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Steve: You can crossgrade to Sibelius very cheaply (for less than 200$)...

But as I said, I'm a fan of custom made scores in Finale! In fact I have my own templates for page sizes and % and libraries (for EMF purposes).

Finale (a product of MakeMusic, Inc.) is also in danger ...

http://www.makemusic.com/Pressroom/Default.aspx?pid=555

MakeMusic Confirms Receipt of Proposal from LaunchEquity Partners, LLC

Minneapolis, MN – July 16, 2012 – MakeMusic, Inc. (NASDAQ: MMUS) confirms that it received, on July 15, 2012, a proposal from LaunchEquity Partners, LLC (“LaunchEquity”) to acquire the operating assets of MakeMusic, excluding cash, and assume the related liabilities of MakeMusic, free and clear of all liens and encumbrances, for $13.5 million. LaunchEquity’s proposal contemplates that MakeMusic would adopt a plan of liquidation, which would include a distribution of MakeMusic’s then available cash to existing shareholders. LaunchEquity and certain of its affiliates currently collectively own approximately 27.7% of MakeMusic’s outstanding common stock, according to the latest filings by LaunchEquity and its affiliates with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Consistent with its fiduciary duties, MakeMusic’s Board of Directors has appointed a Special Committee of independent, disinterested directors to review and consider the proposal, in consultation with financial and legal advisors, and determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interests of MakeMusic and its shareholders. The Board has authorized the Special Committee to consider the full range of available strategic alternatives including, but not limited to, continuing as an independent, public company with MakeMusic’s current growth plans.

So what does this mean exactly?

I'm a relatively avid user of Sibelius 6, but I've never heard about this issue before.
Does the firing of this Daniel person mean that the company will be closing altogether. What problems will this cause exactly? No more new sibelius updates in the future? No Sibelius 8?

Nobody really knows yet.

The real problem is that Daniel Spreadbury was part of the UK office that was closed, and he was the senior product manager for over a decade. He's been the brains and the public face behind Sibelius for a long time.

And aside from his official role, he also runs www.sibeliusblog.com - a great source of tutorials and insider tips and tricks. Many users, myself included, have come to trust Spreadbury and his vision for the software.

Now, who knows what will happen. Avid won't have trouble finding top developer talent outside the UK, but they'll never find a development team with the kind of dedication and passion for music that the UK Sibelius guys had.

It looks like they're getting rid of the development team which has developed Sibelius for all of these years, and planning to outsource the coding to people who have no idea of all the ins and outs of how this huge program is coded.

Basically the're erasing their institutional memory.

Actually you can customize Sibelius too (from the Layout option), but yes, if you refer to the default settings Sibelius is more "normal". However I don't have the latest version of Finale, and not even the latest version of Sibelius, as I prefer 6 to 7, at least on my relatively small screen (I use a laptop).

Like Kreisler said, nobody knows.

But I "know" Daniel.

I went and bought Sib 7 as a crossgrade from Finale (as I suggested to Steve) and I had various issues. Daniel took it to his heart to help out: He requested that I sent him the files I had trouble, confirmed my findings, offered a great solution (I can't mention this in public, but I'll just say that sibelius can 'backsave' to previous versions) and after a few weeks came up with a new update for Sib 7 which resolved the matter.

All for free and with great expense of his time!

I will say that this is one of the few times that customer services surpasses my expectations (the other being Andrew K. from LASS, but that's another matter, and Niclas from Pianoteq, who is an awesome guy!)!

Makemusic and Finale customer services is awful as it stands, and it's not like they have more users than Sibelius!

So I think that Daniel, apart from being the head of the team, and a great guy, he's also the body, the spirit and the soul of Sibelius right now and for a long time now! Take that away and you're stuck with a body-less, soul-less, spirit-less, head-less corpse called Sibelius!

_________________________

Just check the pro-tools case: Once a brilliant program, now everyone loves to hate the lack of development. In fact check Logic as well: Once a brilliant program, now there's no development, even if it's now a part of Apple itself!

One of the few software that have survived, thus far, the transition to a bigger company is Steinberg (Cubase) which was sold a few years ago to Yamaha!

Yes, that's not fully what I mean (if you're refering to what I said about layouts, etc).

Sibelius offers EVERYTHING ready. Wavy lines, cluster lines, little hands, percussion signs, buttons, various length dashed lines, various thickness lines, etc... All these things I create alone in Finale, which gives me ultimate control. It's harder, but my scores don't look like Sibelius (as is actually evident from another thread), and it's not only the font that makes a difference.

I think the summary that ends that proposal letter is pretty interesting.

"As we stated above, we believe that MMUS requires significant intervention now for the following reasons:

· significant leadership changes - MMUS has had four CEOs in the last four years and now has to recruit a fifth CEO. Not only is this expensive and time consuming, it is very disruptive to the organization and to the company’s relationship and standing with industry partners.

· significant development costs ahead - we believe that the source code base of Finale and the other notation products is near end of life and significant financial resources are necessary to update and refresh the notation product line. A review of recent quarterly financial reports makes clear that the company’s expenses are rising while its balance sheet is contracting. This suggests a period of heavy investment ahead.

