Is ROLI almost dead?

Everywhere I look their products are out of stock or completely deleted.
Getting worried ROLI is on it’s last breath but I could be wrong of course.

What happened?

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Taken over by ableton
(Fake News)

They’ve been in financial trouble for a while. If they’ve not done well over the holiday period despite the lockdown music gear boom then it could be curtains.

Could also just be Brexit/covid related supply issues, or the opposite - they’ve done so well that they’re just selling out.

I fear the opposite though. Their Glassdoor reviews don’t paint a happy picture. :frowning:

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Love the top review, seems very honest and not fake

"Great place to work

5.0

★★★★★

Former Employee - Engineer in London, England

Recommends

Positive Outlook

Approves of CEO

I worked at ROLI full-time for more than a year

Pros

Great people and a good working environment

Cons

Can’t think of any right now"

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It wouldn’t surprise me if they are close to being done. They pivoted to a keyboard learning product that doesn’t seem to have really taken off, while also needing to service a bunch of debt from their earlier products. The light up keyboard/software platform needed to not only be successful, but be very successful in order to dig themselves out of that hole.

They still own FXpansion, right? BFD3 is my goto for all percussion, and Cypher2 for MPE controllers. Maybe there’s some revenue there.

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If they are death, then the reaper has some very colorful teeth.

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…they also sold JUCE last year so that might be another hint? or maybe not… :thinking:

Well they’ve announced SOUL this year. And their Lumi Keys apparently are selling well (but who knows).

Then they recently released Equator 2 which was a major overhaul.

Not sure where they currently stand, they did have financial issues before and I hear their team’s contracted a lot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re finished, quite possibly even the opposite.

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They sold BFD to another company I think, can’t remember who

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there are several articles like this from last year.

In Music

Juce was sold to Pace April 2020

Background reading: Why should you care that ROLI sold JUCE to PACE?

Edit: I know you know all this @guga; more just providing links for those who don’t.

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I believe the FXpansion side has a tight team, and if the company tanks, you can expect them to reformulate into something else. MPE was just not a foundation to build a company around. People like hardware synths, eurorack, drum machines…If all you sell are controllers, thats a tough spot to be in. Roli would have been better off making hardware analog synths that had built in MPE.

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…i just recently ordered a roli seaboard block…

their stuff was listed out of stock at thomann for a while…next batches were awaited within next few weeks…then suddenly they switched to back in stock date unknown…

i kept my order anyways…really want and really need one…

so i called…and thomann told me, due to actual lockdown situations, their next batch got stucked in mexico…???..and they don’t know when it will finally arrive…
but they seemed positive that the day will come…just can’t fix any date for now…

but they also asked me if i might wanna use my money for an alternative…
and i said, there is no such thing…a seaboard is a seaboard…

and at least speaking of the seaboard block version…this damned little squishy thing is pretty undestroyable…maybe someone else have seen this utube vid, where a whole bunch of british music tech u tubers were trying hard and everything to open it, to get a look inside…
in the end the only option was to destroy it with a cutter and an army of screwdrivers from all angles to finally get to it’s bottomline…and while trying really really hard, it kept on “singing and swinging” to it’s very last and final controler breath…

so, i really hope this brand keeps staying alive…and in worst case scenario, i will get me two of those seaboards from somewhere…no matter what…

maybe B will clone them

…hmmmmpf…slowly i start to think and fear, the headline question is closing in to nail it…

i was so impressed when they came out with this new concept…
but did’nt see any real use for me back then…
but loved their productdesign right from the start…
damn…anything i can find on them is refering to latest news from early last year…
the basic mpe seaboard and then this whole block ecosytem concept is so cool…
it must survive…
hey uli behringer…here u could really do good thing with all ur money…buy in and make them grow again…they were just a little too early…their future is now and just ready to fly…

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which is one of the reasons why i don´t own one: you can´t change the battery it seems.

…yeah, i guess so, too…would be at least a dedicated service issue…

but given the fact that this is a high quality product and that batteries/rechargeable accus are pretty advanced these days, since they’re so much in use in mobile devices like phones and stuff since ages, i’m confident enough to say, this battery would take a few years to come until it’s really useless…and it would at least feed the device for three hours before it would ask for recharging…and that’s low end guessing…presumeably it can run way longer…i mean what’s most energy consuming are displays and stuff…and all that shines bright on this device are two little status leds…
on top, i mean u would use this gadget in bluetooth mode only in certain situations…
most of the time there’s no dealbreaker to leave it attached to the cable…