Bearing in mind that Dorico doesn’t operate a subscription pricing model, somebody is always going to get caught out by buying into Dorico 29 days before the next paid release. There’s no particularly easy way round that. On the other hand, compared to Sibelius subscriptions (even the educational ones), Dorico’s upgrade pricing is cheap once you’re on the yearly-ish cycle. Compared to FInale, there’s not much in it, except that Finale’s barely developing and Dorico’s ever-growing.
There’s also no-one forcing anyone to upgrade to the latest version of Dorico on the day that it lands, assuming the new functionality isn’t relevant to the user. In my case, there’s not much in the new features that actually adds to any of the work that I’ve done in Dorico over the past couple of years, though I’m more likely to say yes to particular sorts of projects I’d previously have been apprehensive about taking on.
On the other hand, one of the improvements to lyrics alone has saved me two hours in the last 24 (specifically the ability to shunt lyrics up and down - I’ve been using hidden muted notes off the bottom of the stave to influence this), and those two hours are worth more to me than half of the entire year’s upgrade cost. Why would I use Dorico for this project, you ask? Well, a) because the client specifically wanted someone who would do the work in Dorico, and b) because Dorico generally does a better job of this kind of project than the competition.
Totally agree. Dorico is a professional program, built by professionals. Is $100 a lot of money? Sure it is. I’ve got kids and a mortgage. And no one forced me to buy it, but I did, because (like Leo) it’s completely transformed my daily workflow.
Reaper is an excellent program which I use every day, but this is kind of comparing apples to oranges.
The brains behind Reaper is Justin Frankel, a brilliant guy who made a small fortune after he sold winamp to AOL back in the early 2000s. Not being the kind of guy to rest on his laurels, he then started developing an audio / midi application (after getting frustrated with Logic), which was launched in 2006. The development team is still very small, but the user base is huge, so in terms of pricing they can afford to have a very unusual business model, including the absence of copyright protection. Meaning the program is fully functional, even if you didn’t pay for the license.
Yamaha / Steinberg is a more traditional for profit corporation, with a decent sized development team for Dorico, all based in London, with support from Steinberg people in Hamburg. When they took over the former Sibelius group back in 2012 (2013?), they gave Daniel pretty much free reign to build a program from the ground, waiting patiently for years to hash out the fundamentals. That is a big leap of faith, which was richly rewarded.
So yeah, Steinberg have to recoup their invesment. They are not Santa Claus, lol.
That said, personally I find the pricing model very reasonable, when I compare it to the quality of software and the quality of the engraving you get. I’m not sure whether you ever used the built in notation feature of Reaper. It’s really cool, and kudos to the developers for including it, but it’s not even close to the quality fo the engraving you get from Dorico (or Sibelius or Finale, for that matter).
To be sure, it was Steinberg who bankrolled the Dorico team for several years, before anyone every paid a single penny for a license fee.
And for the early adopters, I don’t think they got a bad deal. The value of getting onboard early, and learning the software immediately after it was released, is priceless. I mean, if you can save a few hours of time getting scores and parts ready in no time because Dorico is so efficient, you already earned back your upgrade price.
It’s like everything in life — nobody forces you to buy anything. It’s up to you to make the judgment call whether you think it’s worth your money.
Even if you are a hobbyist and put a low value on your time (say $2 an hour - way below the minimum legal wage) you would easily get your $100 back in a year by being more productive.
Of course if you enjoy doing everything the hard way in Sib or Fin, that may be all the justification you need for your hobby - and from posts on other music engraving sites, there are a few people who DO claim to enjoy all the manual busywork as an end in itself.
And on your products, how many updates are there over the course of a year, and what sort of additional functionality does each update bring? To quote somebody else further up the thread, you’re probably comparing apples to oranges.
Our products are in an entirely different space, but our release cycle is very similar, relatively frequent 0.0.1 releases with bug-fixes, 0.1 releases a couple per year with added features, and we aim for 18 months for major version releases which are paid.
But that’s not the point - whether the software / products themselves are comparable.
At a higher level, people buy software to achieve goals, do work. In this way, pretty much all software is the same.
It comes down to how long someone has to derive benefit from some software before having to pay for an update.
I’m just saying 4 weeks grace seems very short. Consider someone who purchased Dorico 2.2. 5 weeks ago.
If you make the grace period 12 weeks, you get exactly the same whine from someone who purchased it 13 weeks ago.
And probably with more justification, because nobody can accurately predict a release date 12 weeks in advance, but an imminent release within is more likely to be “out there” as common knowledge and if people really want to save a few dollars they can defer their purchase until it happens.
Actually in my experience you don’t get more whining, you get less.
Because you can go back to them and say you’re paying E100 for the benefit you derived over 13 weeks.
At the moment you’re saying you’re paying E100 for the benefit you derived over 4 weeks and 1 day in the worst case. That’s a pretty steep weekly rate if it were subscription software.
As for predicting release dates, there is away around that.
Sure it’s hard to predict release dates, but it’s easy to set amnesty dates. When we have a major new version coming we just pick an amnesty date, which can be communicated to customers. It becomes the basis for how we calculate eligibility for a free update.
finally at the risk of appearing to bang on about this…
Software companies don’t actually want people to stop buying the current version prior to the release of a paid upgrade. This messes with their cash-flow. If everyone knows there’s a new version imminent and they only have a 4 week grace period, they are incentivised to defer purchasing until they are certain they are within that 4 week window.
I bought in ending March, a couple of months. I used Sibelius and they are fast but nit so fast as this time. Of course, I checked the grace period and not. And I remember there were domo,aunts against Bill Gates if monopoly tendencies and the fast of force upgrades for the companies, but including Microsoft is not so fast. Anyway I will check reaper, maybe re to Sibelius or check Notion.
The more people who already own the software, the less important the length of the grace period is; and most new customers are attracted by the actual release of a new version. The major difference is that Dorico is more transparent about their plans for the future than most competitors are.
Come on guys.
The people at Dorico are making such a fantastic job !! What are 99euros for an update ?!!!
You pay 150euros PER HOUR for an accountant for your tax declaration to type in some stupid numbers in his computer and you are not willing to spend 99euros for a fantastic software with fantastic support for guys who work day and night (even during the week-ends) and give all their heart for this software.
Then you’d better change to Sibelius, with no support, no real development, which is just a money-printing machine and you pay for your f*** yearly subscription and you get ridiculous ‘updates’ which even don’t earn the name.
I don’t understand this discussion at all, sorry…it’s like when playing a concert and people don’t understand why I want at least 50-100euros/hour. They even don’t realize that it takes hours and hours of practicing which are not paid for being able to stand on a podium and play.
And you can buy a $250 basic iPad or a 3k computer from Apple. They aren’t the same, they don’t cost the same. But both are “computers” from Apple.
I also “hope” that people who are complaining here are also complaining on vst manufacuters’ forums about having to pay for upgrades to their sound libraries too.
If an engraver finishes a score, and then the clients come back months later and ask for revisions, even though the score was fine and they played from it in the meantime, do they charge for their time to revisit the score? Of course they do. If an arranger/composer writes theme music for a company and they come back the next year for a new ad campaign but want a new arrangement of their jingle, do they pay the arranger for their new work even though the intellectual property rights to the composer’s melody belongs to the company? Of course they do. It’s the “same music” but it isn’t. If you call a contractor to your house to update your kitchen they do and you sign off on the project, and the 4 weeks later you decide to make a few mor changes, are you billed for the additional labor? Of course!
