The End of Finale(finalemusic.com)
finalemusic.com
The End of Finale
https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/end-of-finale-new-journey-dorico-letter-from-president/
168 comments
Seems quite ridiculous to not just release a free version with no support, no updates, no DRM. It's like they're going out of their way to destroy their legacy. I'd hate to be one of the devs.
If they don't, the darknet (read as: "unpaid chaotic-good data preservation enthusiasts") will.
This is just a guess, but maybe the struck a deal with Steinberg that does not allow them to do this?
It’s a hell of a way to treat your customers who may have spent thousands of dollars on your software over the decades.
Exactly what I’d expect from MakeMusic though, they have always been shysters.
Exactly what I’d expect from MakeMusic though, they have always been shysters.
the mouth eats the hands.
The egregoric lifecycle of a company. People that want to make money take over a successful business and run it into the ground not realizing their budget cuts are what killed the company (because, like locus, they've already moved on to the next feast).
The egregoric lifecycle of a company. People that want to make money take over a successful business and run it into the ground not realizing their budget cuts are what killed the company (because, like locus, they've already moved on to the next feast).
I wouldn't trust Steinberg, either.
I had a copy of one of the lesser Cubases from an audio thing I owned. I had it registered and on my account...and then I didn't. And, of course, the contact form only offers options that begin with selecting the software you own in your account, so I was left with useless pre-sale contact options. I had a notion to upgrade to one of the higher Cubase versions and maybe get WaveLab using the lesser version that also came with the hardware, but that permanently soured me on the company.
I had a copy of one of the lesser Cubases from an audio thing I owned. I had it registered and on my account...and then I didn't. And, of course, the contact form only offers options that begin with selecting the software you own in your account, so I was left with useless pre-sale contact options. I had a notion to upgrade to one of the higher Cubase versions and maybe get WaveLab using the lesser version that also came with the hardware, but that permanently soured me on the company.
Some new information (from MakeMusic in a follow-up email, https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/end-of-finale-new-journey-d...)
----------------------------------------------------
Updates
8/27/2024 @ 5:30 PM ET:
Clarifications on the initial announcement
Finale authorization will remain available indefinitely: Please note that future OS changes can still impact your ability to use Finale on new devices.
Finale v27 to be included with Dorico Pro Crossgrades: We are currently working on a solution for all customers who have purchased or intend to purchase a Dorico Pro crossgrade to be able to download Finale v27. This will ensure that you can export your Finale files using MusicXML 4.0, the most robust version of MusicXML available. Thank you for your patience, we will provide more information soon.
Updates
8/27/2024 @ 9:00 AM ET:
Clarifications on the initial announcement
Finale development has ended, but the Finale installer for any previously purchased version can still be downloaded from your eStore account. If your computer crashes or you need to install Finale on a new device, you’re not left without options.
We are committed to keeping the authorization process functional for a year. We’ve heard your concerns and are actively exploring ways to extend flexibility in the weeks ahead.
We understand that learning Dorico will be a steep learning curve, as it is with any complex notation or professional software. Both our team and Steinberg have developed extensive onboarding videos to guide you through the transition.
----------------------------------------------------
Updates
8/27/2024 @ 5:30 PM ET:
Clarifications on the initial announcement
Finale authorization will remain available indefinitely: Please note that future OS changes can still impact your ability to use Finale on new devices.
Finale v27 to be included with Dorico Pro Crossgrades: We are currently working on a solution for all customers who have purchased or intend to purchase a Dorico Pro crossgrade to be able to download Finale v27. This will ensure that you can export your Finale files using MusicXML 4.0, the most robust version of MusicXML available. Thank you for your patience, we will provide more information soon.
Updates
8/27/2024 @ 9:00 AM ET:
Clarifications on the initial announcement
Finale development has ended, but the Finale installer for any previously purchased version can still be downloaded from your eStore account. If your computer crashes or you need to install Finale on a new device, you’re not left without options.
We are committed to keeping the authorization process functional for a year. We’ve heard your concerns and are actively exploring ways to extend flexibility in the weeks ahead.
We understand that learning Dorico will be a steep learning curve, as it is with any complex notation or professional software. Both our team and Steinberg have developed extensive onboarding videos to guide you through the transition.
Sheesh, kinda harsh. The reauthorize deadline isn’t until a year from now. And I wouldn’t assume anything, but I hope they’re making a kickback from sales of Dorico. Given the discount price, even if your assumption is true, it can’t be that much money.
This isn’t some kind of massive win for MakeMusic, nor is it greed if they get a little money for moving people to another product. They’re shutting down what once was their flagship product. There’s more competition now, the codebase is heavy with legacy cruft, maybe it’s no fun at all to work on, or maybe they’re losing customers and are unable to make a living on Finale. It’s hard and painful to shut down a once-successful project, especially for people who’ve worked hard on it for a long time. I can’t help but empathize a little.
It could be way worse, they could be shutting down new authorizations today. Companies and products that die do that all the time. Giving the customers a year to deal with it and a steeply discounted upgrade path is relatively kind.
This isn’t some kind of massive win for MakeMusic, nor is it greed if they get a little money for moving people to another product. They’re shutting down what once was their flagship product. There’s more competition now, the codebase is heavy with legacy cruft, maybe it’s no fun at all to work on, or maybe they’re losing customers and are unable to make a living on Finale. It’s hard and painful to shut down a once-successful project, especially for people who’ve worked hard on it for a long time. I can’t help but empathize a little.
It could be way worse, they could be shutting down new authorizations today. Companies and products that die do that all the time. Giving the customers a year to deal with it and a steeply discounted upgrade path is relatively kind.
They just announced that they're stealing back the product they sold to their erstwhile customers. "It could be way worse" is a hell of a response to that.
"We just stopped support for your Silverado. You can drive it for one more year, then we're coming to take it out of your garage. We have a deal with Ford for you to get an F-150 with a discount."
"It could be way worse, at least I get to use it for another year, I hope they're getting a kickback from Ford."
"We just stopped support for your Silverado. You can drive it for one more year, then we're coming to take it out of your garage. We have a deal with Ford for you to get an F-150 with a discount."
"It could be way worse, at least I get to use it for another year, I hope they're getting a kickback from Ford."
What’s with the outrage? Do you own a Finale license? I’m sorry if you do, this does suck for people who still want to use Finale, but “stealing back” seems like hyperbole. The product (along with their income stream related to it) is shutting down permanently. It died, and no amount of commentary is going to bring it back.
Assuming you have a vested interest in the outcome here, what do you actually want to have happen to Finale that’s realistic for MakeMusic? What would you have done if it was your business? Have you ever had a business and had to plan the shut down a product people had paid for? Please actually consider those questions carefully.
Sometimes businesses lose. You can’t force a business to make a profit or to sell something they don’t want to sell or can no longer make. There’s no good way to shut down a product. And there’s no product ever that has ceased that didn’t have buyers right before they stopped taking money.
It’s a fact that it could be worse, and I already explained why, because often it actually is worse, especially with tech companies.
And yes, I hope the devs at MakeMusic are okay. I don’t understand why internet commenters wouldn’t, especially if they’re Finale fans.
Assuming you have a vested interest in the outcome here, what do you actually want to have happen to Finale that’s realistic for MakeMusic? What would you have done if it was your business? Have you ever had a business and had to plan the shut down a product people had paid for? Please actually consider those questions carefully.
Sometimes businesses lose. You can’t force a business to make a profit or to sell something they don’t want to sell or can no longer make. There’s no good way to shut down a product. And there’s no product ever that has ceased that didn’t have buyers right before they stopped taking money.
It’s a fact that it could be worse, and I already explained why, because often it actually is worse, especially with tech companies.
And yes, I hope the devs at MakeMusic are okay. I don’t understand why internet commenters wouldn’t, especially if they’re Finale fans.
If you do a quick read of the announcement, it sounds at first like "after next year, it's impossible to use Finale anymore" (a closer read indicates that what goes away is the ability to activate a Finale install, so existing copies will keep working until you get a new computer). And for a lot of people, those who are reading the announcement that way, this is going to be a "my library of scores becomes permanently and completely inaccessible" situation. Especially because, to my knowledge, no one has a working Finale music file -> their own music file converter (people have working converters from MusicXML, but you have to open up Finale to convert from its format to MusicXML, and Finale only added MusicXML support relatively recently).
It's this library archival stranding that is driving a lot of outrage from some quarters, especially if you're misreading the announcement, as noted above.
It's this library archival stranding that is driving a lot of outrage from some quarters, especially if you're misreading the announcement, as noted above.
That’s a great point, and I’m happy to overlook any initial misunderstandings. I would be very concerned as well if I had a Finale library, even knowing MusicXML might be available. I don’t have a Finale library, but I know at least one composer who does and is probably freaking out right now. I’m going to call him today.
I don't have a proverbial dog in this race but I agree with the outrage and I don't think "stealing back" is at all hyperbolic.
I guess if you're really really really young and all you know is subscription based software, then that is the world you know and you might just be accustomed to it and accept it.
But if Finale has been around for 35 years, then it existed long before "cloud" and long before subscription software was a thing.
If someone has invested money and time into using that software, into creating project files that only work with it, in learning how to use that then it is not remotely acceptable in my opinion to disable their access to something that they have paid for and invested in. I don't think that "stealing" is an inappropriate word to use in that case. Not even a little bit of hyperbole.
Does that mean that MakeMusic should continue to invest their own resources into maintaining it? Absolutely not. To answer your question: "what do you actually want to have happen to Finale that’s realistic for MakeMusic?": I would suggest that they allow people who have paid for it to continue to use it indefinitely.
This might mean that they need to release a patched version that's not going to activate remotely through their servers with a download link that will eventually expire.
I acknowledge that that doesn't cost them "absolutely nothing" but it's not a major expense (also happens to be a fixed cost) and it prevents them from being akin to your fridge manufacturer saying "we are discontinuing this model, as well as repair services for this model, therefore we are going to enter your house and physically remove your fridge one year from now so that you will be forever unable to use the thing that you paid us money for." What they get in return for this one time "end of life" service for their paying customers is customer retention and good will. I mean, I know that I will never consider buying anything from MakeMusic as a result of hearing that they might shut off my access to things I bought and paid for at any time.
I guess if you're really really really young and all you know is subscription based software, then that is the world you know and you might just be accustomed to it and accept it.
But if Finale has been around for 35 years, then it existed long before "cloud" and long before subscription software was a thing.
If someone has invested money and time into using that software, into creating project files that only work with it, in learning how to use that then it is not remotely acceptable in my opinion to disable their access to something that they have paid for and invested in. I don't think that "stealing" is an inappropriate word to use in that case. Not even a little bit of hyperbole.
Does that mean that MakeMusic should continue to invest their own resources into maintaining it? Absolutely not. To answer your question: "what do you actually want to have happen to Finale that’s realistic for MakeMusic?": I would suggest that they allow people who have paid for it to continue to use it indefinitely.
This might mean that they need to release a patched version that's not going to activate remotely through their servers with a download link that will eventually expire.
I acknowledge that that doesn't cost them "absolutely nothing" but it's not a major expense (also happens to be a fixed cost) and it prevents them from being akin to your fridge manufacturer saying "we are discontinuing this model, as well as repair services for this model, therefore we are going to enter your house and physically remove your fridge one year from now so that you will be forever unable to use the thing that you paid us money for." What they get in return for this one time "end of life" service for their paying customers is customer retention and good will. I mean, I know that I will never consider buying anything from MakeMusic as a result of hearing that they might shut off my access to things I bought and paid for at any time.
Users who’ve paid for it can continue to use it indefinitely, albeit with no support after 1 year from now. The fridge analogy is wrong. MakeMusic is not going to remove the software from your computer.
> it’s not a major expense (also happens to be a fixed cost)
That’s unlikely to be true, and not anyone’s decision but MakeMusic’s. What if they don’t have the money? It’s not reasonable for me to ask you to pay me $10 on the grounds that it’s not a major expense and is a fixed cost, right?
> it’s not a major expense (also happens to be a fixed cost)
That’s unlikely to be true, and not anyone’s decision but MakeMusic’s. What if they don’t have the money? It’s not reasonable for me to ask you to pay me $10 on the grounds that it’s not a major expense and is a fixed cost, right?
Users who’ve paid for it can continue to use it indefinitely, albeit with no support after 1 year from now
FALSE.
From the announcement, "It will not be possible to authorize Finale on any new devices, or reauthorize Finale".
If I have to reinstall it for any reason, such as my computer dying, or I get a virus, or I upgrade my computer, or any myriad of reasons, I am completely SOL and can no longer "continue to use it indefinitely".
FALSE.
From the announcement, "It will not be possible to authorize Finale on any new devices, or reauthorize Finale".
