FL Studio
More info
- Creator
- Didier Dambrin
- Released
- Owner
- Image-Line
- Type
- DAW
- License
- Proprietary
Belgian developer Image-Line's DAW, which started life as a simple drum-loop toy called FruityLoops and became the bedroom producer's default tool.
Didier Dambrin released FruityLoops in 1997 as a step sequencer: a grid of buttons where each row was a drum sound. Features piled up year after year — piano roll, mixer, plugin hosting — and in 2003 it was renamed FL Studio, the old name sitting uncomfortably close to a well-known breakfast cereal. Pattern-based composition, with short blocks arranged on a playlist, is still the core of it.
Image-Line has promised free lifetime updates to licence holders from the start, an unusual stance in an industry fond of paid version numbers. Its piano roll is widely considered one of the best around, and a large share of 2010s trap and hip hop was written in it. A native Mac version didn't arrive until 2018.