Avid lays off Sibelius Senior Designer

[mducharme]

Justin Tokke, who has been the Senior Designer of Sibelius at Avid for the past few years, posted today on Facebook that he has been laid off, that his "position was eliminated".

Although I moved to Dorico years ago, I had started to feel like the Sibelius ship had been righted by Justin, who was guiding things and was heavily involved in the community. I'm a little concerned about what this means for the future, as it would be bad for everyone to lose another major notation program.

[Fred G. Unn]

Here’s the link to his post:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/ezJPby ... tid=wwXIfr

After a slow period of development, he did get Sibelius moving again, which I think was positive for the notation community no matter what software you use. I’m curious if that direction will continue or if they’ll scale things back.

Finale goes kaput, Dorico wins the battle for the Finale refugees (which must be a hefty influx of cash), and both Dorico and Sib have to contend with MuseScore, so his successor will be inheriting an interesting situation in a fairly niche market. We’ll probably never know, but I’m curious if the failure to capture the ex-Finale users was a factor in Avid’s decision. In any case, 2024 was certainly a wild year with lots of shake-ups in the notation world!

[Fred G. Unn]

It's probably worth remembering Avid was bought by the private equity firm STG in 2023 too. It's entirely possible that they have decided that the market can't support two paid notation programs, and Sib isn't worth the development cost. Avid's homepage is currently all about Pro Tools, Wolftech, Avid Media Composer, AI, etc. It would be huge if this is the first step towards ceasing development of Sib.

[benwiggy]

That's tragic. Interesting to know if there are any more such 'eliminations'. We can only speculate about internals, but I would presume that to save money, they've given overall responsibility to someone else (who is likely in charge of something else as well), meaning that Sibelius will be a second fiddle, at best.

Finale goes kaput, Dorico wins the battle for the Finale refugees (which must be a hefty influx of cash)

It will have been something, though we don't know how the crossgrade fee was split. And the team have had to work frantically to support the influx of users. The real benefit will be if those users stay on the upgrade train to Dorico 6 and beyond. (Given that so many Finale users were still running ancient versions...)

I agree that the market is consolidating. Most fields of endeavour have three software products: the Commercial Standard; the Market Disruptor, and the Free/open source choice. Sibelius was at one time the Disruptor to Finale's industry standard, but Sib became the industry standard.

Sibelius, as the "best selling" notation app (so they claim) must be pulling in reasonable income. I guess the question is whether it meets the Equity firm's targets.

[hautbois baryton]

Sibelius, as the "best selling" notation app (so they claim) must be pulling in reasonable income. I guess the question is whether it meets the Equity firm's targets.

Yes, this is key. I've seen way too many businesses that closed because their private equity owners had a profit, but not enough profit for them. Equity is the death of so many businesses.

[NeeraWM]

In the end it is all about profit which, while making practical sense, still strikes a sad chord.
Most app that switched to the subscription model did so to remain profitable, so one could assume that both Finale and Dorico were/are not entirely profitable per se?

It sounds like the story of cultural activities in Europe where managers come in and expect art, culture and education to be profitable. They just cannot be, nor they should, as their goal is different.