If I have to reinstall it for any reason, such as my computer dying, or I get a virus, or I upgrade my computer, or any myriad of reasons, I am completely SOL and can no longer "continue to use it indefinitely".
I was referring to this:
https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308...
“Will my software continue to function?
Yes! Your existing authorized Finale installations will continue to work as long as your current computer is working.”
BTW, I did make the mistake of saying ‘forever’ in another comment, but FWIW ‘indefinitely’ doesn’t mean forever. Also, it doesn’t matter what I say, I don’t work for MakeMusic, just read the whole FAQ.
https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308...
“Will my software continue to function?
Yes! Your existing authorized Finale installations will continue to work as long as your current computer is working.”
BTW, I did make the mistake of saying ‘forever’ in another comment, but FWIW ‘indefinitely’ doesn’t mean forever. Also, it doesn’t matter what I say, I don’t work for MakeMusic, just read the whole FAQ.
> but FWIW ‘indefinitely’ doesn’t mean forever
You just really like arguing for the sake of arguing don't you?
I'm sure that if I opened a dictionary I would find the distinction, but most people treat the words 'indefinitely' and 'forever' as synonymous. Nit-picking on that minutia kind of makes you come across like the obnoxious little brother who does the "But I'm not touching you!" thing to his sister. It's just annoying and most reasonable people know exactly how 'indefinitely' and 'forever' will be interpreted.
You just really like arguing for the sake of arguing don't you?
I'm sure that if I opened a dictionary I would find the distinction, but most people treat the words 'indefinitely' and 'forever' as synonymous. Nit-picking on that minutia kind of makes you come across like the obnoxious little brother who does the "But I'm not touching you!" thing to his sister. It's just annoying and most reasonable people know exactly how 'indefinitely' and 'forever' will be interpreted.
"...will continue to work as long as your current computer is working."
This doesn't seem dumb to you?
This doesn't seem dumb to you?
Yeah sure, in a way. It’s kinda dumb in the sense that ‘as long as your computer is working’ actually means ‘ending soon’, for the majority of people in the real world. That seems obvious though. Few people if anyone can keep their current computer working with a software app that freezes. It might stop working in a year, it might be more than that, or might be less than that (which they explicitly admit re: Sequoia).
It’s a sort of glass-half-full spin, perhaps, but doesn’t seem misleading to me in light of all the FAQ entries and the letter. They are very clearly and explicitly recommending users move off of Finale asap, and not wait for the computer to stop working, whatever that might mean. If someone really truly depends on Finale professionally, and can’t move within a year, it’s not outside the bounds of possibility to freeze their computer, buy a new one for everything else, and keep Finale running for a while. I would in no way recommend that, but I’ve seen people do it before.
It’s a sort of glass-half-full spin, perhaps, but doesn’t seem misleading to me in light of all the FAQ entries and the letter. They are very clearly and explicitly recommending users move off of Finale asap, and not wait for the computer to stop working, whatever that might mean. If someone really truly depends on Finale professionally, and can’t move within a year, it’s not outside the bounds of possibility to freeze their computer, buy a new one for everything else, and keep Finale running for a while. I would in no way recommend that, but I’ve seen people do it before.
It's not their job to revoke access to a product that I paid for regardless of the reason.
If they sold me that product I should be able to pop that software into a Windows 10 VM and use it till the end of time.
If they sold me that product I should be able to pop that software into a Windows 10 VM and use it till the end of time.
I guess that depends on what they want, and what their agreement with Steinberg is, and maybe the EULA, and maybe how much money and time they have to maintain an auth server machine.
What you’re actually complaining about is the fact that the software was remotely authorized in the first place, starting over 3 decades ago, not that it was discontinued and will stop. It’s fine and fair to be against the idea of releasing software that requires remote authorization, I’m not arguing against that idea. But if you are, then don’t buy it in the first place. Software that is remotely authorized always comes with the risk that authorization will go away, it would be pretty silly to assume otherwise.
What you’re actually complaining about is the fact that the software was remotely authorized in the first place, starting over 3 decades ago, not that it was discontinued and will stop. It’s fine and fair to be against the idea of releasing software that requires remote authorization, I’m not arguing against that idea. But if you are, then don’t buy it in the first place. Software that is remotely authorized always comes with the risk that authorization will go away, it would be pretty silly to assume otherwise.
> That’s unlikely to be true, and not anyone’s decision but MakeMusic’s
The nuance here is that it depends on the contract between MakeMusic and their customers. If I'm purchasing a subscription and the fine print makes it clear that service may be discontinued at any point for any reason, fair enough. If I make a one-time purchase and expect that I will be able to use what I paid for indefinitely, then them taking down their activation servers without providing a workaround might be a violation of their contract with their customers.
But I'm not making a completely ill-informed proposition when I suggest that the expense would be minimal and fixed for MakeMusic to do what I suggested. Obviously I don't know all of the details about how their software works, so I can't know for sure. I'm making certain assumptions based on how long their software has been around, the fact that they have a remote activation mechanism and having developed software professionally myself for over 25 years.
The nuance here is that it depends on the contract between MakeMusic and their customers. If I'm purchasing a subscription and the fine print makes it clear that service may be discontinued at any point for any reason, fair enough. If I make a one-time purchase and expect that I will be able to use what I paid for indefinitely, then them taking down their activation servers without providing a workaround might be a violation of their contract with their customers.
But I'm not making a completely ill-informed proposition when I suggest that the expense would be minimal and fixed for MakeMusic to do what I suggested. Obviously I don't know all of the details about how their software works, so I can't know for sure. I'm making certain assumptions based on how long their software has been around, the fact that they have a remote activation mechanism and having developed software professionally myself for over 25 years.
They’re making it impossible to continue to use a product their customers already paid for. How is that not stealing?
Are you a Finale user?
I guess you can call it stealing if you want. The word steal has many figurative meanings, such as ‘you stole my heart’. When a product fails, yes it eventually becomes impossible to use, even when you paid for it. To me it seems like misleading and hyperbole to call it stealing because you’re implicitly assigning malice to the business that simply failed, because they failed and aren’t getting value from the software becoming EOL, because they’re offering refunds to people who paid recently and haven’t had time to get value.
Do you call all products and business that fail or go out of business “stealing”?
If you read the letter and FAQ in their entirety, you will see they are not making it impossible to continue to use Finale. Customers who paid can continue to use it, for as long as their computer works. They are turning off new activations on new machines, in a year from now. It’s hard to imagine that mattering very much in the face of the facts that Finale is now dead, cannot be purchased, and is going to be obsolete eventually due to incompatible OS changes no matter what. But if you depend on Finale enough to not upgrade your computer, you can continue to use Finale as long as you want.
I guess you can call it stealing if you want. The word steal has many figurative meanings, such as ‘you stole my heart’. When a product fails, yes it eventually becomes impossible to use, even when you paid for it. To me it seems like misleading and hyperbole to call it stealing because you’re implicitly assigning malice to the business that simply failed, because they failed and aren’t getting value from the software becoming EOL, because they’re offering refunds to people who paid recently and haven’t had time to get value.
Do you call all products and business that fail or go out of business “stealing”?
If you read the letter and FAQ in their entirety, you will see they are not making it impossible to continue to use Finale. Customers who paid can continue to use it, for as long as their computer works. They are turning off new activations on new machines, in a year from now. It’s hard to imagine that mattering very much in the face of the facts that Finale is now dead, cannot be purchased, and is going to be obsolete eventually due to incompatible OS changes no matter what. But if you depend on Finale enough to not upgrade your computer, you can continue to use Finale as long as you want.
> Do you call all products and business that fail or go out of business “stealing”?
I have plenty of products from companies that go out of business. Some of them even have servers that they depend on. At least one of the companies did the right thing and allowed their physical hardware product to continue to be used by people running their own servers.
It's not rocket science. It's should be the right and moral thing to do. Are they legally required to do it? No. Should they be? Probably yes.
I have plenty of products from companies that go out of business. Some of them even have servers that they depend on. At least one of the companies did the right thing and allowed their physical hardware product to continue to be used by people running their own servers.
It's not rocket science. It's should be the right and moral thing to do. Are they legally required to do it? No. Should they be? Probably yes.
It's stealing.
It's one thing if I buy a tool and it breaks down naturally. That does happen... in the physical world. It should NEVER happen in the software world, not for a standalone tool. If a company that sold you the tool (which you expected to use indefinitely) then goes out of their way to make sure you can't keep using that tool, then yeah, that's stealing.
Actually, it's not stealing. It's sabotage.
(And yes, they are making it nearly impossible to keep using finale. Unlike software, computers do break down. Or sometimes Microsoft forces everyone to get a new computer, as it seems will happen next year with the forced obsolescence of Windows 10 and forced move to Windows 11.)
It's one thing if I buy a tool and it breaks down naturally. That does happen... in the physical world. It should NEVER happen in the software world, not for a standalone tool. If a company that sold you the tool (which you expected to use indefinitely) then goes out of their way to make sure you can't keep using that tool, then yeah, that's stealing.
Actually, it's not stealing. It's sabotage.
(And yes, they are making it nearly impossible to keep using finale. Unlike software, computers do break down. Or sometimes Microsoft forces everyone to get a new computer, as it seems will happen next year with the forced obsolescence of Windows 10 and forced move to Windows 11.)
I hope people treat you with respect and understanding and don’t attack you for stealing if you ever need to discontinue any of your software products or happen to go out of business. I have had my own software business, and had to plan the sunset of a paid product, and it would have been hurtful if people accused me of stealing when I was already hurting due to being out of money and feeling like a failure. Thankfully, none of my customers did that to me, as far as I know.
As you point out, it’s Microsoft or Apple forcing you to upgrade. Why are you blaming MakeMusic for that? If you don’t upgrade, then your currently running copy of Finale will continue working. It’s completely unrealistic for most people to not upgrade, but still, it’s not MakeMusic’s fault that people upgrade.
As you point out, it’s Microsoft or Apple forcing you to upgrade. Why are you blaming MakeMusic for that? If you don’t upgrade, then your currently running copy of Finale will continue working. It’s completely unrealistic for most people to not upgrade, but still, it’s not MakeMusic’s fault that people upgrade.
> I hope people treat you with respect and understanding and don’t attack you for stealing if you ever need to discontinue any of your software products or happen to go out of business.
No-one is attacking MakeMusic for discontinuing their product, yet you continue to assert this.
People are attacking MakeMusic for removing a way that you can continue to use their product as long as there are no technical limitations preventing you. No-one is saying "Oh, it needs to support Windows 14 and macOS 18". They are saying "there is nothing wrong with the software I purchased, nor the hardware I wish to run it on. You are just arbitrarily preventing me from doing so".
They don't have to keep activation servers running. Create a patch that disables the online activation requirement. Done.
No-one is attacking MakeMusic for discontinuing their product, yet you continue to assert this.
People are attacking MakeMusic for removing a way that you can continue to use their product as long as there are no technical limitations preventing you. No-one is saying "Oh, it needs to support Windows 14 and macOS 18". They are saying "there is nothing wrong with the software I purchased, nor the hardware I wish to run it on. You are just arbitrarily preventing me from doing so".
They don't have to keep activation servers running. Create a patch that disables the online activation requirement. Done.
I understand this distinction. I understand why some users are upset. However, I am getting dogmatic blowback in this thread by some people who admitted never purchasing Finale, and are not interested in discussing the pros and cons of any tradeoffs or alternatives, and don’t even want to consider the possibility that this isn’t fun for MakeMusic either.
It sucks if people expected authorization would continue to work forever. How many people would actually use that if it existed, and what is a reasonable user base threshold below which they can turn it off? It doesn’t matter what I think, but I don’t think leaving the auth servers on is going to benefit more than a very tiny handful of people at most, and thus probably isn’t worth the effort. And again, it’s entirely possible this is all coming at Steinberg’s request and was deemed an acceptable tradeoff by MakeMusic, assuming that it would benefit more people than it would harm. The discount vs activation tradeoff very well might benefit more people than it harms.
Personally, having run a software business, and having known others who’ve run software businesses, I see failed businesses, failed products, and company acquisitions all under the same umbrella of causing real problems against the expectations of buyers. All of those situations cause changes to the EULA, and people don’t like change, especially when they’ve paid money for constancy, I can completely and totally understand that. I was just trying to calm the pitchforking down a little… and not doing that great of a job, obviously.
If MakeMusic is offering the Dorico discount in return for no competition via turning off the auth servers, in a way that’s almost like Steinberg acquiring Finale but killing it. Maybe that could have happened, and maybe this way was cheaper and less legal paperwork for both parties, I dunno. Nobody else here does either.