· significant revenue decrease in 2012 and beyond appears likely for the following reasons -

--- we believe that the current Finale product release will be a partial upgrade versus the typical annual refresh and re-release cycle, which would generate higher revenues.

--- SmartMusic subscription growth has stalled while spending on its development and marketing continue to rise. We believe that shareholders have much higher expectations for SmartMusic subscriber levels and are disappointed with this stagnation.

--- the largest print music publisher, Hal Leonard Corporation (“HLC”), announced in late 2011 its entry into the digital music publishing, education and performance evaluation software market with its Essential Elements Interactive platform. We understand that HLC is using a more modern software platform. We believe this is a direct competitive threat to MMUS’s SmartMusic product suite and it will come from the largest industry participant that is also a significant contributor of content for SmartMusic. If MMUS cannot access quality content from HLC, SmartMusic’s allure in the marketplace is likely to be seriously damaged and the company may face increased repertoire development costs from other sources."

I had no idea their executive turnover had been so dramatic - not a good sign. I'm also surprised at the offer price - I thought they were a larger company. I did get an email from them not long ago saying they weren't doing the usual revision this year. What an odd coincidence that both of the major notation programs are finding themselves in turmoil simultaneously.

I'd say that this is scary, at least for me... :-/

It would seem the software notation market has more than a few issues. One that doesn't get mentioned too often is that most users do not upgrade annually. I'm using Finale 2009 and until I feel the improvements are significant enough to warrant upgrading I won't. It feels like the software is fairly mature, but perhaps that's just a sign that a major overhaul is necessary.

If Finale were to address the issue of its defaults that would be sufficient to get me to upgrade. The labor saving potential would be significant. Instead they add nice sounds, the Garritan library is nice and a big improvement over the previous sound library, and that's why I bought 2009. It does seem to me that Finale is disengaged from their users and doesn't have a clue what we value.

Nikolas, I've thought about the crossgrade to Sibelius. The cost is just one of the issues. Finale is the Devil I know. While Sibelius isn't dead yet the current signs are not positive.

It's not unheard-of for a company to buy up a competitor simply to get rid of it. And if they can't get in the front door, they will come in the back door--- actually, this is just another way of saying the same thing, isn't it.

I wonder if it can be determined in whose interest it would be, to set fire to both Sibelius and Finale? It can be just a simple matter of envy.

One wonders if this means a door is open for others. Notion has always looked promising, especially given the fact it beat Sibelius and Finale to the iPad market:

http://www.notionmusic.com/

Or maybe MuseScore will gain ground amongst professional engravers:

http://musescore.org/

And then there's Lilypond. It already makes beautiful scores, and if someone can come up with a solid front-end, it might really catch on. There's a fair amount of interesting and work being done in this area also:

http://www.denemo.org/About

In the meanwhile, I'm happy with Sibelius and will remain a loyal user for the foreseeable future.

There's also Noteflight:

http://www.noteflight.com/

I loved their online editor when I tried it a few months ago and seriously considered switching, but I ended up sticking with Sibelius.

There are indeed many issues. Apart from not upgrading every year, free programs on the market etc. a major problem is also piracy. (Or has it already been mentioned?)

For anyone wanting to mull over and maybe do further research on the the MakeMusic (Finale) takeover bid and who the players are, here are links to the documentation filed with the SEC. Of course, this is just the most visible piece of the puzzle - who knows exactly what is going on, that the company would be going through CEOs so fast? It seems something must be very wrong for that to happen. At the very least, it looks the board of directors doesn't know how to do its job.

For me Finale has something wrong for plenty of years... THe yearly upgrades are pretty much worthless, like Steve says. If I hadn't switched to a win7 machine, I would have stayed with Finale 2009 myself!

So the whole movement of the company, is nothing like Sibelius and doesn't work like I would expect any serious company to...

I shouldn't be defending Finale, since it has caused me all sorts of frustration over the years, but I have so say that many programs and pieces of hardware run into problems as operating systems and technology evolve. When I got a new machine with 64-bit Win7, for example, I had to get a new monitor AND a new DSL modem, even though my old ones were working quite nicely with my previous computer. And several older programs were just left in the dust. Finale 2010 was one program that didn't cause any problems - even the unauthorization and reauthorization process to transfer it from the old computer worked just fine (the new machine has 8 GB of RAM).

But it still has a bunch of sucky aspects along with the good stuff. Just trying to use the documentation makes me crazy almost every time - it is like there is some kind of counter-intuitive streak of perversity running through it that's a mile wide. Not to mention a lot of flat-out errors. I am guessing, now that I know the company isn't really all that big, that they never really invested their resources in a top-notch documentation team that a program that complex needs.

Last I checked, Noteflight didn't have much in terms of layout - no graphics import/export, font selection, staff sizes, etc...

It's a neat tool for education, but just isn't up to the task of serious engraving.

Just launched: http://www.sibeliususers.org