Blend, an online collaborative platform for making music in a social environment, joins interactive tech creators ROLI.

ROLI, creators of the Seaboard pressure sensitive keyboards/MIDI controllers, are expanding their horizons from an ingenuitive technology company with the acquisition of Blend. Blend works with most DAWs and allows users to backup their music, collaborate with others, share projects and even more.With Blend you can even sell your music directly meaning ROLI now have what Blend describe as “the first marketplace powered by creators.”

This coupling puts ROLI in a substantially more powerful position in the industry than they were as just creators of high quality music technology and instruments. Users can now use their products to create their music and then use Blend to share and collaborate with others on their projects.

On their blog announcement ROLI said:

Our mission at ROLI is to “make music now.” By that we mean making truly expressive music in real time – and more broadly, placing it in the service of music creators the best tools and technologies of the digital age. Blend calls for people to “make music together,” and that idea resonates at ROLI as well. We believe a collaborative approach is fundamental to how we make music now.

ROLI say that it was about a year ago they got to know Alex Kolundzija, Blend founder, and the Blend team and bonded instantly through their similar ambitions of truly helping musicians. They said: “We felt that Blend was not focused merely on attracting as many users as possible, but also building a true community of creators.”

ROLI acquire blend
Blend founder Alex Kolundzija and ROLI CEO Roland Lamb

On Blend’s own announcement founder Alex Kolundzija said: “We’re thrilled to join ROLI and feel that they’ll be a great home for the product, the entire Blend team and the global community of Blend users. We’ll establish the US ROLI office at BlendHQ in New York and will elevate our game by leveraging the expanded learnings and expertise.”

ROLI’s main drawback in the past has been the price of their products, with their magnum opus – the Seaboard Grand – coming in at over £2000/$3000, but with the release of the considerably cheaper Seaboard RISE and now the acquisition of a platform free to anyone ROLI look to be broadening their horizons to mainstream audiences.

To celebrate their new ownership Blend are launching a host of new opportunities. There’s a remix opportunity featuring Heathered Pearls from the Ghostly International roster as well as a recording of the live performance from Blend’s New York City launch event using the Seaboard Rise. The details of these opportunities and the chance to win a Seaboard RISE will be announced by Blend tomorrow.