It sucks if people expected authorization would continue to work forever. How many people would actually use that if it existed, and what is a reasonable user base threshold below which they can turn it off? It doesn’t matter what I think, but I don’t think leaving the auth servers on is going to benefit more than a very tiny handful of people at most, and thus probably isn’t worth the effort. And again, it’s entirely possible this is all coming at Steinberg’s request and was deemed an acceptable tradeoff by MakeMusic, assuming that it would benefit more people than it would harm. The discount vs activation tradeoff very well might benefit more people than it harms.
Personally, having run a software business, and having known others who’ve run software businesses, I see failed businesses, failed products, and company acquisitions all under the same umbrella of causing real problems against the expectations of buyers. All of those situations cause changes to the EULA, and people don’t like change, especially when they’ve paid money for constancy, I can completely and totally understand that. I was just trying to calm the pitchforking down a little… and not doing that great of a job, obviously.
If MakeMusic is offering the Dorico discount in return for no competition via turning off the auth servers, in a way that’s almost like Steinberg acquiring Finale but killing it. Maybe that could have happened, and maybe this way was cheaper and less legal paperwork for both parties, I dunno. Nobody else here does either.
> but I don’t think leaving the auth servers on is going to benefit more than a very tiny handful of people at most, and thus probably isn’t worth the effort.
You say this, but of the composers who haven't moved to Dorico by now, they're probably very set in their ways. So I'm not sure "very tiny handful" is accurate.
I don't actually think they should be required to maintain auth servers, hence the patch.
> And again, it’s entirely possible this is all coming at Steinberg’s request and was deemed an acceptable tradeoff by MakeMusic
I still have no idea why this relevant or appropriate. "Hey, we might have been willing to continue to "allow" you to use the software you know, you bought, but another agreement sounded more appealing to us". That would actually be pushing on the concept of tortious interference (where a third party induces a first party to renege on their agreement with a second).
> And again, it’s entirely possible this is all coming at Steinberg’s request and was deemed an acceptable tradeoff by MakeMusic, assuming that it would benefit more people than it would harm. The discount vs activation tradeoff very well might benefit more people than it harms.
Entirely so. And maybe for some, the financial aspect is what's holding them back. But to be clear, Finale itself has been several hundred dollars (I believe I paid $299), so I don't know that that was the distinction for some.
Also, there is the removal of choice. "We're turning off the activation servers. You can pay $179 to some other company, or lose access to the software you'd already paid for". I don't know that your "oh you're not losing it, because you can keep running it, if it's already activated" is anywhere near the argument you think it is.
You say this, but of the composers who haven't moved to Dorico by now, they're probably very set in their ways. So I'm not sure "very tiny handful" is accurate.
I don't actually think they should be required to maintain auth servers, hence the patch.
> And again, it’s entirely possible this is all coming at Steinberg’s request and was deemed an acceptable tradeoff by MakeMusic
I still have no idea why this relevant or appropriate. "Hey, we might have been willing to continue to "allow" you to use the software you know, you bought, but another agreement sounded more appealing to us". That would actually be pushing on the concept of tortious interference (where a third party induces a first party to renege on their agreement with a second).
> And again, it’s entirely possible this is all coming at Steinberg’s request and was deemed an acceptable tradeoff by MakeMusic, assuming that it would benefit more people than it would harm. The discount vs activation tradeoff very well might benefit more people than it harms.
Entirely so. And maybe for some, the financial aspect is what's holding them back. But to be clear, Finale itself has been several hundred dollars (I believe I paid $299), so I don't know that that was the distinction for some.
Also, there is the removal of choice. "We're turning off the activation servers. You can pay $179 to some other company, or lose access to the software you'd already paid for". I don't know that your "oh you're not losing it, because you can keep running it, if it's already activated" is anywhere near the argument you think it is.
> but of the composers who haven't moved to Dorico by now, they're probably very set in their ways. So I'm not sure "very tiny handful" is accurate.
Fair point, maybe more people will be caught than I think. I do know a composer that hasn’t moved yet, and he is pretty set in his ways.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that the whole reason Finale is shutting down is because the user base is already too small. And, even people set in their ways are now being notified that Finale is going away, which is news, so a lot of the people still left will certainly move before the year is out, right? We’re both speculating on how many will be left and whether we can subjectively call that many or few, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to estimate those still left in a year from now will not be the majority of the user base they had last week.
I agree with you that suggesting people can continue to run Finale is a weak argument. If you look, you might notice I’ve actually argued that it’s pretty unrealistic for most people and probably not going to work for long. I only corrected people who’ve incorrectly claimed or implied they would lose any and all access, and I only did that because that’s what the Finale FAQ says and I assume people are getting angry before reading and understanding the entire situation. People have a year to install Finale on a new computer, and if it’s really super important they can setup a machine that won’t get upgrades or other applications on it, and Finale might continue to work for longer than a year. That’s still unrealistic and I neither expect nor encourage it, but it is an option, should someone sufficiently motivated want to take it. Seems better to me to take the Dorico discount or explore MuseScore or Sibelius or something else and not waste time wishing Finale would continue to run.
Fair point, maybe more people will be caught than I think. I do know a composer that hasn’t moved yet, and he is pretty set in his ways.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that the whole reason Finale is shutting down is because the user base is already too small. And, even people set in their ways are now being notified that Finale is going away, which is news, so a lot of the people still left will certainly move before the year is out, right? We’re both speculating on how many will be left and whether we can subjectively call that many or few, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to estimate those still left in a year from now will not be the majority of the user base they had last week.
I agree with you that suggesting people can continue to run Finale is a weak argument. If you look, you might notice I’ve actually argued that it’s pretty unrealistic for most people and probably not going to work for long. I only corrected people who’ve incorrectly claimed or implied they would lose any and all access, and I only did that because that’s what the Finale FAQ says and I assume people are getting angry before reading and understanding the entire situation. People have a year to install Finale on a new computer, and if it’s really super important they can setup a machine that won’t get upgrades or other applications on it, and Finale might continue to work for longer than a year. That’s still unrealistic and I neither expect nor encourage it, but it is an option, should someone sufficiently motivated want to take it. Seems better to me to take the Dorico discount or explore MuseScore or Sibelius or something else and not waste time wishing Finale would continue to run.
This is the kind of software which is going to have a small number of dedicate users who depend on it a lot. The fact that there's a small number of them is outweighed by the disproportionate amount that it affects them, likely professionally.
(Artists get very attached to their tools: this happens with physical objects as well, where e.g. it's very common for an artist to have hoarded up a very large stock of their favourite pen/pencil/brush because it was discontinued. Not an option with software that's had its auth servers turned off)
(Artists get very attached to their tools: this happens with physical objects as well, where e.g. it's very common for an artist to have hoarded up a very large stock of their favourite pen/pencil/brush because it was discontinued. Not an option with software that's had its auth servers turned off)
Yes, you’re totally right. I’m aware of this (what artists do), and they are pulling the rug out from under these people by discontinuing Finale. Leaving new installs working beyond 1 year won’t actually fix that, for even most of the die-hard artists attached to Finale. That’s the part that nobody here is admitting, despite the fact that it’s true. The set of people who aren’t willing to move to Dorico or Sibelius or something else, and also who will be technically able to keep Finale running even if new installations are allowed, that set is near empty or empty. Keep it running with new installs allowed is almost as unrealistic as keeping it running without allowing new installations on new machines. It’s unrealistic to assert that allowing new installations will make anything significant better for a meaningful number of people. Finale is dead. In theory or in principle, abstractly, it does suck they’re disabling new authorizations in a year, but in reality it’s not going to matter. In the mean time, if that move enabled Dorico to feel good about offering a $450 discount, that might really help a lot of people. I’m just guessing, but it could help more people than will still be trying to run Finale next year.
Upgrade? What my CPU melts and I need a new computer. This has nothing to do with Microsoft of Apple. All they have to do is allow their product to continue to be installed -- it's easy. Nobody expects anything else from them. If, for whatever reason, it no longer installs on Windows 17 -- so be it. As long as it was not explicitly sabotaged by it's creator to not run.
I "own" Finale and the Garritan instrument package, which cost me around $600 on a student license. I remember having to guide my music composition teacher through installing his MIDI interface which connects his keyboard to Finale when he upgraded his computer.
He is the conductor of a local musical group and rewrites the scores for different instruments depending on the orchestra he can find/pay.
This guy has spent thousands of dollars over the years, and now he is faced with.... what? Relearning the interface? Can he still open his old scores, and (rather importantly), will the score "work" in its entirety, with all the accidentals in the right place, the lyrics in the right position and split to the correct notes to be sung, the trumpets in the right key, the timpani using the correct symbols, the repeats and coda correctly defined, the personal additions still working? What about linking each instrument to the correct MIDI output or instrument package?
This goes way beyond just cost, even if for a musician who doesn't make tons of money. The intellectual investment over decades is hard to express to someone who doesn't write music for a living.
He is the conductor of a local musical group and rewrites the scores for different instruments depending on the orchestra he can find/pay.
This guy has spent thousands of dollars over the years, and now he is faced with.... what? Relearning the interface? Can he still open his old scores, and (rather importantly), will the score "work" in its entirety, with all the accidentals in the right place, the lyrics in the right position and split to the correct notes to be sung, the trumpets in the right key, the timpani using the correct symbols, the repeats and coda correctly defined, the personal additions still working? What about linking each instrument to the correct MIDI output or instrument package?
This goes way beyond just cost, even if for a musician who doesn't make tons of money. The intellectual investment over decades is hard to express to someone who doesn't write music for a living.
"what do you actually want to have happen to Finale"
I want the existing licenses to keep working.
I want the existing licenses to keep working.
You may not understand the scale here. There are about a hundred thousand users, a lot of whom had thousands of scores in this format. Some tens of thousands. It's not a straightforward proposition to simply jump to another platform, especially since there's no perfect conversion between any notation software given the proprietary algorithms involved, and the sheer complexity of music notation itself. It's a bad day for a lot of people.
> It could be way worse
So they chopped off your finger, it could be worse they could have taken the whole hand!
The right thing to do is release a version that doesn't require authorization at all.
So they chopped off your finger, it could be worse they could have taken the whole hand!
The right thing to do is release a version that doesn't require authorization at all.
The existing authorized versions will continue to work forever. What more do you want from a product that ceases to exist? It’s going to EOL no matter what very quickly as OSes get incompatible upgrades. If you’re still using Finale a year from now hoping that it’s somehow going to continue, you’re only tricking yourself.
I have productivity software that is 30 years old that I can still install and run today either on windows or wine. This is because it doesn't need to connect to the internet in order to install. Any software from the last decade or so is far less permanent.
With all the negative replies to your post, it's rather unbelievable to me that you can't figure out why.
Number 1: this is not a cloud-based product, it works entirely off-line, so saying that the product ceases to exist is also wrong, I and many others archive the installers to re-install them on new computers.
Number 2: Microsoft prides itself on backwards compatibility, and it is very common to run software that is decades-old on new versions of windows.
Number 3: It will not be possible to authorize Finale on any new devices, or reauthorize Finale. This is the point that is angering people. I paid for a very specific version of Finale, and it's obvious that I should continue to expect to be able to use it barring OS related incompatibility. The only reason the software won't work anymore is because they're deliberately locking my authorization key.
The correct move from the company is to either leave the server that authorizes keys on, or if that's somehow magically too much trouble, then they need to patch older versions of finale to not check for the key.
Source: Have been using Finale for decades
Number 1: this is not a cloud-based product, it works entirely off-line, so saying that the product ceases to exist is also wrong, I and many others archive the installers to re-install them on new computers.
Number 2: Microsoft prides itself on backwards compatibility, and it is very common to run software that is decades-old on new versions of windows.
Number 3: It will not be possible to authorize Finale on any new devices, or reauthorize Finale. This is the point that is angering people. I paid for a very specific version of Finale, and it's obvious that I should continue to expect to be able to use it barring OS related incompatibility. The only reason the software won't work anymore is because they're deliberately locking my authorization key.
The correct move from the company is to either leave the server that authorizes keys on, or if that's somehow magically too much trouble, then they need to patch older versions of finale to not check for the key.
Source: Have been using Finale for decades
This does suck. I truly, honestly feel bad for you and other Finale users.
I might indeed be wrong (about what I’m not exactly sure yet despite your comment), but I think you maybe misunderstood my comment a little bit. I didn’t say the software will cease to exist, but the product actually went on life support yesterday and will cease to exist in a year. You can’t buy it, and support ends in 1 year. After that it no longer exists as a product. That’s not my opinion, it’s what the letter says.
It’s understandable to be upset about the new authorization cutoff. That might not be MakeMusic’s decision, it might be Steinberg’s. The move to Dorico and the discount on offer might be valuable and viable for a lot of people, but I have no doubt that it probably doesn’t work for everyone, and in that case the authorization shut-off hurts more.
