Trailblazers is an MBW interview series that turns the spotlight on music entrepreneurs with the potential to become the global business power players of tomorrow. This time, we meet Constantin Koehncke, CEO of Image-Line, the Belgian company behind FL Studio. Trailblazers is supported by TuneCore.
There’s a strong chance the music you’re listening to right now was made in FL Studio.
Originally released in 1997 under the name FruityLoops, and later renamed after a trademark dispute with Kellogg’s, the digital audio workstation developed by Belgium-headquartered Image-Line has become the software of choice for a formidable cross-section of the world’s most successful producers.
From Avicii and Martin Garrix to Kendrick Lamar, Bad Bunny and Metro Boomin, FL Studio’s fingerprints are all over the modern charts.
Image-Line estimates that more than 50% of the tracks on the Billboard Hot 100 were produced using its software – a figure MBW is unable to independently verify, given that the company is privately held.
What is clear is the scale of FL Studio’s user base. According to Image-Line CEO Constantin Koehncke, the software gets 30,000 new downloads every day, with tens of millions of creators opening it annually.
“In many ways, tomorrow’s music is created in FL Studio today,” claims Koehncke.
Koehncke, who is German-born and studied Media Arts in London before building a career in Berlin and LA’s music and tech scene, joined Image-Line as CEO in October 2022. He arrived with significant industry experience.
The exec spent 12 years at Native Instruments (the music tech firm recently acquired by inMusic), rising through the ranks to become CEO. He departed the company in 2022.
Since Koehncke’s arrival at Image-Line, the company says it has doubled the number of people beginning their music journey with FL Studio. It has also launched FL Cloud, integrating samples, mastering, plugins and distribution directly into the DAW, and FL Studio Web, a browser-based version currently in beta.
The company also notes it was among the first major DAWs to introduce a range of AI-powered features, from native stem separation and the idea generator Loop Starter, to its own chatbot Gopher and a partnership with ElevenLabs.
FL Studio’s longstanding promise of Lifetime Free Updates, whereby every customer receives all future versions of the software at no extra cost, is an unusually generous proposition for a software company.
But Image-Line faces its own set of challenges. As the music creation landscape evolves rapidly, Image-Line is navigating the emergence of a new wave of AI-powered creative tools that threaten to reshape how music is created, developments Koehncke sees as an opportunity to further expand how creators make music with FL Studio.
Here, Koehncke discusses FL Studio’s global growth, AI’s role in music creation, and his vision for Image-Line’s future…
TELL US ABOUT YOUR CAREER LEADING TO BECOMING CEO OF A MUSIC TECHNOLOGY COMPANY.
I came into this the same way many of our users do – as someone who simply loved making music. Long before I ever thought about running a music technology company, I was DJing and producing my own tracks.
I originally studied Media Arts in London with the idea of becoming a film director. After graduating I moved to Berlin at a time when the city was exploding creatively, especially in electronic music. During the day I worked in the music industry – at night I DJed, promoted club nights and wrote about music and technology as a journalist.
A few years later I joined Native Instruments, where I spent 12 years. I moved to Los Angeles to build the US marketing team and became increasingly involved in product and business strategy. I also had the privilege of working with many of the world’s best producers and artists – some of my own heroes – and watching their creative process up close.
“I SPENT A LOT OF TIME SITTING QUIETLY IN STUDIOS OBSERVING HOW PRODUCERS BUILD TRACKS FROM SCRATCH – SOMETIMES STARTING WITH NOTHING MORE THAN A DRUM PATTERN AND A MELODY IDEA.”
Ultimately my job [today] is to set a clear vision, bring talented people together around it and help them execute. In a creative industry people care deeply about what they do, which can make discussions lively – but those debates usually come from the same place: everyone wants to build the best possible tools for music creators. Turning that passion into real progress and a thriving business is one of the most rewarding parts of the job.
YOU RAN PR FOR PRINCE’S LAST OPEN-AIR CONCERT IN BERLIN. WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING AROUND HIM?
It was special. It actually rained when he played Purple Rain, which felt almost surreal. I didn’t interact with him much. Backstage was essentially locked down before the show. But just being around that moment was incredible.
What makes the story memorable for me is that I had a spare ticket and asked my now-wife if she wanted to come. We weren’t together yet, so it was basically my attempt to ask her out. She already had plans and said no. She still regrets it to this day – and I still tease her about it.
