Quarterly Analysis

Avid Pro Tools remains at the top of the rankings followed by ImageLine FL Studio, Steinberg Cubase and Cakewalk Sonar. There were only two changes in the third quarter ranking: Ableton Live moved up to seventh place pushing Apple Logic Pro down to eighth. Google made a major revision to its estimating algorithm in May 2011 which continues to have a significant impact on the rankings of all products. In order to provide continuity with previous data, the index is now being reported as an annual moving average of four quarters.

How do you know this stuff?

The music software popularity index is based on recent Internet search activity on Google, Yahoo, AOL & Microsoft. Collectively these 4 search engines represent approximately than 95 percent of the searches on the Internet. Over 100 search terms are used to construct this index.

We have been publishing this index for over 5 years now, and the rankings have been generally stable. Here are the changes in rankings from the past quarter. Fifteen products are tracked in this index. More...

Products or companies?

Most people search for products instead of companies with three important exceptions: Cakewalk, Steinberg, and MOTU. More...

Products in transition

Product names change, but people still search for the old names. In particular people still search for Fruity Loops instead of FL Studio and Cool Edit instead of Adobe Audition. More...