But, new authorization isn’t going to help much beyond a year anyway, right? With the product dying, if you haven’t moved to something else by then, it’s just playing Russian Roulette. I’ve watched loads of Windows software become incompatible, software much younger than Finale, despite your point #2. I tried installing audio drivers for my Edirol audio interface just yesterday, and it no longer works. It sucks when software products you depend on go away, but unfortunately, people sometimes run out of money.
I might indeed be wrong (about what I’m not exactly sure yet despite your comment), but I think you maybe misunderstood my comment a little bit. I didn’t say the software will cease to exist, but the product actually went on life support yesterday and will cease to exist in a year. You can’t buy it, and support ends in 1 year. After that it no longer exists as a product. That’s not my opinion, it’s what the letter says.
It’s understandable to be upset about the new authorization cutoff. That might not be MakeMusic’s decision, it might be Steinberg’s. The move to Dorico and the discount on offer might be valuable and viable for a lot of people, but I have no doubt that it probably doesn’t work for everyone, and in that case the authorization shut-off hurts more.
But, new authorization isn’t going to help much beyond a year anyway, right? With the product dying, if you haven’t moved to something else by then, it’s just playing Russian Roulette. I’ve watched loads of Windows software become incompatible, software much younger than Finale, despite your point #2. I tried installing audio drivers for my Edirol audio interface just yesterday, and it no longer works. It sucks when software products you depend on go away, but unfortunately, people sometimes run out of money.
> I’ve watched loads of Windows software become incompatible...
I've been a Windows sysadmin since the late 90s. This has not ever been my experience with productivity software. Games and hardware drivers can be problematic, for sure, but productivity software by-and-large can be made to work fine on newer versions of Windows.
> It sucks when software products you depend on go away...
It's not "going away"-- it's being taken away. That's the issue people are having with it.
Bits don't rot. Locally-installed software doesn't "wear out". (Yes, yes-- you need to employ different security paradigms and compensating controls with "out of date" software in light of vulnerabilities. That's still not the software "wearing out".)
It's deeply saddening anyone would just accept perpetually-licensed use rights for locally-installed software being revoked after-the-fact. This should be the the purview of consumer protection regulation, not resignation that the world just works that way.
I've been a Windows sysadmin since the late 90s. This has not ever been my experience with productivity software. Games and hardware drivers can be problematic, for sure, but productivity software by-and-large can be made to work fine on newer versions of Windows.
> It sucks when software products you depend on go away...
It's not "going away"-- it's being taken away. That's the issue people are having with it.
Bits don't rot. Locally-installed software doesn't "wear out". (Yes, yes-- you need to employ different security paradigms and compensating controls with "out of date" software in light of vulnerabilities. That's still not the software "wearing out".)
It's deeply saddening anyone would just accept perpetually-licensed use rights for locally-installed software being revoked after-the-fact. This should be the the purview of consumer protection regulation, not resignation that the world just works that way.
> I’ve watched loads of Windows software become incompatible
And I've seen a resurgence of old software running with very compatible PC emulators and older versions of Windows still installable. In theory, this software could run forever just like my copy of Oregon Trail.
And I've seen a resurgence of old software running with very compatible PC emulators and older versions of Windows still installable. In theory, this software could run forever just like my copy of Oregon Trail.
Great! It’s great that sometimes software continues to work. If only that was always the case.
I bought Office 2013 over 10 years ago and I still install it on my desktop.
It is available as a Windows app right? It takes a lot for Microsoft to make their OS be incompatible with apps.
It is available as a Windows app right? It takes a lot for Microsoft to make their OS be incompatible with apps.
Some important context here is that Tantacrul has a history of buying up music or audio related software (some of which is Open Source, e.g. Audacity) and trying to take it in New Directions™ in ways nobody wants or asked for.
For example, the entire Audacity Google Analytics debacle, and how he basically insulted the entire community when there was an outrage over GA being silently added.
MuseScore I'm less familiar with but I do recall people being upset about how some of that went down, too.
For example, the entire Audacity Google Analytics debacle, and how he basically insulted the entire community when there was an outrage over GA being silently added.
MuseScore I'm less familiar with but I do recall people being upset about how some of that went down, too.
That's quite the shortcut. Audacity and Musescore belong to the Muse, and the Muse hired Tantacrul. He didn't buy anything. Do we know that he made those decisions?
Yes, questionable stuff was added to Musescore since he joined. I'm particularly not too happy about their push for their Musescore.com cloud in the UI, the proprietary (optional) audio rendering bit, and the proprietary "update manager" in the binaries they distribute. Is he the one who pushed those things though? (Maybe, I don't know. But I doubt it. Those things are mostly business decisions, he is a UX designer).
Musescore also massively improved since he joined. It is a massively better software than before.
But I don't see the connection with the current discussion? We are not talking about Musescore, the Muse or Tantacrul, are we? We are talking about Finale.
Yes, questionable stuff was added to Musescore since he joined. I'm particularly not too happy about their push for their Musescore.com cloud in the UI, the proprietary (optional) audio rendering bit, and the proprietary "update manager" in the binaries they distribute. Is he the one who pushed those things though? (Maybe, I don't know. But I doubt it. Those things are mostly business decisions, he is a UX designer).
Musescore also massively improved since he joined. It is a massively better software than before.
But I don't see the connection with the current discussion? We are not talking about Musescore, the Muse or Tantacrul, are we? We are talking about Finale.
What does this have to do with Finale?
Looks like a comment got edited somewhere.
Hmmm, I don’t think so…
Tantacrul was mentioned. Otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned Tantacrul.
Ah okay, maybe it looked at the time like my comment was part of the other Tantacrul thread. I never mentioned Tantacrul and you replied to me, but I think the comments were next to each other at first. I’ve done that before. No worries.
Oops, could be. I was half awake when I responded. Apologies!
Yes, God forbid someone tries to get some real usage statistics and actually improve the product. Much better to rely on random emails bikeshedding about some minutia
Adding Google analytics to an open source project without consulting the millions of users and having it opt-in to start is a huge middle finger to everyone who uses it.
The customers paid for a lifetime license, why is a year reasonable to revoke this with no compensation?
Maybe its the "companies Lifetime" license. You may use this as long as the company survives
The license to use existing installs is not being revoked, customers can continue to use Finale on their computer.
How do you know they’re not offering compensation to people who purchased recently? What compensation do you expect, and under what circumstances?
(* edit to add link to the refund offer: https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308...)
Like I said, I’m comparing the extra year to situations where products shut down immediately without an extra year. You would agree that having an extra year is better than not, wouldn’t you?
How do you know they’re not offering compensation to people who purchased recently? What compensation do you expect, and under what circumstances?
(* edit to add link to the refund offer: https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308...)
Like I said, I’m comparing the extra year to situations where products shut down immediately without an extra year. You would agree that having an extra year is better than not, wouldn’t you?
Yes, people are pointing out that “it could be worse” is a cruddy thing to say. It’s bad! It could always be worse, but there’s no point in saying so. Continuing to harp on “it could be worse” is not helpful. It sounds like you are disagreeing that it’s wrong and bad to disable future use of a product that is locally installed and not a subscription.
Thank you for acknowledging that my comment is being misinterpreted and that it could be worse. Of course it’s bad, the product died. That sucks for people who like Finale, sucks for people who paid for it recently, and it sucks for MakeMusic too! That simply does not justify attacking or disparaging the developer, nor making assumptions about their motivation, nor making unreasonable demands about how they handle the transition.
What do you actually want? Do you need to convert your Finale library? By nearly all accounts, Dorico’s a massive UX upgrade and being offered at a 75% discount. I haven’t used it, but I just don’t understand why the pitchforks are out, especially when I’m not hearing many personal stories in this thread, so that makes it seem like bystander outrage where the bystanders aren’t invested.
What do you actually want? Do you need to convert your Finale library? By nearly all accounts, Dorico’s a massive UX upgrade and being offered at a 75% discount. I haven’t used it, but I just don’t understand why the pitchforks are out, especially when I’m not hearing many personal stories in this thread, so that makes it seem like bystander outrage where the bystanders aren’t invested.
There is nothing unreasonable about the demand that continue to make software that they sold installable by the owners. That's completely reasonable. It's actually far more unreaonable to sell someone a product and the next day make it unable to be reinstalled. That's unreasonable. I would even hope that would be illegal; it's too bad it's probably not.
> It’s actually far more unreasonable to sell someone a product and the next day make it unable to be reinstalled. That’s unreasonable.
I agree. So does MakeMusic, I guess, which is why they have at least a 30 day refund, and a whole year before new install authorizations end. I feel like I’m being misunderstood and misquoted and you’re arguing against things I didn’t say. I agree that losing access to new installs of Finale after a year sucks. I understand why paid users are angry. I assume the no re-auth after a year part could be a non-compete stipulation in their agreement with Steinberg. If most current Finale users value the ~$450 Dorico discount, maybe it’s worth the blowback, otherwise, maybe not.
I agree. So does MakeMusic, I guess, which is why they have at least a 30 day refund, and a whole year before new install authorizations end. I feel like I’m being misunderstood and misquoted and you’re arguing against things I didn’t say. I agree that losing access to new installs of Finale after a year sucks. I understand why paid users are angry. I assume the no re-auth after a year part could be a non-compete stipulation in their agreement with Steinberg. If most current Finale users value the ~$450 Dorico discount, maybe it’s worth the blowback, otherwise, maybe not.
If you agree that losing access to new installs after a year sucks, and you understand why paid users are angry I don't know why you keep replying. This is an unnecessary user-hostile thing to do and, in my opinion, should be illegal. If you sell a product, you should not be able to post-sale revoke access to that product. This is even more cut-and-dried than products that rely on servers for actual functionality.
I’m replying because we’re having a discussion, and because it has been clear all along that you didn’t quite understand my position before arguing with it, so I’m trying to better explain it. I do agree that losing access sucks, and I do see why some paid users are angry, so maybe you don’t actually disagree with me after all. Maybe it should be illegal to turn off new installs after a year, I could agree with that in some circumstances, but you continue to exaggerate and oversimplify the actual situation which doesn’t help, and this feels purely dogmatic now and not particularly real-world. Leaving the auth server on is unlikely to benefit very many people. In both directions, it seems more symbolic than functional. If they turn it off, hardly anyone will be affected but maybe it appeases Steinberg, and if they leave it on, hardly anyone will be affected but maybe it appeases internet mobs.
They should just remove the need for the auth server entirely. Whether or not it benefits very many people is beside the point; it's the principle. Allowing their users to continue to use the product that they have fully paid for is morally (and potentially legally) the right thing to do.
Yes I see your point is a principle you have and that you aren’t interested in discussing any nuance or details. I have heard and acknowledged your opinion multiple times that they should not disable the auth server. I understand that and I’m not disagreeing with it, so there’s no need to keep repeating it over and over unless you have new evidence, reasons, points to discuss.
For MakeMusic, I don’t know, but whether it benefits the most Finale users may be the entire point from their perspective. And it might matter to the users too, even if it doesn’t matter to you. The dev’s principles might prioritize maximum benefit for the most users over the anger that shutting off the auth server could potentially lead to. They are offering a tradeoff for which there is no perfect solution for everyone. Leaving the auth server on but not offering a Dorico discount might be overall significantly less good than what they did, even if what they did isn’t perfect or agreeable by your standards. That possibility is interesting and worth considering to me, even if not to you.
For MakeMusic, I don’t know, but whether it benefits the most Finale users may be the entire point from their perspective. And it might matter to the users too, even if it doesn’t matter to you. The dev’s principles might prioritize maximum benefit for the most users over the anger that shutting off the auth server could potentially lead to. They are offering a tradeoff for which there is no perfect solution for everyone. Leaving the auth server on but not offering a Dorico discount might be overall significantly less good than what they did, even if what they did isn’t perfect or agreeable by your standards. That possibility is interesting and worth considering to me, even if not to you.
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I have CDs from software I bought in the 90s I can install today (probably in a VM). I bought it, I should be able to make it work SOMEHOW for the next 100 years. Just release an update with the phone-home commented out.
I also have a bunch of software from 20, 30, and 40 years ago that still works. And I have a bunch of software that no longer runs. Audio and video software is way less likely to still run than other kinds of software, in my experience. It probably could work with an unknown and maybe large amount of work, money, time, and hardware.
The issue here is more about remote authorization in the first place. It’s funny to have this conversation after the fact. It probably should have come before Finale shut down. People against the idea of disabling new authorizations should, instead of complaining about Finale, proactively work to make remote software authorization illegal in the first place. Remote authorization always comes with the risk that authorization will be disabled. I’m guessing it was supposed to be a copy protection scheme, which is widespread and common, not a way to shutdown use. But here we are.