YOU JOINED IMAGE-LINE AS CEO IN 2022 AFTER 12 YEARS AT NATIVE INSTRUMENTS. WHAT APPEALED TO YOU ABOUT FL STUDIO?
By 2022, after 12 years at Native Instruments, I felt ready for a new chapter.
The DAW has become the main environment where modern music gets made, and at NI we closely tracked which DAWs our users were using. Over time FL Studio had clearly become the number one among them.
You could see that reflected in the music itself. Many of the most iconic records in electronic music and hip-hop over the past two decades were made in FL Studio – from Avicii and Afrojack to records by artists like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny.
“THERE IS PROBABLY NO OTHER COMPANY IN MUSIC WHERE PEOPLE TATTOO THE LOGO ON THEIR BODIES SO FREQUENTLY.”
The FL Studio community is enormous and incredibly passionate. I once met one of the biggest producers in the world who had the FL Studio fruit logo tattooed and told me, very emotionally, that the software had changed his life. He got the tattoo the day he quit his day job to pursue music full time. That’s when you realize how deeply these tools can shape someone’s life.
Before I joined, we aligned with the owners around two key questions: how do we help more people who start making music with FL Studio actually stick with it, and how do we gradually bring more of what creators need into that experience?
WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS SINCE TAKING OVER?
Ultimately the biggest accomplishment is that we’ve helped significantly more people start – and stick with – making music with FL Studio.
Over the past three years we’ve doubled the number of people beginning their music journey with FL Studio and significantly increased the number of active users. Today it’s the most widely used music creation software in the world, with a community that ranges from teenagers making their first beats to Grammy-winning producers releasing global hits.
We’ve also expanded access globally by making it more affordable for people to get started. That has helped unlock growth in markets where music creation is exploding – from bedroom producers in India and Indonesia making their first beats, to rapidly growing creator communities across Brazil, Nigeria and many other parts of the world.
At the same time we launched FL Cloud, which integrates samples, mastering, plugins and distribution directly into the creative workflow. Today every second new FL Studio customer starts FL Cloud.
And we recently launched FL Studio Web, currently in beta, as a new way for anyone to start making music instantly in the browser before moving deeper into the full desktop environment.
“WE ALWAYS TRY TO ERR ON THE SIDE OF GENEROSITY WITH OUR USERS.”
Just as importantly, we’ve been able to do all of this while staying true to the values that built the FL Studio community in the first place. Lifetime Free Updates still makes FL Studio one of the best value propositions in music software.
HOW IS FL STUDIO POSITIONED WITHIN THE GLOBAL MUSIC BUSINESS TODAY?
Millions of people around the world are making music every day, and that number continues to grow as the barriers to entry fall – including through new tools like generative AI that are bringing even more people into music creation.
Image-Line sits in a unique place in that ecosystem because FL Studio is where so much of that music actually gets created. In many ways it’s the infrastructure of modern music production – the place where new ideas and sounds emerge.
Many of the defining genres of the past decades were pioneered in FL Studio long before they reached the mainstream. Early dubstep and grime producers often worked at 140 BPM partly because that was the default tempo in FL Studio, which helped shape the sound of those scenes.
In South Africa’s Amapiano scene, many producers use FL Studio to design the distinctive log drum sound that defines the genre. In Latin music – from artists like Bad Bunny to producers like Bizarrap – FL Studio has become deeply embedded in the creative process.
“THE NEXT GLOBAL GENRE WILL LIKELY START IN SOMEONE’S BEDROOM – AND THAT BEDROOM MIGHT BE IN LAGOS, MUMBAI OR SÃO PAULO WITH A PRODUCER USING FL STUDIO.”
Because so much music is created in FL Studio, we often see new trends emerge very early. We know from our partners at DistroKid – the largest distributor for independent artists – that FL Studio is the most widely used DAW among their users, which shows how deeply it’s embedded in the fastest-growing part of the music industry.
HOW DELIBERATE IS YOUR STRATEGY TO BE VISIBLE IN ELITE, GRAMMY-LEVEL PRODUCTION?
It’s important for us to celebrate the producers and artists creating great music with FL Studio. Seeing how successful creators make their records can be incredibly inspiring for the next generation.
One of my personal routines is spending Fridays listening to new music and checking the producer credits to see how many of them come out of the FL Studio community.
One of the most exciting things for us is watching someone go from making their first beat to winning a Grammy years later. Somewhere out there a teenager is making their first beat tonight – and a decade later that person might be producing a global hit.
