> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 :)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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.
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.
----------------------------------------------------
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
Edit: Apparently, he already said that it's lighting a fire under him to get it done: https://nitter.poast.org/Tantacrul/status/182807170687273381...
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.
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 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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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
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 understand wanting to get paid but the Finale family was so onerous in copy protection that it deserves its fate.