They chose not to release an update with phone home commented out. It was, therefore, a business decision, not a technical one. I understand the reactions to this decision, but I have serious doubts about the claims of harm or number of users who will want to run Finale in 12 months.
How much of the software you have from the 90s do you actually use? Be honest. I hardly ever use any of the software I have. I was a packrat and collected things I thought I was going to use, but 30 years later, I don’t use it.
The issue here is more about remote authorization in the first place. It’s funny to have this conversation after the fact. It probably should have come before Finale shut down. People against the idea of disabling new authorizations should, instead of complaining about Finale, proactively work to make remote software authorization illegal in the first place. Remote authorization always comes with the risk that authorization will be disabled. I’m guessing it was supposed to be a copy protection scheme, which is widespread and common, not a way to shutdown use. But here we are.
They chose not to release an update with phone home commented out. It was, therefore, a business decision, not a technical one. I understand the reactions to this decision, but I have serious doubts about the claims of harm or number of users who will want to run Finale in 12 months.
How much of the software you have from the 90s do you actually use? Be honest. I hardly ever use any of the software I have. I was a packrat and collected things I thought I was going to use, but 30 years later, I don’t use it.
> This isn’t some kind of massive win for MakeMusic, nor is it greed if they get a little money for moving people to another product.
Yeah, this doesn't smell like a typical financial or strategic move. My guess would be that this is a team that really cared about the product domain to recommend a competitor going forward but also came to recognize retirement needs among their codebase and/or the team itself.
Yeah, this doesn't smell like a typical financial or strategic move. My guess would be that this is a team that really cared about the product domain to recommend a competitor going forward but also came to recognize retirement needs among their codebase and/or the team itself.
They should, at minimum, release a freeware file conversion tool.
It seems like the FAQ addresses this, no? Customers can use MusicXML, which is an open format. https://www.musicxml.com/
The tool would need to output MusicXML. And maybe PDF as a fallback, if they can manage that. Each version of Finale uses its own complex, proprietary, and opaque file format. With no way to activate new installations of the software, the content of these files will become harder to access as time progresses. They should do more to allow the software to continue to be activated, as well.
> The tool would need to output MusicXML.
Finale does export MusicXML already. And PDF.
https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308...
> They should do more to allow the software to continue to be activated, as well.
Why? BTW, it can continue to be activated for a year, and existing activations will continue to work after that, as long as the OS remains compatible. What else do you think they should do after development has stopped?
https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308...
Finale does export MusicXML already. And PDF.
https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308...
> They should do more to allow the software to continue to be activated, as well.
Why? BTW, it can continue to be activated for a year, and existing activations will continue to work after that, as long as the OS remains compatible. What else do you think they should do after development has stopped?
https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/258438881308...
And after that period, in one year and one day, any new installation of Finale will be impossible to activate without a keygen (and I am not aware of any having been released, so far, that work with the "final" version). This will make it impossible to recover the contents of .mus and .musx files by users who do not already have a previous working installation of Finale.
Yes, that’s correct. The time is now to convert your Finale files, not a year from now. You could easily get stuck before a year is up due to OS upgrades. And you will get stuck eventually for the exact same reason, OS incompatibilities are coming, guaranteed. Finale is officially dead. Right now while it’s still working is when people should archive the contents of their files.
Circling back to your top comment, my point is that the tools to do this already exist. No new tools or freeware is needed, the exporters are already there.
Circling back to your top comment, my point is that the tools to do this already exist. No new tools or freeware is needed, the exporters are already there.
It is unreasonable for the software vendor to impose the task of converting a large mass of files (one by one!) on the users, especially within such a limited time frame. Most users have hundreds, thousands, or more such files to go through. As things stand, a very large amount of music is certain to become lost. A freeware convertor would obviate this particular concern. Very easy to implement, too; just don't disable the export and print functionality anymore in the main application after the "evaluation period" expires.
Are you sure Finale has no batch export? There are free & paid tools available on both Mac & Windows to help automate menu actions and batch convert things.
The product is dead, and like any product or business that dies, yes users may have a problem with their archive. It does suck, and I feel for anyone in this situation. I guess the lesson is that this is always the risk with all software, it might lose support. It happens, often.
I don’t see any reasonable alternatives. It doesn’t seem reasonable to demand that someone ending support for a product must turn around and write a new product to continue supporting the dead product. If they’re out of money, they’re out of money, and they can’t afford to retain developers to work on it.
The product is dead, and like any product or business that dies, yes users may have a problem with their archive. It does suck, and I feel for anyone in this situation. I guess the lesson is that this is always the risk with all software, it might lose support. It happens, often.
I don’t see any reasonable alternatives. It doesn’t seem reasonable to demand that someone ending support for a product must turn around and write a new product to continue supporting the dead product. If they’re out of money, they’re out of money, and they can’t afford to retain developers to work on it.
Windows 11 has compatibility with 30 year old software. And will be able to be emulated far into the future.
If you are ending a product that users were using to make creative works, then preventing that product from working into the future is robbing the future of the ability to look back at these files.
Imagine a case where 5 years from now you find your backups with files from Finale. You won't be able to read them unless you have an active activated installation. Even if you had the installer backed up so you could re-install, it won't work.
The right thing to do, would be to enable the users to keep running this software, if they have the means + the rights, not activly prevent it from working. Especially if the only thing between a user and using their licensed software, is a license check.
Honestly, it's probably moot anyway: the pirate scene will almost certanly have the activation check patched out in no time.
If you are ending a product that users were using to make creative works, then preventing that product from working into the future is robbing the future of the ability to look back at these files.
Imagine a case where 5 years from now you find your backups with files from Finale. You won't be able to read them unless you have an active activated installation. Even if you had the installer backed up so you could re-install, it won't work.
The right thing to do, would be to enable the users to keep running this software, if they have the means + the rights, not activly prevent it from working. Especially if the only thing between a user and using their licensed software, is a license check.
Honestly, it's probably moot anyway: the pirate scene will almost certanly have the activation check patched out in no time.
Yes! There must be millions of Finale files out there that will otherwise become unreadable.
Ez to bypass that. =p
So... does this mean that Tantacrul is never going to get around to making a video on Finale like he did with MuseScore, Sibelius, and Dorico?
Edit: Apparently, he already said that it's lighting a fire under him to get it done: https://nitter.poast.org/Tantacrul/status/182807170687273381...
Edit: Apparently, he already said that it's lighting a fire under him to get it done: https://nitter.poast.org/Tantacrul/status/182807170687273381...
Wow. I didn't see this one coming
Over 20 years ago I needed to do some engraving for a school band project, and went online looking for a solution. At the time there was SCORE, which produced beautiful pages but was a massive dog to get running on XP (dos emulators were rare and difficult to use), finale, Sibelieus, and LilyPond.
Finale was nice but far too expensive, and Sibelieus was nicer for slightly cheaper. Both rather hard amounts of money to come up with in middle and high school. So that left LilyPond.
My father is a scientist, and therefore quite handy with TeX, so he pushed me rather hard in the direction of LilyPond, running in cygwin. Took me about a week to pick it up, and another week to get my engraving looking the way I wanted. Turned it in after that and got a B from the band teacher, because apparently the school had finale on the library computers, and my output was subtly different (not wrong, different stylistic approaches to auxillary notation such as crescendos) than that of finale.
I still use lilypond to this day. I've played a bit with Sibelieus in the interim, and then dorico when Sibelieus went to hell and dorico was created. Still prefer lilypond.
But all through that period, finale basically felt like the Microsoft office of music engraving. The big juggernaut that no one can topple. Sure, the output of a finale engraving looked like it was a finale engraving, and others might have more aesthetically pleasing output, but finale was the standard. Seeing an upstart like dorico kill them is akin to something like Pages or Zoho office killing word.
Over 20 years ago I needed to do some engraving for a school band project, and went online looking for a solution. At the time there was SCORE, which produced beautiful pages but was a massive dog to get running on XP (dos emulators were rare and difficult to use), finale, Sibelieus, and LilyPond.
Finale was nice but far too expensive, and Sibelieus was nicer for slightly cheaper. Both rather hard amounts of money to come up with in middle and high school. So that left LilyPond.
My father is a scientist, and therefore quite handy with TeX, so he pushed me rather hard in the direction of LilyPond, running in cygwin. Took me about a week to pick it up, and another week to get my engraving looking the way I wanted. Turned it in after that and got a B from the band teacher, because apparently the school had finale on the library computers, and my output was subtly different (not wrong, different stylistic approaches to auxillary notation such as crescendos) than that of finale.
I still use lilypond to this day. I've played a bit with Sibelieus in the interim, and then dorico when Sibelieus went to hell and dorico was created. Still prefer lilypond.
But all through that period, finale basically felt like the Microsoft office of music engraving. The big juggernaut that no one can topple. Sure, the output of a finale engraving looked like it was a finale engraving, and others might have more aesthetically pleasing output, but finale was the standard. Seeing an upstart like dorico kill them is akin to something like Pages or Zoho office killing word.
Gosh - that's a blast from the past!
I remember back in the 90's when studying for my Music A-Level you essentially had two choices for notation - Finale if you were on a PC, and Sibelius if you had an Acorn.
For that reason, the music department at my school had Acorn Archimedes and then Acorn RiscPC machines.
Sibelius was the all around better piece of software - but I "only" had a windows PC at home, so it was Finale or nothing.
I remember back in the 90's when studying for my Music A-Level you essentially had two choices for notation - Finale if you were on a PC, and Sibelius if you had an Acorn.
For that reason, the music department at my school had Acorn Archimedes and then Acorn RiscPC machines.
Sibelius was the all around better piece of software - but I "only" had a windows PC at home, so it was Finale or nothing.
Relevant Tantacrul video on the erosion of the Sibelius UI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI
I used Sibelius extensively circa version 5, and refused to upgrade for many years. I used it to get through my music minor in college. I still have the installer and a k*ygen on a hard drive somewhere since they stopped selling licenses to it and I lost mine. Still my preferred software, and yes I've tried Musescore. It's not nearly the same. Old software still works.
I used Sibelius extensively circa version 5, and refused to upgrade for many years. I used it to get through my music minor in college. I still have the installer and a k*ygen on a hard drive somewhere since they stopped selling licenses to it and I lost mine. Still my preferred software, and yes I've tried Musescore. It's not nearly the same. Old software still works.
A bit later on in the mid 2000s when I 100% wasn't cheating my way through GCSE Music, Sibelius on Windows PC was the standard.
Yep - I believe they released the first Windows version in 1998 ... and by that time I was about to start my first year of uni ... not studying music, but instead AI + Comp Sci!
This was a storied name in the history of computer music. I can't help but feel that its EOL'ing is a huge missed pun opportunity, though. At least call it the Grand Finale for chrissakes.
I switched from Finale to Dorico about a year ago. It was like night and day in terms of user-friendliness. Finale felt heavily loaded down with legacy garbage. On Windows, it (really the Aria player) insisted on complete ownership of my audio output, too, which was a real pain.
Did the same thing about the same time - consulted with a composition professor, and he said that he didn't know anyone that was using Finale, so realized it was time to switch after using for 2 decades.
Agreed about the user-friendliness. Dorico is one of the most well thought-out, beautiful pieces of software I've seen. Really like the idea of modes - it's a bit complex at first, but think more software should do this. It's a really good way to separate features into different areas, to prevent the shotgun approach that most pieces of large software use, of just splattering features everywhere.
Still, end of an era.
Agreed about the user-friendliness. Dorico is one of the most well thought-out, beautiful pieces of software I've seen. Really like the idea of modes - it's a bit complex at first, but think more software should do this. It's a really good way to separate features into different areas, to prevent the shotgun approach that most pieces of large software use, of just splattering features everywhere.
Still, end of an era.
Nice to read this. I was taught finale when I was in school in the early 00s. I went on to study music (as a performer) and my notational needs were covered by writing by hand or by lilypond).
I never though anything would actually threaten Sibelius or Finale, so reading about a new (and good) product has flbeen great.
Maybe it introduces new ways composers can make strange errors when writing music :)
I never though anything would actually threaten Sibelius or Finale, so reading about a new (and good) product has flbeen great.
Maybe it introduces new ways composers can make strange errors when writing music :)
Yeah, I had been a finale user for >10 years, and it was a slow deterioration on MakeMusic's part, but I got frog boiled by it.
frog-boiled, haha, good way to put it:)
> Finale felt heavily loaded down with legacy garbage
It seems like the letter fully confirms & validates your feeling. ;) There’s just no GUI software started 35 years ago that’s still alive and feels modern and unbloated. Okay, there might be something, but I want to see the examples that prove me wrong. Things that come to mind are like Photoshop or Word, both bloated with legacy and might be dying to web apps. Or Windows itself, also loaded down with legacy. UX standards and expectations have (thankfully) gone way up over time, and it’s practically impossible to keep up without starting over with fresh applications, especially for boutique shops.
