MIPA '06: A TRIFECTA FOR LIVE!

For the third year in a row, Ableton Live has won the prestigious Musikmesse International Press Award (MIPA). Live 5 received honors in the DJ Software category, beating out Stanton's Final Scratch 2, and Native Instruments' Traktor DJ Studio 3. Ableton's previous awards were in the DJ Software and DJ Tools categories for Live 3 and Live 4, respectively.

The MIPA is awarded to industry members by a worldwide consortium of pro audio and musical instrument magazine editors and journalists. This year, more than eighty magazines contributed to pick the best products of 2005/2006.

Speaking on behalf of the entire development team, Ableton CEO and co-founder Gerhard Behles expressed his enthusiasm about the win: "We are incredibly pleased to see the consistent recognition of our product as a creative outlet for DJ performance."

A list of all MIPA nominees and winners is available here.

MUSIKMESSE 2006 REPORT

The MIPA win capped a successful Musikmesse 2006 for Ableton--one that offered visitors the opportunity to learn about Live's unique and flexible approach to music playback and production. Visitors were also given a taste of Live 5.2, featuring native Intel-Mac support. (The Live 5.2 upgrade is now available for download here.)

Beatboxer, singer, and songwriter Kid Beyond gave a number of workshops, demoing his onstage live-looping techniques using Live 5. In addition, Ableton Product Specialists Ulf Kaiser and Dankmar Klein presented tutorials on Live's unique production and DJ uses. Other special guests included Tania Mann, Dom Williams, Erdbeerfeld, and Gabriel Le Mar.

A big thank you goes out to everyone who made the trip to Frankfurt to see us!