Developer puts Audacity in Microsoft Store because of many paid clones

Open source sound editing program Audacity has been released on the Microsoft Store. Owner Muse Group has done so because there are many paid clones in the download store. Those apps use variants of the Audacity name and logo.

Audacity has been around since the year 2000 and has been free to download ever since download from the official website. The team has now decided to version in the Microsoft Store but the only reason for that seems to be the presence of several fake versions. This is evident from the tweet by Martin Keary, head of product at Audacity. Keary talks about a ridiculous number of fake versions that cost money and don’t work, or are very limited.

A search for Audacity in the Microsoft Store currently returns four results of paid apps with a similar name and logo. For example, it concerns ‘Audio Editor base Audacity Windows’. The search term now also provides the official Audacity app and the makers have provided the logo with a green check mark that presumably should indicate that this is the original.

Until recently, there was also an app called Audacity Audio Editor and Recorder in the download store. That is a free app, based on Audacity. That app is now called Audiotonic Audio Editor and Recorder. It seems that the name of this app has recently been changed.

Audacity and clones in the Microsoft Store