It seems like the letter fully confirms & validates your feeling. ;) There’s just no GUI software started 35 years ago that’s still alive and feels modern and unbloated. Okay, there might be something, but I want to see the examples that prove me wrong. Things that come to mind are like Photoshop or Word, both bloated with legacy and might be dying to web apps. Or Windows itself, also loaded down with legacy. UX standards and expectations have (thankfully) gone way up over time, and it’s practically impossible to keep up without starting over with fresh applications, especially for boutique shops.
I don't really like "bloated" as a descriptor, because it's so unspecific that it's hard to argue against. Does it mean the software is slow? Too cluttered and disorganized? Too feature-heavy? Compromised by backward compatibility?
In any case, Photoshop, Word, and Windows are not in Finale's position clearly, as they're still far and away leading their respective markets. So, whatever bloat they may have, it's not yet been fatal.
Other old software that's been kept current includes Maya, Blender, Firefox (Netscape), MacOS (NeXTSTEP). I'm sure there are many other examples.
In any case, Photoshop, Word, and Windows are not in Finale's position clearly, as they're still far and away leading their respective markets. So, whatever bloat they may have, it's not yet been fatal.
Other old software that's been kept current includes Maya, Blender, Firefox (Netscape), MacOS (NeXTSTEP). I'm sure there are many other examples.
That’s fair, ‘bloated’ is very vague. And TBH I have multiple stories of devs complaining about bloat in order to justify a complete rewrite that turned out to be multi-million-dollar mistakes.
OTOH, I’ve been developing software long enough that you see the same pattern over and over. All application software is fresh and fast at first, and then gets bloated over time, where bloated means it accrues technical debt and accrues hard-to-manage code and accrues features that conflict with each other and slow down development.
Maya’s definitely bloated, and it has been for decades. Users were complaining about it being slow and buggy and a mess of a UI when I was using Maya in production more than 20 years ago. I went to the Maya developer’s conference around maybe 2002 and the devs were complaining about it being hard to maintain.
MacOS got a total ground-up rewrite in between versions 9 and 10, and it helps they built the UI on top of an existing nix. I hope Firefox and Blender last as long as Finale, only time will tell.
But it’s a good point that some bloated software hasn’t died, I have to assume that is because they’re making enough money from it to continue its development. I guess that would be true for Finale too, but that the income isn’t sufficient to carry it forward.
OTOH, I’ve been developing software long enough that you see the same pattern over and over. All application software is fresh and fast at first, and then gets bloated over time, where bloated means it accrues technical debt and accrues hard-to-manage code and accrues features that conflict with each other and slow down development.
Maya’s definitely bloated, and it has been for decades. Users were complaining about it being slow and buggy and a mess of a UI when I was using Maya in production more than 20 years ago. I went to the Maya developer’s conference around maybe 2002 and the devs were complaining about it being hard to maintain.
MacOS got a total ground-up rewrite in between versions 9 and 10, and it helps they built the UI on top of an existing nix. I hope Firefox and Blender last as long as Finale, only time will tell.
But it’s a good point that some bloated software hasn’t died, I have to assume that is because they’re making enough money from it to continue its development. I guess that would be true for Finale too, but that the income isn’t sufficient to carry it forward.
> MacOS got a total ground-up rewrite in between versions 9 and 10, and it helps they built the UI on top of an existing nix.
The reason the parent mentioned NeXTSTEP is while MacOS between 9 and X is a ground-up rewrite if you compare those two, Mac OS X was an evolution of the NeXTSTEP codebase from 1989 (34 years ago).
> I went to the Maya developer’s conference around maybe 2002 and the devs were complaining about it being hard to maintain.
I'm not surprised. I'm a bit fuzzy on the pre-history of Maya, but I believe it incorporated software acquired from Alias, Wavefront, and TDI. However, I think part of the performance and bugginess might be from launching on expensive IRIX-based systems and transitioning to commodity hardware an Linux in the early 2000s.
The reason the parent mentioned NeXTSTEP is while MacOS between 9 and X is a ground-up rewrite if you compare those two, Mac OS X was an evolution of the NeXTSTEP codebase from 1989 (34 years ago).
> I went to the Maya developer’s conference around maybe 2002 and the devs were complaining about it being hard to maintain.
I'm not surprised. I'm a bit fuzzy on the pre-history of Maya, but I believe it incorporated software acquired from Alias, Wavefront, and TDI. However, I think part of the performance and bugginess might be from launching on expensive IRIX-based systems and transitioning to commodity hardware an Linux in the early 2000s.
I think part of the reason apps like Photoshop and Word got bloated is that their audience got watered down and are fairly mainstream software.
I'm sure there's a lot of old niche software that feels modern and unbloated. Nuke[1] is 31 years old and Houdini[2] is 27. Maya[3] is 26 years old. I would say Maya feels bloated--but at larger places I've worked, people have avoided the newer viewports with more features because the "legacy" viewports are so fast.
It may be hard to make it feel "modern," but I love how optimized "old" code can be if they've been able to resist rewriting it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_(software)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini_(software)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Maya
I'm sure there's a lot of old niche software that feels modern and unbloated. Nuke[1] is 31 years old and Houdini[2] is 27. Maya[3] is 26 years old. I would say Maya feels bloated--but at larger places I've worked, people have avoided the newer viewports with more features because the "legacy" viewports are so fast.
It may be hard to make it feel "modern," but I love how optimized "old" code can be if they've been able to resist rewriting it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_(software)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini_(software)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Maya
So this is a rather niche industry concern but it's been wildly disruptive to anyone dealing with sheet music in practically any capacity. I run the Music Engraving Tips group on Facebook and I wrote a little essay given the situation, maybe some can get value from it.
Full disclosure, I'm the Senior Product Designer for Sibelius, so I'm uniquely embedded in this stuff this week.
--------------
RIP Finale
This is a very sad week for our industry, a titan has fallen. The only other parallel I can think of is when the Sibelius London office closed in 2012. But this feels so much more tangible given the short timescale of the shutoff. Finale will no longer activate within one year, effectively locking people out of their scores.
To all the thousands of users out there who's entire catalogs of scores have now been put in jeopardy, I greatly empathize. I felt similarly back in 2012 when Sibelius looked like it was going away. Back then, Finale was the only viable alternative, though I didn't jump ship at the time. Fortunately, today there's a wealth of options and competition in our industry is strong.
Since this is such a monumental event in the music notation space, the mods and I are going to relax our restrictions on notation software how-to posts (Rule 2) so folks can discuss how to deal with their files, via MusicXML or otherwise. Please keep the conversations civil, I know tensions are high. We will monitor things closely and won't tolerate any animosity toward one platform or another, nor gloating or other unprofessional behavior. (Rule 3)
Back when I was literally 5 years old, I did my first arrangement in Finale. It opened up a new world to me, the world of the written note. Music notation has been my passion forever as a result. No matter which platform you use, remember the joy that music can bring and how these tools enable it. They are essential, and to lose one means a great deal.
Full disclosure, I'm the Senior Product Designer for Sibelius, so I'm uniquely embedded in this stuff this week.
--------------
RIP Finale
This is a very sad week for our industry, a titan has fallen. The only other parallel I can think of is when the Sibelius London office closed in 2012. But this feels so much more tangible given the short timescale of the shutoff. Finale will no longer activate within one year, effectively locking people out of their scores.
To all the thousands of users out there who's entire catalogs of scores have now been put in jeopardy, I greatly empathize. I felt similarly back in 2012 when Sibelius looked like it was going away. Back then, Finale was the only viable alternative, though I didn't jump ship at the time. Fortunately, today there's a wealth of options and competition in our industry is strong.
Since this is such a monumental event in the music notation space, the mods and I are going to relax our restrictions on notation software how-to posts (Rule 2) so folks can discuss how to deal with their files, via MusicXML or otherwise. Please keep the conversations civil, I know tensions are high. We will monitor things closely and won't tolerate any animosity toward one platform or another, nor gloating or other unprofessional behavior. (Rule 3)
Back when I was literally 5 years old, I did my first arrangement in Finale. It opened up a new world to me, the world of the written note. Music notation has been my passion forever as a result. No matter which platform you use, remember the joy that music can bring and how these tools enable it. They are essential, and to lose one means a great deal.
I have a copy of Allegro on a XP laptop, it's a case of it still doing everything I need it to do.
I moved to macs around 2005, got a version of Allegro for it but basically every time I installed something new Allegro acted like it was a whole new machine and it was a pain to re-enable it, so I just stuck with the XP version.
I understand wanting to get paid but the Finale family was so onerous in copy protection that it deserves its fate.
I understand wanting to get paid but the Finale family was so onerous in copy protection that it deserves its fate.
Wow. I'm surprised this app has been in development for so long.
I used Finale in highschool in the mid to late 90s to write (admittedly terrible) music when I was in high school. Really amazing program at the time and the instrument voices were good for the time.
I'm sure I have an old piece somewhere floating around on a floppy from that time in a box.
Does anyone happen to know how far back the latest version supports their old file formats?
I used Finale in highschool in the mid to late 90s to write (admittedly terrible) music when I was in high school. Really amazing program at the time and the instrument voices were good for the time.
I'm sure I have an old piece somewhere floating around on a floppy from that time in a box.
Does anyone happen to know how far back the latest version supports their old file formats?
I may be the only person who loves LilyPond but I really do love it. The LaTeX of music notation.
LilyPond is great, but the writing process for a lot of music involves a lot of playback, so integration with a half-decent playback engine is really useful. On top of that, you can do almost everything in Dorico and Sibelius with keyboard shortcuts, so they are very power-user-friendly (which is what I like about LaTeX).
Plus, as professional software used by people along (mostly not very much) money with it, productivity is key. Lilypond loses badly here.
I can enter 200 or 300 bars in Dorico in the time I could do 20 in Lilypond - and that’s at the rate I could manage when I was using lilypond regularly.
I also think the output is nicer, which also matters here.
I can enter 200 or 300 bars in Dorico in the time I could do 20 in Lilypond - and that’s at the rate I could manage when I was using lilypond regularly.
I also think the output is nicer, which also matters here.
Lilypond is for music typesetting (they call it "engraving").
Finale, Sibelius, Dorico, MuseScore are primarily for composing (though they have each made their own strides on the engraving front too).
Finale, Sibelius, Dorico, MuseScore are primarily for composing (though they have each made their own strides on the engraving front too).
I do "professional" engraving as a side gig, mostly turning scratch people's make on lined paper into actual sheet music, and I exclusively use lilypond
Lilypond makes gorgeous music. However, getting things besides music to look good is painful at best and sometimes impossible. I spent hours trying to figure out how to get a good looking lead sheet setup (music, chord name, lyrics). Especially font sizes and spacing. Ugh. Good luck getting an annotation (such as "intro" or "chorus") anywhere less than about 2em from the top of the staff...
I think they've changed things in the five years since then, so I think I'd have to do it all over again.
I think they've changed things in the five years since then, so I think I'd have to do it all over again.
Meanwhile, I’m pretty happy with Musescore to make accordion sheet music for myself. Is Dorico worthwhile for amateurs?
If you've learnt how to use Musescore, and you have no external reason to learn Dorico or Sibelius, e.g. you need to collaborate with others already using them, then you're good. Editing is fast enough, people reading your music won't notice a difference once it's printed out.
The only thing I can think of is playback with VSTs and other fancy tools (e.g. Philharmonik, NotePerformer) - the fanciest ones are tied to Dorico/Sibelius/Finale. MuseScore now has its own such playback system, Muse Sounds, but each person will have their own preference.
The only thing I can think of is playback with VSTs and other fancy tools (e.g. Philharmonik, NotePerformer) - the fanciest ones are tied to Dorico/Sibelius/Finale. MuseScore now has its own such playback system, Muse Sounds, but each person will have their own preference.
Dorico is exceptional software, but it’s expensive and there’s a learning curve.
If you have the money to spend and like fiddling with pro software I’d recommend it, but if MuseScore meets your needs then I’d stick with it. It seems to be in good hands and should continue to improve over time.
If you have the money to spend and like fiddling with pro software I’d recommend it, but if MuseScore meets your needs then I’d stick with it. It seems to be in good hands and should continue to improve over time.
I used Finale for years before switching to Sibelius about 13 years ago. I found Sibelius much easier to use, but I'm surprised that there aren't enough unmovable legacy Finale users to warrant continual maintenance of the product.
I'm in that camp. I've been using Finale since version 1. I tried Sibelius around the time you changed and it didn't quite but right with my use cases. I have to imagine that there are many like me that have years of muscle memory with the features (not to mention years of scores in the file format) who use it for to avoid having to worry about me software when they'd rather be focused on their music.
