The End of Finale

https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/end-of-finale-new-journey-dorico-letter-from-president/

by sbuttgereit • 2 years ago

156 180 2 years ago

finalemusic.com

genter• 2 years ago

It will not be possible to authorize Finale on any new devices, or reauthorize Finale

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.

dahart41• 2 years ago

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.

wvenable13• 2 years ago

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.

junon5• 2 years ago

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.

wwweston• 2 years ago

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.

lozenge• 2 years ago

The customers paid for a lifetime license, why is a year reasonable to revoke this with no compensation?

InsideOutSanta2• 2 years ago

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."

jawilson2• 2 years ago

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.

resonious• 2 years ago

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.

miclill• 2 years ago

This is just a guess, but maybe the struck a deal with Steinberg that does not allow them to do this?

pmarreck• 2 years ago

If they don't, the darknet (read as: "unpaid chaotic-good data preservation enthusiasts") will.

prvc4• 2 years ago

They should, at minimum, release a freeware file conversion tool.

dahart41• 2 years ago

It seems like the FAQ addresses this, no? Customers can use MusicXML, which is an open format. https://www.musicxml.com/

ta21122• 2 years ago

Yes! There must be millions of Finale files out there that will otherwise become unreadable.

Kye• 2 years ago

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.

sbuttgereit2• 2 years ago

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.

stuckkeys• 2 years ago

Ez to bypass that. =p

TheCleric• 2 years ago

Just open source it. You could spin this as a positive instead.

pclmulqdq5• 2 years ago

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.

hyperrail• 2 years ago

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/

tjr2• 2 years ago

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.

sbuttgereit2• 2 years ago

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....

tjr2• 2 years ago

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.

umvi• 2 years ago

Good thing I went with MuseScore

empressplay• 2 years ago

My local music college uses Finale for their notation course, and I just spent $100US on it --- oh well :)

bcatanzaro• 2 years ago

I may be the only person who loves LilyPond but I really do love it. The LaTeX of music notation.

pclmulqdq5• 2 years ago

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).

TylerE• 2 years ago

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.

PaulDavisThe1st• 2 years ago

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).

prewett• 2 years ago

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.

paradox4602• 2 years ago

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

cpr• 2 years ago

Wow, memory lane! Used it (only amateurishly) about 30 years ago...

jamesfinlayson• 2 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.

jcranmer2• 2 years ago

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...

pclmulqdq5• 2 years ago

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.

computerdork2• 2 years ago

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.

pclmulqdq5• 2 years ago

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.

bjoli• 2 years ago

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 :)

dahart41• 2 years ago

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.

Clamchop• 2 years ago

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.

pfranz2• 2 years ago

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

danbmil99• 2 years ago

rosegarden ftw

minebreaker• 2 years ago

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.

pclmulqdq5• 2 years ago

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.

ssttoo• 2 years ago

Agreed that NotePerformer is night and day difference, highly recommended. I don’t think it works with MuseScore though

aeortiz• 2 years ago

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.

tomphoolery• 2 years ago

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!

eschaton• 2 years ago

Time for them to release the source code then.

squarefoot• 2 years ago

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.

its-summertime2• 2 years ago

They could just not release the code they don't have the rights to, and release the code they do have rights to

ralphc• 2 years ago

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.

lukeh• 2 years ago

Dorico is great. A bit of a learning curve but I don't miss Sibelius for an instant.

geuis• 2 years ago

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?

macmac4• 2 years ago

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.

Earw0rm4• 2 years ago

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.

macmac4• 2 years ago

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.

thombles• 2 years ago

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.

worstspotgain• 2 years ago

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.

philjohn2• 2 years ago

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.

swarnie• 2 years ago

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.

philjohn2• 2 years ago

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!

wildrhythms• 2 years ago

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.

Earw0rm4• 2 years ago

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.

iainctduncan2• 2 years ago

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!

iainctduncan2• 2 years ago

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

Earw0rm4• 2 years ago

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.

skybrian• 2 years ago

Meanwhile, I’m pretty happy with Musescore to make accordion sheet music for myself. Is Dorico worthwhile for amateurs?

breckinloggins• 2 years ago

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.

amiga386• 2 years ago

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.

honkycat2• 2 years ago

Always crazy to me there isn't a "blender for music" equivalent.

Seems like a fun project! I wonder if the problem is licensing.

greenpizza13• 2 years ago

There is! MuseScore.

https://musescore.org/en

honkycat2• 2 years ago

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.

ta21122• 2 years ago

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.

vintermann• 2 years ago

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.

bcx• 2 years ago

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...

Tokkemon6• 2 years ago

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.

ksr2• 2 years ago

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.

Tokkemon6• 2 years ago

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.

ksr2• 2 years ago

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.

chrisldgk• 2 years ago

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/

paradox4602• 2 years ago

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.

chriscjcj• 2 years ago

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.

Tokkemon6• 2 years ago

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.

Tokkemon6• 2 years ago

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.

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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.

The End of Finale

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