native Instruments alliance is history. All the companies have new owners. iZotope is with Boris FX, Plugin Alliance and Brainworx are back with Dirk Ulrich, and Native Instruments is with inMusic.

As you can read from various online posts, inMusic is currently restructuring the entire NI company. As feared, with a bad outcome for the employees



inMusic Native Instruments Layoffs
A former employee, who wishes to remain anonymous and is affected by these changes, reports 100 layoffs across various departments.

He says in the post that the entire NI customer support team was terminated and that this was set up by inMusic as part of their buy. That this would happen was foreseeable because inMusic has centralized support for its brands.

The ex-employee writes:

It has occurrend across in nearly all departments (around 100 individuals) and will keep happening. I found out the entire customer support team was terminated. This was set up by inMusic as part of their buy

The organization is a mess, and I have little faith it will get better considering the individuals they’ve chosen to lead.

Customers don’t matter right now despite what you hear or read about the company or inMusic AMA (I won’t answer questions about what I do as they will try to figure out who is behind this post). (Creating a new account for safety reasons and to avoid legal issues).



The electronic musician “Unders” writes in another Reddit post also about mass layoffs in NI, multiple staff in development, hardware, and support.

More, he writes that some have been given “garden leave” until September, where their roles (hardware development, for example), might get rolled into the other brands. I can also confirm that I have received messages from former employees who have been dismissed.

Neither inMusic nor Native Instruments has published any public news about this. Therefore, I can only confirm what I know from the people I know.

It seems that what I feared has now come to pass. inMusic is shrinking NI and merging many areas with other existing company departments. This will result in the loss of jobs currently held by two people. That’s very sad for the ex Native team.

I hope those who are being laid off find new jobs in the music tech industry or elsewhere and are happy again. These are good, talented people, not soulless AI agents whose work lives have been taken away from them.

It’s sad, but that’s how business is in a big brand, or as the NI CEO once said: Business continues as usual.

Source: https://synthanatomy.com/2026/07/na...joining-the-portfolio-with-akai-and-moog.html

 

The reason Traktor and Kontakt never got a proper gui scaling and Reaktor development stopped its because the last OG coder and founder left around 2010. IIRC, it happened because the other OG founder paved the way for Native Instruments to drop development left and right, same for hardware (stop driver support), and move into sound libraries and whatnot.

I think we're witnessing a brand name takeover, while many software and hardware will be left behind. A complete Kontakt or Traktor rewrite (to get up to date with the current times) is pretty much dead (even with the new ai coding advances). C'est la vie

 

In my experience (working for a similar software company in another chapter of my life), all organizations that file for bankruptcy are a mess. Even most of those that don't are a mess - small mess, big mess, or just messy mess, depending (from Apple to Zara).

What usually holds companies together, is Vision, Organization, and Execution - or in a word: talent. At every hierarchical level.

Normally those tasks are handled by talented, lucid and intelligent people, but not always. For those roughly my age or older, we remember Nokia and Blackberry, Palm and Compaq, Kodak and Polaroid - all gone. Even Apple almost bit the dust (Steve Jobs had to blackmail Bill Gates out of a $150M investment to save the company). Most of the defunct companies cited above were dominant, led the industry for decades, but faltered due to ego mostly: Ego of the founders (Blackberry), or C-suite (Nokia, Palm, Kodak, Polaroid).

Many more companies have failed in the last 10-15 years, chiefly brick and mortar retailers, which brings me to the last leg of the stool, or chair, so to speak: beside Vision, Organization, and Execution, a company needs Distribution. You can sort of sit on a three leg stool, but a four legged chair is preferable, more comfortable. That said, any of the four legs wobbles (is lacking in talent and diligence), and out on your ass you go - maybe you even crack your skull. No bueno.

Software companies have become three legged stools essentially: no distribution partners needed (except emails, portals and Download Managers), it's all ones and zeroes. Which places greater weight and pressure on their VOE (Vision, Organization, and Execution) legs.

My point here: the talent and egos of the "the individuals they’ve chosen to lead" matters greatly. There can be no weaknesses there.

Bill Gates once admiringly commented in an interview about Apple's leadership structure that "there are no weaknesses there." Perhaps it was a swipe at the infamously blurry vision and incompetent Ballmer, perhaps not, but the praise was high and real.

At our (pro audio industry and software plugin) level, making sure "there are no weaknesses there" is paramount. Any little wooble, wart or loose screw, and out on your ass you go - maybe you even crack your skull. No bueno.

If past history is any indicator (EMU, Ensoniq, Dave Smith, Roger Linn, and many others in Germany), talented people with a proven track record almost always get snatched up - major economic downturns excepted. I have little doubt those good and soulful humans will be gainfully employed and happy again, and keep contributing to our collective music making ecosystem.

May they live long and healthy, and prosper.

 

damn.. really..

 

Oh boo hoo. Now you know how it felt (and still feels) when Spotify was embraced and promoted by the corporate industry and govts worldwide, including by NI, only to completely decimate the indie artist and label ecosystem ie, careers, jobs, income etc. aka YOUR FORMER CUSTOMERS that funded your $200,000 remote-desk job salary!!! See how all this works now?

Welcome to the party!

 

Was to be expected given what has happened so far. I had a feeling Dirk would end up with BX & PA again (one way or another).

 

BFD3 rip (Drew where you at?) - it seems inMusic turns everything it touches into shit.

