# QUESTION: Has Audacity been acquired by a private firm or company **URL:** \ **Category:** Feedback and Discussion Forum\ **Created:** [July 31, 2026, 9:45pm UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434 "2026-07-31T21:45:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![trashtrash931](https://forum.audacityteam.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@trashtrash931](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/trashtrash931)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2026, 9:45pm UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/1 "2026-07-31T21:45:42Z")
Audacity has changed quite a bit recently. Not just in its UI layout, but also in its **philosophy** of presentation and processing. At least to me, it feels that way. Which make me question if the development team has changed, or if something else has happened. My direct question is: Has Audacity been acquired by a private firm or company, or has ownership, or control of it been taken over by another group within the last year or so? ---
**Author:** ![LeoWattenberg](https://forum.audacityteam.org/user_avatar/forum.audacityteam.org/leowattenberg/32/72853_2.png) [@LeoWattenberg](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/LeoWattenberg)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2026, 9:54pm UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/2 "2026-07-31T21:54:32Z")
Audacity has been acquired my Muse Group in April 2021. ---
**Author:** ![kozikowski](https://forum.audacityteam.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/919ad9/32.png) [@kozikowski](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/kozikowski)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2026, 10:09pm UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/3 "2026-07-31T22:09:14Z")
Yes. It used to be run as a volunteer group effort from the world headquarters in Land’s End, Great Britain. [![](https://kozco.com/pix/AudacityHeadquarters.jpg) ](https://kozco.com/pix/AudacityHeadquarters.jpg) I’m one of the odd ducks on the US west coast. I think it’s still 6 hours time shift, right? Yes, a corporation in, I think, Russia, acquired us in, ummm, I don’t remember the date. It’s still free, as far as I know and we still drop in now and again to help out. The company still doesn’t have a formal Help Desk. That’s actually Dockweiler RV Park, a stone’s throw from LAX on one of the five cloudy and rainy days that year. I had my camera with me. Koz ---
**Author:** ![trashtrash931](https://forum.audacityteam.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@trashtrash931](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/trashtrash931)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2026, 7:04am UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/4 "2026-08-02T07:04:17Z")
Thank you for the information. It does explain a few things. ---
**Author:** ![trashtrash931](https://forum.audacityteam.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@trashtrash931](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/trashtrash931)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2026, 7:08am UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/5 "2026-08-02T07:08:47Z")
Thank you so much for your replay. It’s good to know. I knew something changed, and some of the changes didn’t seem to track with the base product design. Muse. Russia, Great. Thanks again. ---
**Author:** ![romontschun](https://forum.audacityteam.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/90ced4/32.png) [@romontschun](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/romontschun)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2026, 7:20am UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/6 "2026-08-02T07:20:43Z")
Muse Group (MuseCY Holdings Ltd.) is a **Cypriot** software and education company specialised in making tools and resources for music composition, music production and music education. Established in 1998 as Ultimate Guitar, it became Muse Group in 2021 following several acquisitions such as MuseScore and **Audacity**. See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_Group). ---
**Author:** ![LeoWattenberg](https://forum.audacityteam.org/user_avatar/forum.audacityteam.org/leowattenberg/32/72853_2.png) [@LeoWattenberg](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/LeoWattenberg)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2026, 9:28am UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/7 "2026-08-02T09:28:07Z")
Koz, do you happen to remember if you sold it to the old “WSM Group” legal entity (in Kaliningrad), “Ultimate Guitar” (which does have a USA entity) or the new Muse Group one? I’ve had one of Muse’s lawyers lunge at me with a cease and desist for, among other things, daring to suggest that Audacity got sold to what then was a Russian company. ---
**Author:** ![evilmrb](https://forum.audacityteam.org/user_avatar/forum.audacityteam.org/evilmrb/32/78767_2.png) [@evilmrb](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/evilmrb)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2026, 10:24am UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/8 "2026-08-02T10:24:09Z")
They are going to need to copy Fender and send a lot of those letters given how many people have said the same thing. The two founders are Russian and they have Russian developers despite the Cyprus HQ. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck… ---
**Author:** ![LeoWattenberg](https://forum.audacityteam.org/user_avatar/forum.audacityteam.org/leowattenberg/32/72853_2.png) [@LeoWattenberg](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/LeoWattenberg)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/9 "2026-08-02T13:56:42Z")
Fwiw, the Audacity team itself isn’t very Russian, and in fact is probably one of the most amazing teams I’ve ever worked with. It’s the rest of the company I don’t understand: Amazon spent an enormous amount of money creating the “flywheel”, a system that sucks you in with an impossibly cheap free-shipping subscription to keep customers around for as long as possible and then sucks in more sellers and yet more customers. Muse meanwhile hides the Audacity download button to drive more traffic to the musehub, preventing people from using audacity directly, and using, in my opinion, dark patterns to trick people into subscriptions which has tons of folks cancel as soon as they realize they got tricked. Do they not realise it’s counter productive? I’ve told them as much… ---
**Author:** ![LeoWattenberg](https://forum.audacityteam.org/user_avatar/forum.audacityteam.org/leowattenberg/32/72853_2.png) [@LeoWattenberg](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/LeoWattenberg)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2026, 9:17am UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/question-has-audacity-been-acquired-by-a-private-firm-or-company/153434/10 "2026-08-04T09:17:58Z")
Split this topic on August 4, 2026, 9:17am UTC A post was merged into an existing topic: [Audacity 4 in the browser](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/audacity-4-in-the-browser/153349/11)