Of course... that's a business focused on casually milking an annuity... Not something that's growing. I guess not with it for the people that bought the company a few years ago.
Finally... Wonder what's happening with those Garritan sound libraries I've invested in....
Of course... that's a business focused on casually milking an annuity... Not something that's growing. I guess not with it for the people that bought the company a few years ago.
Finally... Wonder what's happening with those Garritan sound libraries I've invested in....
Exactly, years of muscle memory and files. If I was involuntarily forced off of Sibelius at this point, I would be rather annoyed. I'm not even sure what I would do. Last time I tried it, Dorico did not support everything I needed to do, even if I wanted to use it.
I used Finale in the last year of high school (roughly), 1999. On PowerPC macs with MacOS 8 or 9. It was unbelievably bad. The UI was absolutely terrible - it had a huge photoshop/paint-like "drawing tools" palette, but what was in this palette changed depending on other things. Exotic things like resizing note heads or stems were easy. Basic things like a pickup beat you would never, ever figure out how to do correctly on your own.
The developers had also given up trying to get rendering to work correctly. They had a "rerender the whole UI from scratch" menu option for when the rendering inevitably messed up horribly.
It also crashed a lot.
It may honestly have been a factor in me deciding that I could do better in programming than in music, because I felt like even I could do better than that.
I have heard musician friends claim it got better in later years, but I don't quite trust it, since I know what musicians put up with in terms of awkward user interfaces.
So, good riddance.
The developers had also given up trying to get rendering to work correctly. They had a "rerender the whole UI from scratch" menu option for when the rendering inevitably messed up horribly.
It also crashed a lot.
It may honestly have been a factor in me deciding that I could do better in programming than in music, because I felt like even I could do better than that.
I have heard musician friends claim it got better in later years, but I don't quite trust it, since I know what musicians put up with in terms of awkward user interfaces.
So, good riddance.
As people are talking about Dorico, a little story about how it happened (and, very nearly, didn't).
So Sibelius began as a project by the Finn brothers, then in their early 20s in Cambridge, some time around 1990. Originally it was written for the Acorn Archimedes, a British desktop computer running on ARM RISC processors. (They were decent machines, but having a big platform for native software was THE thing that mattered for personal computing in the 90s, and being essentially UK-only, Archimedes as a platform was doomed - as with Clive Sinclair's C5 light EV, the right idea at the wrong time).
Sibelius grew and thrived for 15 years, porting to PC & Mac on the way, enjoying wide adoption in education especially outside the US, growing to maybe 50 or 100 people, and became Finale's main competitor. In the mid 2000's they were acquired by Avid, who saw the potential to tie in its notation platform with their recording packages for Hollywood and other media composers. The founders stepped back, received royal awards from the Queen, and have kept a fairly low profile since.
Things carried on OK for a few years, but then when the financial crisis hits, the suits and bean-counters running Avid got Ideas. And you know that's not going to end well.
So to understand the importance of what happens next, you need to realise that there are maybe as few as a hundred people in the world who understand both music engraving and C++ application development to an advanced level. Either skill on its own, no big deal. Both together? The Venn overlap on that is _tiny_.
And at that point in time, twenty or thirty of them were working for Sibelius, the same again or a few more at Coda MakeMusic working on Finale, and a handful of others at minor competitors and F/OSS contenders such as Rosegarden. This is 2009 ish - before the mobile/tablet revolution really gets going, and interactive Web apps aren't quite at the maturity level to do professional-quality music engraving with smooth, low-latency UI.
So the top-level Avid suits find out that Western senior engineer salaries are $70K or thereabouts, whereas you can hire a senior engineer in Ukraine for $12K, and send out a decree that ALL engineering functions will be offshored to their development partner in Kiev.
I'm not knocking the Ukrainians. Clever, well-educated, innovative and hard-working to a (wo)man. But... rapidly offshoring a codebase with 15 years of history, addressing what is a very highly specialised domain, almost a culture in its own right, which the vast majority of contract engineers would have zero understanding of?
So, yep. Avid has a profitable (I assume) product, a mature team consisting of a third of the people in the world with that skill set, most of whom are doing it for the love and none of whom are overpaid, and what do the bean-counters do?
Yep, you guessed it. Fire the lot. "For the stock price!"
Now the professional composer community isn't huge. But they're sharp as a pin and well-connected, and this news is, obviously, not taken well. Thankfully the team's PM, Daniel Spreadbury, has the presence of mind to phone a friend at Yamaha-Steinberg. And over the next few weeks they're able to hammer out a deal where almost the entire engineering team is re-hired.
The way I heard it told, he convinced them to give him and his team three years and sufficient budget to build a "new Sibelius". In the end, it took them five-and-a-half, but such is the way of software projects.
So anyway, kudos to Daniel Spreadbury and whoever at Yamaha-Steinberg had the foresight to invest in this. And the opposite to the suits at Avid, who seem to have been bought out by a PE firm last year. So I guess triple yachts all round for them.
So Sibelius began as a project by the Finn brothers, then in their early 20s in Cambridge, some time around 1990. Originally it was written for the Acorn Archimedes, a British desktop computer running on ARM RISC processors. (They were decent machines, but having a big platform for native software was THE thing that mattered for personal computing in the 90s, and being essentially UK-only, Archimedes as a platform was doomed - as with Clive Sinclair's C5 light EV, the right idea at the wrong time).
Sibelius grew and thrived for 15 years, porting to PC & Mac on the way, enjoying wide adoption in education especially outside the US, growing to maybe 50 or 100 people, and became Finale's main competitor. In the mid 2000's they were acquired by Avid, who saw the potential to tie in its notation platform with their recording packages for Hollywood and other media composers. The founders stepped back, received royal awards from the Queen, and have kept a fairly low profile since.
Things carried on OK for a few years, but then when the financial crisis hits, the suits and bean-counters running Avid got Ideas. And you know that's not going to end well.
So to understand the importance of what happens next, you need to realise that there are maybe as few as a hundred people in the world who understand both music engraving and C++ application development to an advanced level. Either skill on its own, no big deal. Both together? The Venn overlap on that is _tiny_.
And at that point in time, twenty or thirty of them were working for Sibelius, the same again or a few more at Coda MakeMusic working on Finale, and a handful of others at minor competitors and F/OSS contenders such as Rosegarden. This is 2009 ish - before the mobile/tablet revolution really gets going, and interactive Web apps aren't quite at the maturity level to do professional-quality music engraving with smooth, low-latency UI.
So the top-level Avid suits find out that Western senior engineer salaries are $70K or thereabouts, whereas you can hire a senior engineer in Ukraine for $12K, and send out a decree that ALL engineering functions will be offshored to their development partner in Kiev.
I'm not knocking the Ukrainians. Clever, well-educated, innovative and hard-working to a (wo)man. But... rapidly offshoring a codebase with 15 years of history, addressing what is a very highly specialised domain, almost a culture in its own right, which the vast majority of contract engineers would have zero understanding of?
So, yep. Avid has a profitable (I assume) product, a mature team consisting of a third of the people in the world with that skill set, most of whom are doing it for the love and none of whom are overpaid, and what do the bean-counters do?
Yep, you guessed it. Fire the lot. "For the stock price!"
Now the professional composer community isn't huge. But they're sharp as a pin and well-connected, and this news is, obviously, not taken well. Thankfully the team's PM, Daniel Spreadbury, has the presence of mind to phone a friend at Yamaha-Steinberg. And over the next few weeks they're able to hammer out a deal where almost the entire engineering team is re-hired.
The way I heard it told, he convinced them to give him and his team three years and sufficient budget to build a "new Sibelius". In the end, it took them five-and-a-half, but such is the way of software projects.
So anyway, kudos to Daniel Spreadbury and whoever at Yamaha-Steinberg had the foresight to invest in this. And the opposite to the suits at Avid, who seem to have been bought out by a PE firm last year. So I guess triple yachts all round for them.
Thanks for sharing, that's really interesting. So often big acquisitions are such gong shows (I work in that field in diligence actually), but it seems from the sidelines like the Yamaha-Steinberg deal is one of the exceptions. I've been very happy with everything I've ever bought from Yamaha in the music world. And they aren't gougers. (the Yamaha "intermediate" saxophones are pretty much universally seen as the best deal you can get quality-per-dollar on a serious horn).
This all has me thinking quite hard of getting Dorico!
This all has me thinking quite hard of getting Dorico!
Sorry to respond again, but this is germane to my work in diligence and is a really great warning story to over optimistic "rationalizers". I'm curious if you can share sources on this. thanks
Sure.. so the beginning of the story up to the Avid acquisition is publicly documented as Sibelius' history and so on.
The development and release of Dorico has also been written about in depth on Daniel Spreadbury's blog, "Making Notes". There used to be some on his Twitter as well.
The middle bit is alluded to here, for example: https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/avid-keeps-sibelius/
And there were long, if somewhat speculative threads on Gearspace (fka Gearslutz) and various composer forums at the time. A few bits I got word of mouth from friends who worked at Yamaha at the time.
The development and release of Dorico has also been written about in depth on Daniel Spreadbury's blog, "Making Notes". There used to be some on his Twitter as well.
The middle bit is alluded to here, for example: https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/avid-keeps-sibelius/
And there were long, if somewhat speculative threads on Gearspace (fka Gearslutz) and various composer forums at the time. A few bits I got word of mouth from friends who worked at Yamaha at the time.
Time for them to release the source code then.
Releasing source code (especially under a permissive license) would be extremely hard, even more so with software that old. There could be small 3rd party modules buried in the code base whose original developer is impossible to find, or could have passed years ago and they have no ways to contact anyone who owns the rights, let alone have everyone of them agree on open sourcing and under which license. There would be a fairly big chance of liability, and I couldn't blame them for not wanting to test that. Software should be open from the beginning.
They could just not release the code they don't have the rights to, and release the code they do have rights to
What would that achieve? Why would anyone want a pile of old code that can never build or run?
Code has more value than if it can be ran or not. Its 4 decades of problems and their solutions. For anyone who wants to do any work in the music notation space, it could be quite invaluable to go through the lessons learned, to see things from another perspective, especially one that went all the way to production and a long period of commercial viability.
That is theoretically possible, just seems very very unlikely. Finale is “millions” of lines of code, old legacy code that spanned dozens of OSes. Have you ever tried to read huge legacy codebases? They are hard to read, and I’m dramatically understating it. The time it would take to read and extract lessons learned from it could exceed the time available to do any work in the music notation space. Most of the lessons that are there to extract are lessons that no longer apply to anything. Not being able to build & run the code would reduce the ability to understand it by another multiple factor. It would be far more efficient to hunt down and interview the Finale devs, or spend time working on another product and learn from it.
All that is beside the point that Finale devs are under zero obligation to release their code, and generally speaking they have a decent list of reasons not to, plus some specific ones I speculate.
All that is beside the point that Finale devs are under zero obligation to release their code, and generally speaking they have a decent list of reasons not to, plus some specific ones I speculate.
Somebody would be able to replace the unreleased portions with new code.
It’s a nice thought, just extremely unlikely, no? Unlikely that someone has the time to deal with a huge legacy system, and unlikely they’ll be able to rewrite portions and get it working. There are very good reasons this hardly ever happens, releasing proprietary code, even when it’s all modern and working. The potential downsides are usually bigger than the upsides.
It has happened with OpenJDK, first downstream with the IcedTea distribution, and then gradually things were replaced upstream or opened by Oracle. I think today, only the browser plugin is missing, and nobody really wants that anymore.
It's rare that this happens in the open like this. I expect that it was a factor that OpenJDK was a free software development tool, so Sun already had transferrable licenses from their suppliers. For other types of software, building new software with it is not a consideration from the outset, and licensing agreements with third-party component suppliers will reflect that.
It's rare that this happens in the open like this. I expect that it was a factor that OpenJDK was a free software development tool, so Sun already had transferrable licenses from their suppliers. For other types of software, building new software with it is not a consideration from the outset, and licensing agreements with third-party component suppliers will reflect that.
I am always curious about how companies like this end. For fun I did some basic research on archive.org.
It appears that around 2015 the headquarters for make music moved from MN to CO. https://web.archive.org/web/20140703151047/http://www.finale...
This is around the same time that Greg (who wrote the blog post joined Make Music Inc), who also happens to live in Boulder. https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorydellera/details/experienc...
Previously Greg was president of Alfred.com (https://www.linkedin.com/company/alfred-music-publishing-co-...)
My guess is there was likely some move behind the scenes to boost revenue, and keep the business running initiated by a founder, or board member, which resulted in hiring Greg, relocating the headquarters from MN to CO, and probably also shifted the future of makemusic.
would be an interesting read :)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorydellera/details/experienc...