Not too happy about having invested in any of these. Just bought MPC - surely they won't kill Akai? Right?!

 

the IP is the most valuable asset and everything else is baggage as far as they are concerned especially with 250 million dollars of debt and only a turnover of 25 mill. they will sit on the IP and dripfeed it into other things here and there, but this pretty much spells the end for NI in terms of the larger conversation in audio software innovation, or at the very least bringing interesting products to market (which to be fair, they haven't done in over a decade anyways unless you include MASSIVE X)

 

ii Captain inMusic

 

inMisic is a coprse collector (mostly).

The destiny of Kontakt is the same as the destiny of Structure. In the best case, it is the destiny of BFD.

 

They - the asset engineering "companies" ruled by pure profit for themselves and their shareholders, don't kill anything ... but "zombify" it. Keep it alive, keep restructuring it, for as long as there's profit to be made, until death do them part.

Thank you Native Instruments so much for Kontakt 4-6 (best software sampler ever imho), Reaktor 5-6 (too much stuff to say about Reaktor...), FM7 and 8, Massive and MassiveX, Absynth 5-6, many great sample libraries, and pretty good hardware (great keyboards, Maschine, audio interfaces). All of this is still perfectly usable and will continue to live on for as long as there's WINE.

So all in all...

R.I.P Native Instruments. Native Instruments is dead ... long live Native Instruments!

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2026 at 3:22 PM

Last year BFD's "Black Friday" sale was two months long and they ended up changing the sale percentages during the sale twice. Then it started happening this year again. Just same sales over and over (BUY 4, GET 3 FREE etc.) Zero new products.

Got my MPC a while ago and noticed the same started happening with The (inMushit's) Akai's MPC Store - and even their shop design is the same. Too bad they're not syncing between their shop and your purchases/account, so you cannot see what you own while browsing the shop. (I've started assuming this is because they want you to accidentally purchase products you already own).

I mean constant sales are good but if you're not releasing anything new in years... what are you doing?

 

I got the Maschine MK3 and Komplete Kontrol MK2 versions. I feel that whatever happens it will and as long as there is version of the software that supports these devices I'm good. Not to much more Maschine 3 software can actually cover. So these last updates coming up before the sh@# hits the fans, is good enough for me. Just my take on this debacle on NI.

 

It is the usual corporate capitalist sh*t : fire ppl whatever they do, we will find other ppl later on the road if we need them.
But those ppl are probably gone forever.
What a "future vision" ...

It remembers me aeronautic engineers : European companies fired specialised engineers because commands were falling.
They gone to USA ... because commands were there. They got bigger salaries and even houses from the companies to live in.

Sometimes after, commands gone back to Europe. European companies needed to pay them EVEN MORE than before to get them back.

NO, ppl are not interchangeables, dumba**es

 

A great many good things have gone by the wayside in history under the banner of 'progress' and corporate takeovers.
With A.I beginning to take a front seat in many corporations (nVidia as one of many), the number of layoffs are anticipated to increase.
sad.

 

We had good run Kontakt, we had a good one. So long partner!

 

For me, 2026 is the year when everything took a drastic turn for the worse.

Thank goodness we have plenty of musical instruments and effects—and we’ve also been blessed with plenty of samples and music! I’m sure there will still be a few highlights, but it won’t be like it used to be. It’s been a steady decline.

 

Nokia is far from gone, they are the infra giant now, AI's future will depend heavily on them actually

 

Please, trying to divert the focus of the conversation gets you no brownie points - although I confess: I knew while writing "gone" in the spirit of expediency and brevity, that some pedantic noisemaker would, um, make noise.

The point stands: Nokia was once the dominant force if not the industry leader. They are no longer.

At the time of writing (you can revisit in the future), Nokia's practically a "retro" or nostalgia phone company now:

• https://www.dezeen.com/2026/07/14/nokia-unveils-nostalgic-dumbphones-with-dedicated-ai-button/

But you have a nice day, and please steer clear of my posts going forward - as I will yours.

 

I know this is obvious, and some people may thnk, "Duh, that's how things have worked for over a century." But I hate how common it is for people who don't actually give a fuck about what they're doing to end up owning or controlling things that were originally created by people with genuine passion and vision. Something built with love gets sold off to someone who's only interested in squeezing as much profit out of it as possible.

Capitalism can get so fucked up that, across almost every industry, whenever a new innovation comes along, people who genuinely love what they've been doing end up losing their jobs simply because some random billionaire, or a group of them, decided they now own the company those people worked for.

I've been seeing this my whole life, and the only way I know how to push back is by avoiding software and services owned by companies like that whenever I can. Half the time that's impossible, because some things genuinely require massive amounts of capital to build and maintain, like DAWs, professional gear, or services such as Splice. But whenever I have a choice, I do my best.

Honestly, I see piracy as one of the few ways ordinary people can exist in this world without constantly funding people whose only goal is extracting more money. Even then, it barely makes a dent when millions of people spend thousands of dollars on products without ever asking where that money ends up or what it's ultimately supporting.

The hardest part is that it's incredibly difficult to directly support the people who actually create the things you love. Most of the time, all you can really do is support the system that sits between you and them. And for many people, even that "support" is a financial decision that directly affects their own lives, turning what should be a simple act of appreciation into a choice between my financial well-being and yours.

That's what feels so crazy about it.