Native Instruments is in the process of methodically hiring away DJ technology talent from around the globe. The hiring spree has affected NI’s competitors, Stanton and M-Audio, and now comes word that they have acquired the brilliant young innovator, Scott Hobbs, who kindled our imagination with his Attigo concept.

Jim Mazur, the technical lead from Stanton, was snapped up by NI in a move that came as a big surprise to the US firm. Mazur was the force behind several of Stanton’s products for years and most likely caused further insult to injury after the very public, and very ugly breakup between Native and Stanton over FinalScratch.

Now comes word that Chad Carrier, who was literally the industry face of Torq, has left M-Audio for Native Instruments. Carrier, who shepherded Torq from the genesis of the digital DJ system as the Product Manager to where it is today, was left out in the cold when product development for Torq 2.0, which will reportedly debut at NAMM 2011, was yanked out from him and given to the A.I.R. (Advanced Instrument Research) group. Communications to M-Audio/Avid have gone unanswered.

Native has also ramped up their initiative to bring more prominent DJs over to the Traktor camp and away from Serato, their only real competition. NI has always gone after top DJ talent, but now that they have the new Traktor S4 DJ controller about to hit the market, the strategy is in hyperdrive.

Last up is news that Native Instruments has just acquired the talented Scott Hobbs, who has serious interface chops and is known as a brilliant integrator, systems designer and coder. As mentioned above, Scott has already developed a provocative DJ system known as Attigo, and it appears that NI has secured this visionary to lead their next generation of multitouch-enabled DJ systems.

The Future: As we like to say when referring to NI, they play to win, and these hires are just another indication that they are extremely serious about making Traktor the software standard in the market. The upcoming S4, which will reportedly cost $999 / €799 (the perfect price point —Ed.) when it is officially announced in a few days, finally gives DJs the perfect hardware compliment to their software, something that no third party has managed to achieve, even after years of trying. However, the addition of Scott Hobbs to their team reveals that NI is definitely looking several years into the future of DJing. Hobbs prowess is an exciting proposition if NI buys into even one of his concepts.

Avid, formally Digidesign, recently reached out to FutureMusic to present their new branding strategy and showcase some upcoming products. The company is somewhat anxious about the public’s perception of their rollup of various companies and products under the Avid umbrella, and is going to great lengths to limit the collateral damage from potential brand confusion.

Now it’s not too difficult for members of the industry to get our arms around the fact that Digi, who purchased M-Audio and most recently Euphonix, is now cooking all the products in the Avid oven, but the California concern wants to make sure that there’s no confusion in the marketplace and is undergoing an awareness campaign, starting with the press. Some may say that this branding exercise is overkill, but how many times does a company simply change their name or a product line and hope it will all work out. Too many. Kudos to Avid for making the effort.

However, Avid should direct their attention to internal rebranding, instead of external overtures at this point. Avid’s employees now have a completely new product line to comprehend and new employees to absorb. The company needs to sharpen its employees focus on the several tiers of products and be able to precisely represent to the public the Avid “experience.”

Without employee understanding and involvement, a company cannot effectively brand itself to the world. A company such as Avid needs to successfully identify their core brand attributes and educate their employees to represent those values in their interactions with customers, which for a music technology concern, is not just a 9 to 5 affair. Music industry employees are usually involved in their local music scene and are in a position to represent their company’s brand in a a variety of online and offline environments. Employees are the foundation of value creation and with the pervasive social media outlets now part of everyday human interaction, these individuals must believe in, promote and contribute to the company’s brand beyond the office setting. Therefore, Avid’s new branding needs to begin as operations and then blossom outward via the various communication channels. However, the underlying question for management, after this campaign has run it course, is how Avid will be able to quantify the impact of their new identity on the company’s fiscal performance?

One of Avid’s employees at the event was very proud of the fact that they didn’t pink slip any of the Euphonix crew after the acquisition, but that certainly didn’t impress me. Not that anyone wants to see a music industry employee get the axe in this economy, but the reality is that Euphonix has been on the ropes for the last couple of years, despite a solid product line, and has been actively soliciting a buyout. The first order of business should have been to retain the engineers and product development personnel and dump the weak Sales and Marketing crew that was responsible for such faux pas as the advertisement below. (Bottom Line: if Euphonix has the opportunity to hand pick a quality musician/producer from anywhere in the world to represent their brand in an advertisement, why would the crack Marketing team pick someone who is a performance artist? All together now…because they just don’t get it. —Ed.)

The takeaway is that it really doesn’t matter if they are Avid or Digidesign. The music industry, at this point in time, only really cares about ProTools. ProTools is their real identity, and from the peak behind the curtain that we received, the future looks bright for Avid’s core users.

When we last reported on the Waves Ultimatum it was 2007 and the Israeli signal processing juggernaut had ramped up their efforts to thwart piracy buy sending undercover “agents” into New York City studios to search for illegal installs. Well, three years later, Waves has just announced that their initiative has resulted in one lawsuit in the win column and had a second defendant admit liability in a lawsuit regarding intellectual property infringements and the illegal use of its software. The two studios named were New York City-based Reckless Music, LLC, d.b.a. Skyline Recording Studios NYC, and Quad Recording Studios, Inc.

Waves attorney, Mr. Guy H. Weiss, of the business law firm Adorno & Yoss, LLC performed the typical attorney chest-pounding when he declared, “this is a tremendous victory for the studio recording industry and Waves in particular. The law is clear: A recording studio is responsible for the copyright infringement committed by its employees, independent contractors or customers.”

Gilad Keren, CEO of Waves Ltd: “The judgments obtained in these two court cases should send a targeted message to all users of illegal software that Waves is very serious about defending its rights and will continue to fight against the use of cracked software. In the long-term, illegal software does not benefit anyone, as it hurts not just Waves, but all developers and manufacturers of software products including their distributors, retail partners and of course, loyal customers who have purchased legitimate, legal versions of the product. We consider a lawsuit the very last resort, but unfortunately it is a course of action that can protect our intellectual property and ensure that we can continue to develop and bring to market the right tools for the recording, broadcast and post-production industries.”

The Future: While Waves’ victory is a nice win for software developers, it won’t do much for deterring software piracy in the long-term. Fact is, most manufacturers don’t have the resources (many of them can’t even afford proper advertising anymore) or the MOSSAD tactics to combat individuals from pirating their software via Cracks and other methods. While this makes good press for Waves Audio, the solution to this problem is not going to be through litigation…just ask the RIAA.