Since 2002, JazzMutant has been a acknowledged pioneer in the field of Creative Computing and Multi-touch technology, being the first-ever company to develop and bring to the market a product featuring a multi-touch screen as early as 2005. Since its market launch, the Lemur has been endorsed by a fascinating community of music and video artists. Nine Inch Nails, Richard Devine, Hot Chip, Ritchie Hawtin, Matthew Herbert, M.I.A, Mike Relm, Alva Noto, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Daft Punk, Bjork, ... : The list of prestigious and influent artists who have made the Lemur their favorite pet companion on stage would be way too long to be mentioned here. Its visionary concept and groundbreaking technologies allowed the Lemur to win numerous international press awards and was recently elected "Innovation of the decade" by Future Music.

During five years and despite the new fever surrounding touch technologies, the Lemur remained the only Multi-touch device capable to meet the needs of creative people. From now on, this ecosystem is evolving quickly : powerful consumer tablet devices are becoming mainstream, bringing the power of multi-touch to everyone. In the meantime, JazzMutant, renamed Stantum in 2007, has become a technology-centric company and developed partnerships with tier-one industrial partners to speed up this democratization. As a result, the need for a high-end dedicated hardware is doomed to vanish in the near future. This is why Stantum is announcing today that it will close its JazzMutant activity unit and stop selling its legendary Lemur Multi-touch hardware controller at the end of December while the stock lasts! The last batch of Lemurs just came out of the factory. These very last units are now available at a special discounted price from JazzMutant's webstore and from its authorized distributors and retailers. These very last units are now available with 25% discount! Moreover, the Dexter App and an original Lemur T-shirt will come along for free. Don't miss this last opportunity and grab the legendary Lemur from authorized retailers while the stock last! The Technical support and after sale service will be handled until December 31, 2011. The jazzmutant website will stay online in order to let the user community access support resources and share their projects.

We would like to thank all the people involved in this fantastic adventure: first of all the user community which exceeded our wildest expectations in creating the most amazing templates; our devoted resellers, who helped us to show the Lemurs all over the world; finally music software editors for their support.

http://www.jazzmutant.com/press_release.php

JazzMutant Lemur, RIP


JazzMutant has updated their site with a sort of tombstone to their company and it’s iconic Lemur multi-touch music controller. All of JazzMutant’s remaining stock of Lemur controllers is now sold. They note, “We have cleared all our stock out and all Jazzmutant commercial activities are ceasing now.”

Less than a year ago, JazzMutant was skeptical about the prospects of the iPad as a musical tool:

Having been at the forefront of touch innovation for seven years now, Jazzmutant has been watching the fast evolution of the multi-touch landscape. We expect to see a lot of Lemur rip-offs showing up on the App Store, as well as other multitouch capable devices. However, we believe that it’s not really the same kind of product. The Lemur is a device dedicated to music and visual control. The iPad, on the other hand, is a mainstream product, a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ that’s not specifically tailored to musicians’ needs.

The Lemur will continue to be the choice of many professionals. However, you can be sure that whatever happens, you will most definitely be hearing exciting news from JazzMutant again in the future.

JazzMutant’s stance reads as overly optimistic or arrogant from today’s perspective. Many would argue that the Lemur was a much more sophisticated tool than any of the current iPad apps. But JazzMutant effectively ceded multi-touch music control to a startups that didn’t have a hardware business to protect.

The Lemur had many features which have yet to be duplicated in any iPad app. In the long run, though, musicians will probably be better served by mainstream tablets, with dozens of competing controller app developers.

http://www.synthtopia.com/