The End of FINALE

[OCTO]

(or in the case of MuseScore, Russian money)

Interesting.
Any source?

[jrethorst]

MuseScore is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for digital sheet music.

Are we seeing more Finale users migrate to Musescore than to Dorico? Does Musescore have much more functionality than Dorico SE? More than Dorico Elements? ($99 shouldn't slow down a serious user of a notation program, and I gather the latest version of Elements has much of what Pro offers, less more esoteric needs). Has anyone developed numbers of users of the various programs (for SE and Musescore, all there would be is downloads, which is not much help). Why did Finale, announcing its sunset, go so far as to recommend Dorico rather than Musescore? These are interesting questions.

[benwiggy]

Are we seeing more Finale users migrate to Musescore than to Dorico?

I don't think we (the public) are likely to get the data on that. How many active users of Finale were there? The Dorico "move to Finale" videos, linked in the sunset announcements, have only received c. 23K views. What percentage of Finale users would feel intrigued enough to click on the link....?

There has certainly been a massive influx of users on the Dorico forum; what percentage of users go on internet forums to answer their questions....?

Personally, I'd 'reckon' Finale's userbase to be around 100,000 — 150,000. I'd be very surprised if it was over 150,000 -- though perhaps school licences may skew things. And how many of those users just have an old copy of Finale 2012 that they occasionally use...

Does Musescore have much more functionality than Dorico SE? More than Dorico Elements? ($99 shouldn't slow down a serious user of a notation program, and I gather the latest version of Elements has much of what Pro offers, less more esoteric needs).

I suspect the Venn diagram of features will show unique features on both sides. There's things you can't do, or can't do easily in MuseScore that you can in Dorico Elements, and vice versa.

Why did Finale, announcing its sunset, go so far as to recommend Dorico rather than Musescore? These are interesting questions.

Who can say? I don't think it's controversial to suggest that for high-end engraving, MuseScore is not quite at Dorico's level currently. Perhaps they felt that a commercial successor, and the customer-supplier relationship, was important.

[Fred G. Unn]

Why did Finale, announcing its sunset, go so far as to recommend Dorico rather than Musescore?

MakeMusic didn't go out of business, they just discontinued Finale. MM's endorsement and steering of their user base to another product certainly was valuable and I'm sure their accountants could estimate exactly what that value was. Obviously I have no idea what their agreement with Steinberg is, but I would think MM didn't just give away that endorsement for free. Perhaps Steinberg presented a better offer than Avid, MuseGroup, or others both in terms of monetary value and customer satisfaction. After all, MM still wants to keep any users that were using both Finale and SmartMusic, so they don't want their SmartMusic customers looking elsewhere if they are unhappy with the transition experience either. In any case, I would assume it's likely that financial considerations factored into the Dorico endorsement.