One example is Mustard. Seeing him win the Grammy for producing Not Like Us was a proud moment for us. [And] seeing an FL Studio producer on stage at the Super Bowl halftime show was a pretty special moment.
WHERE IS THE LINE BETWEEN AI ASSISTING PRODUCERS AND REPLACING THEM?
Our mission is simple: help every music creator make their best music. We believe AI can be a powerful tool in that mission – as long as it genuinely supports the creative process and keeps the producer firmly in control.
For us, music is about creativity and expression, not automation. Today roughly half of our users are already using some form of AI in their productions.
We know that most producers don’t want AI to generate full songs. They use it to create things like samples, vocal chops or stems that they then shape into something original.
“NOBODY WHO LOVES GAMING WANTS THE ROBOTS TO PLAY THE GAME FOR THEM. BUT CHEAT CODES, POWER-UPS AND EASIER LEVELS? THOSE ARE WELCOME.”
AI works in a similar way for music creation. It can remove friction and spark ideas, but the fun is still in building something yourself and developing your own sound.
YOU’VE SAID 50% OF FL STUDIO TRIAL USERS ARE UNDER 20. WHAT DOES THIS GENERATION UNDERSTAND ABOUT MUSIC CREATION THAT PREVIOUS ONES DIDN’T?
Given the size of the FL Studio community, many young creators today choose FL Studio as their very first music-making experience – and they come from all over the world.
At that stage we’re really competing for attention. Young people have many things they could be doing online, which is why we focus so much on making the first creative experience joyful and inspiring.
That moment when someone makes their first beat and realizes “I created this” is incredibly powerful. You can almost see the moment it clicks – suddenly they realize they’re not just listening to music anymore, they’re making it.
Back when it was called Fruity Loops, FL Studio became popular because it was one of the easiest ways to start making music. Soulja Boy famously made Crank That in the demo version using mostly stock sounds – and today kids on TikTok are still recreating it nearly twenty years later.
That idea is still at the heart of our mission: helping more people experience the moment when they realize they can make music themselves. Today, features like Loop Starter – and now FL Studio Web – help music makers take that first step and start turning ideas into real tracks.
And what’s exciting about this generation is how naturally they share their process and connect with others. Creating music is becoming more social, with creators constantly exchanging ideas, techniques and inspiration online. We’re thinking a lot about how to bring more of that community and collaboration directly into the music creation experience itself.
WE’VE SEEN VARIOUS MUSIC TECH COMPANIES MOVE INTO DAW-LIKE FUNCTIONALITY, AND NEW AI-POWERED MUSIC CREATION TOOLS EMERGING. DOES THE CONVERGENCE IN THIS SPACE CONCERN YOU?
We welcome new technology and innovation. If you look at the history of music technology, every wave of new tools has brought a new wave of creators with it. From synthesizers in the 1970s to drum machines in the 1980s to DAWs in the late 1990s, each step lowered the barrier to entry and expanded who gets to make music. We think that’s unequivocally a good thing.
At the same time, building a real DAW is fundamentally different from building a generative tool. Generating audio is one piece of the puzzle. A DAW is where ideas are shaped, edited, arranged, mixed, and finished – a deeply interactive, high-performance environment that creators rely on for hours every day. That level of depth, workflow design, and stability is built over many years.
“A DAW IS A LIVING PLATFORM: MILLIONS OF CREATORS SHARING PROJECTS, TECHNIQUES, SOUNDS, TUTORIALS, AND CULTURE. YOU CAN’T SHORTCUT THAT WITH TECHNOLOGY ALONE.”
We see our role as the platform at the centre of that ecosystem – integrating new tools, plugins, and technologies as they emerge, and scaling them to a global user base.
WHAT’S YOUR LONG-TERM VISION FOR IMAGE-LINE?
Our vision is to make FL Studio the central platform for music creation – a place where anyone can start experimenting with music on the web or on mobile, then grow into a deeper and more powerful creative environment on desktop.
For millions of people around the world, FL Studio is already where they made their first beat. We want to keep expanding that journey – helping creators go from their first idea all the way to releasing music and building a career.
Ultimately, our ambition is simple: to build the place where the next generation of music begins.
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
One thing I would change is how difficult it still is for many talented creators to build sustainable careers.
Technology has made it incredibly easy to create and distribute music, which is a huge positive. But the economics of the industry haven’t evolved at the same pace. There are millions of incredibly talented producers and artists who shape culture but still struggle to turn that creativity into long-term stability.
Finding better ways to support creators – economically and structurally – is one of the most important challenges for the industry going forward.