It appears that around 2015 the headquarters for make music moved from MN to CO. https://web.archive.org/web/20140703151047/http://www.finale...
This is around the same time that Greg (who wrote the blog post joined Make Music Inc), who also happens to live in Boulder. https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorydellera/details/experienc...
Previously Greg was president of Alfred.com (https://www.linkedin.com/company/alfred-music-publishing-co-...)
My guess is there was likely some move behind the scenes to boost revenue, and keep the business running initiated by a founder, or board member, which resulted in hiring Greg, relocating the headquarters from MN to CO, and probably also shifted the future of makemusic.
would be an interesting read :)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorydellera/details/experienc...
Quite, MakeMusic, Peaskware, and Alfred have all had a complex relationship.
To be clear, the company MakeMusic is not going out of business. They still are running their incredibly popular Make Music Cloud web-based app, used heavily in education (formerly called "Smart Music"). This was just an attempt to jettison a dinosaur in their portfolio. They haven't done any active development of Finale in many years.
To be clear, the company MakeMusic is not going out of business. They still are running their incredibly popular Make Music Cloud web-based app, used heavily in education (formerly called "Smart Music"). This was just an attempt to jettison a dinosaur in their portfolio. They haven't done any active development of Finale in many years.
My local music college uses Finale for their notation course, and I just spent $100US on it --- oh well :)
Always crazy to me there isn't a "blender for music" equivalent.
Seems like a fun project! I wonder if the problem is licensing.
Seems like a fun project! I wonder if the problem is licensing.
There is! MuseScore.
https://musescore.org/en
https://musescore.org/en
Yeah, Musescore doesn't quite fit though.
It doesn't really work like any other DAW.
It has a strong focus on composing sheet music, as opposed to recording and producing full tracks.
It doesn't really work like any other DAW.
It has a strong focus on composing sheet music, as opposed to recording and producing full tracks.
Well yeah, that's what Finale is and what this thread is about. If you're talking about standard DAWs then your initial comment was a non sequitur
I don't see how wanting a "blender for music" in response to this news is a non sequitur.
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I am wondering if they cleared this with their lawyers? At a minimum it looks like a variant of a binding resale price, which is not legal in the EU. Yes, Dorico is selling their own product, but it is based on the ownership of of finale. On the other hand it seems pretty obvious that a lot of value is being created for the customers.
There's no resale here? EU resale law is mostly around the fact that makers can't dictate to shops or other resellers what their sale price should be.
Vendors - whether original makers or resellers - are free to offer differential pricing to customers, as long as they don't break equality laws.
Vendors - whether original makers or resellers - are free to offer differential pricing to customers, as long as they don't break equality laws.
I am absolutely not saying that it is clear something is illegal here, but there kind of is a resale, the product being sold is an upgrade from finale to dorico, which can only be sold if finale confirms the existance of a finale license. And the parties have obviously agree what the price must be.
Why must they have agreed on price?
Only Steinberg/Dorico are making a sale, I don't see any reason to think Finale are forcing their hand on price.
More likely it's Finale says "offer a good price to our users, and in return we'll promote it to our user-base", and Steinberg decide what that price will be.
Confirmation that the license exists has to be handled a bit carefully for GDPR reasons, but that's not insurmountable. Competitor cross-grades are pretty common practice in those (fewer and fewer each year) sectors which still sell perpetual software licenses.
Only Steinberg/Dorico are making a sale, I don't see any reason to think Finale are forcing their hand on price.
More likely it's Finale says "offer a good price to our users, and in return we'll promote it to our user-base", and Steinberg decide what that price will be.
Confirmation that the license exists has to be handled a bit carefully for GDPR reasons, but that's not insurmountable. Competitor cross-grades are pretty common practice in those (fewer and fewer each year) sectors which still sell perpetual software licenses.
Well, finale is advertising the price as an offer to their customers, it is hard to see how they could do that without an agreement. How else could they make the offer? Price discussions between competitors is an absolute no-go under EU law.
What makes you think Steinberg didn’t dictate the price? How are they competitors when Finale is dead? You’re referring to price fixing laws between ongoing competition, which is illegal in this US too. This is not that by any stretch of the imagination.
There is an agreement that the price can be offered, that is plenty. As long as the product is in the market there is competition, even if it is not actively being sold, and nothing prevents the seller of finale from changing their mind, as an agreement with a competitior to stop selling their product would most definitely be illegal.
Okay, there might be antitrust issues to possibly consider. For one company pushing/selling/trasferring it’s customers to another company, I think in the US it mostly depends on whether the result could be some kind of monopoly, so an important question might be whether the number of Dorico users and Finale users combined dominate the market for score-writing software, and how big that market is. https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you
As @Earw0rm mentioned, this isn’t a “resale” in the sense that that word is defined in the law. Buying Dorico at a discount is not a “resale” of Finale, regardless of the agreement; they’re different products sold by different companies. There is also no evidence, no reason to believe that Finale had any say in the sale price of Dorico. But, yes, the companies did agree to nudge customers from Finale towards Dorico.
The nudge is not mandatory, and the transition is opt-in and not automatic, so customers have the choice, and that lessens the probability that this crosses any laws. Dorico seems to have healthy competition from Sibelius, MuseScore and others, and the market has been called “saturated”, so no clear indication the result would be a monopoly. We also don’t know if Finale solicited agreements from other competitors who declined to participate, and if so that also reduces the possibility of this appearing shady in any way.
This kind of thing happens all the time when products and companies merge or die. It’s legal and acceptable for small companies to merge, and becomes illegal when merger gives the target company too much power, where ‘too much’ is determined by the court. In this case, since these are relatively niche (small) products, and it’s not a corporate merger but simply a targeted advertising & discount sale to a captive audience, and since the result probably isn’t a monopoly for Steinberg, it’s unlikely that any court would care about this agreement. Small companies are allowed to make agreements and do all kinds of things that large companies might get in trouble for.
As @Earw0rm mentioned, this isn’t a “resale” in the sense that that word is defined in the law. Buying Dorico at a discount is not a “resale” of Finale, regardless of the agreement; they’re different products sold by different companies. There is also no evidence, no reason to believe that Finale had any say in the sale price of Dorico. But, yes, the companies did agree to nudge customers from Finale towards Dorico.
The nudge is not mandatory, and the transition is opt-in and not automatic, so customers have the choice, and that lessens the probability that this crosses any laws. Dorico seems to have healthy competition from Sibelius, MuseScore and others, and the market has been called “saturated”, so no clear indication the result would be a monopoly. We also don’t know if Finale solicited agreements from other competitors who declined to participate, and if so that also reduces the possibility of this appearing shady in any way.
This kind of thing happens all the time when products and companies merge or die. It’s legal and acceptable for small companies to merge, and becomes illegal when merger gives the target company too much power, where ‘too much’ is determined by the court. In this case, since these are relatively niche (small) products, and it’s not a corporate merger but simply a targeted advertising & discount sale to a captive audience, and since the result probably isn’t a monopoly for Steinberg, it’s unlikely that any court would care about this agreement. Small companies are allowed to make agreements and do all kinds of things that large companies might get in trouble for.
My 84-year old father, a retired music professor, has created many fantastic arrangements and transcriptions of orchestra music for wind band. He still uses Sibelius 6, but the publisher that has published some of his work has done complete re-dos using Finale. They have strongly encouraged him to used Finale, calling it the "industry standard." But at his age, the learning curve is so steep he just gets frustrated and goes back to Sibelius.
I wonder what the new "industry standard" will be moving forward. I understand that Dorico was created by the people who originally made Sibelius. I wonder if it's worth trying to get him to experiment with it.
I wonder what the new "industry standard" will be moving forward. I understand that Dorico was created by the people who originally made Sibelius. I wonder if it's worth trying to get him to experiment with it.
The "industry standard" has functionally been split between Finale and Sibelius for over 20 years. It still holds, but Dorico is attempting a coup for that title with this move.
Note to anyone hoping to export MusicXML from Finale into Musescore: Musescore 4's MusicXML import (and export) is horrendous. It has even regressed compared to MuseScore 3 which was already pretty bad soon as you started getting ambitious.
The format is just so underpowered for what music notation requires, unfortunately. Michael Good pulled off a miracle writing the standard, but it doesn't do enough and now we have to deal with those shortcomings by fixing thousands of files that were perfectly fine.
You're uniquely positioned to comment on this, of course. Are there other music notation formats that do a better job (MEI, MNX, etc.) ?
I've been working with MusicXML as a consumer (and occasional contributor) in my own apps for a few years now, and my pet theory is that the _problem domain_ is so complex that any format will fall short of the universe of use cases - or become so cumbersome that its application to a codebase will forever remain buggy / incomplete.
I've been working with MusicXML as a consumer (and occasional contributor) in my own apps for a few years now, and my pet theory is that the _problem domain_ is so complex that any format will fall short of the universe of use cases - or become so cumbersome that its application to a codebase will forever remain buggy / incomplete.
MNX is probably good but they are taking an awful long time to get the job done. They ran into the same roadblocks as any format, there's too many competing needs and too many opinions. MIDI 2.0 has also had some really interesting talk about embedding notation data inside the wrapper to make it an "all-encompassing" music format.
I'm not as familiar with MEI but I don't believe it's any better for preserving music engraving data compared to the musical data itself.
I'm not as familiar with MEI but I don't believe it's any better for preserving music engraving data compared to the musical data itself.
Finale was my first notation program, and while I switched to Sibelius out of necessity during college, I never really liked it. Will definitely check out Dorico, heard good things!
Just open source it. You could spin this as a positive instead.
I assume that if Finale were open-sourced, the code would be so ugly that nobody who worked on it would ever be employable again. Finale also has some tight integration with its Midi player and audio output that may have some weird patented shit or Apple/MS proprietary jank.
Indeed, I have heard that at least early versions of Finale had painfully unmaintainable code that severely slowed its development.
This supposedly was/is in part because Finale's original author Phil Farrand [1] was a musician turned self-taught programmer and Finale was only his second software product.
[1] https://philfarrand.com/biography/
This supposedly was/is in part because Finale's original author Phil Farrand [1] was a musician turned self-taught programmer and Finale was only his second software product.
[1] https://philfarrand.com/biography/
For me there are so many basic features that are missing in the competitors.
I tried Dorico but it can't even play trills properly.
I tried Dorico but it can't even play trills properly.
If you're notating classical music and want to be able to listen to half decent playback, I would suggest buying NotePerformer and working with MuseScore before buying one of the "fancy" notation packages. Dorico's default playback is worse than Finale's Aria player.
MuseScore doesn't work with NotePerformer (yet?).
One of the main advantages I find in Dorico is it seamless use of NotePerformer. I like MuseScore 4.4 that came out a few days ago, but it's lack of NotePerformer support makes it extremely difficult to fiddle with to sound balanced. Even if the UI is easier, the playback is most important to me.
Making playback sound pleasant, even with their excellent new integration with sound libraries like Spitfire's, is not easy without tweaking notation.
I hope that the MuseScore team fixes this soon. They have been improving very fast.
One of the main advantages I find in Dorico is it seamless use of NotePerformer. I like MuseScore 4.4 that came out a few days ago, but it's lack of NotePerformer support makes it extremely difficult to fiddle with to sound balanced. Even if the UI is easier, the playback is most important to me.
Making playback sound pleasant, even with their excellent new integration with sound libraries like Spitfire's, is not easy without tweaking notation.
I hope that the MuseScore team fixes this soon. They have been improving very fast.
Agreed that NotePerformer is night and day difference, highly recommended. I don’t think it works with MuseScore though
I have fond memories playing with Finale 3 on Win3.11. After that it seemed everyone I knew musically was on Sibelius. What I found most remarkable about that old release is that it came in a huge cardboard box with printed manuals describing how to use every function.
Oh no! I'll need to get to work converting all those old Finale files to MusicXML or something. Hopefully they will release a tool for viewing and converting Finale files beyond the 1 year retirement.
Wow, memory lane! Used it (only amateurishly) about 30 years ago...
Me too (though it was 20 years ago). I think Sibelius and a few others were alternatives installed on the machines but I didn't use any of them in depth.
Dorico is great. A bit of a learning curve but I don't miss Sibelius for an instant.
It seems now is as good a time as any for people to try MuseScore [1], the FOSS alternative to Finale and Dorico.
[1] https://musescore.org/
[1] https://musescore.org/
Good thing I went with MuseScore
rosegarden ftw
Well that seems like a dick move.
> MakeMusic has partnered with Steinberg to offer an exclusive discount on Dorico Pro.
So can we assume MakeMusic is getting a kickback for every sale of Dorico? If that's the case, of course they're going to stop you from reinstalling Finale.