Sonic Foundry Now Sony

Via, Glenn Reynolds, Sonic Foundry, maker of our beloved Acid music creation and Vegas video editing software, has been swallowed up by Sony:

Sony Pictures Digital and Sonic Foundry®, Inc. announced today Sony Pictures Digital has struck an agreement to purchase all of Sonic Foundry’s desktop software products and related assets for $18 million cash and assumption of certain trade payables, accrued liabilities and capital leases associated with the desktop software business.

The acquisition of Sonic Foundry’s desktop software follows the recent retail release of Sony Pictures Digital’s Screenblast® Movie Studio™ and Screenblast® Music Studio™ video and music-mixing applications created in conjunction with Sonic Foundry’s award-winning software team.

Glenn expresses reservations:

On the one hand it’s good: Sony makes great video cameras, but their efforts at video-editing software (Pixela and the much-despised Movie Shaker for micro-MV) haven’t exactly set the world on fire. But will Sonic Foundry make Sony better, or will Sony ruin Sonic Foundry? A couple of readers seem to think it’ll be the latter. I sure hope not.

Why did this happen? Sony gets some great software pretty cheap, Sonic Foundry gets cash to carry on: note the whiff of desperation in this SF statement:

“The sale of our music and video digital software products is a key milestone in Sonic Foundry’s history,” said Rimas Buinevicius, chairman and CEO of Sonic Foundry. “We couldn’t pick a better partner than Sony Pictures Digital to carry on the same passion and success we’ve achieved over the past 12 years,” he said. “Consummation of this agreement will give us the cash we need to pay our debt and allow us to focus our attention on writing the next successful chapter of Sonic Foundry’s story – rich media – and building upon the early success we’ve already achieved with our Web presentation solution, Media Site Live™.”

In other words, this may have been a “distressed” sale.