Dorico sale in China really needs to be operated by Steinberg directly, bypassing YAMAHA

Dorico
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Sorry for this bold thread, but these are truth I heard from my close friend who is doing pro-audio reselling business in China for more than 10 years.

  1. YAMAHA in China doesn’t actively prepare boxed Dorico products for their authorized sub-resellers. It has to be in this procedure at this moment: Someone wants boxed product, and he contact a sub-reseller → Such requests accumulate under this sub-reseller → this sub-reseller contact YAMAHA China to batch-order boxed products. This hinders Dorico from being spread to those people who are just bad at dealing with downloaded softwares.

  2. Most sub-resellers of YAMAHA in China don’t know a bit about what Dorico is and why it is far more better than Sibelius. I don’t even see YAMAHA China actively promote this product. Only we volunteers are far from enough.

  3. YAMAHA in China doesn’t fight with floods of pirate sellers of cracked Dorico on Taobao market. (Taobao is similar to eBay). Note that these pirate sellers also sell unauthorized copies of NotePerformer together. By searching “Dorico” on Taobao returns most results of sellin pirated NotePerformer copies. Sigh.

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Unfortunately, my friend (mentioned above) had tried contacting Arne Wallander to see whether he can be an authorized reseller of NotePerformer, and was told that he has to be a sub-reseller of a Japanese reseller… which is totally not acceptable: we don’t want our fate to be unnecessarily determined by a Japanese company.

To mention: Current sub-resellers of YAMAHA Steinberg in Mainland China are only good at selling hardwares. The reason why they can sell Cubase / Nuendo well is only because of the well-spread of pirated Cubase 5 (windows version). These hardware sub-resellers really have lack of knowledges about providing sufficient technical supports of Steinberg softwares. My friend (mentioned above) was previously a direct sub-reseller of Steinberg softwares but got the business of that robbed by his competitor simple because that this competitor sells a lot in hardware, regardless that such hardware-oriented sellers can hardly provide sufficient technical support and promotion of Steinberg softwares.

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Why would anybody want a boxed product in this day and age? But as far as I can see, Dorico is only available as a download anyway. Come to think of it, computers do not have optical drives any more. And Dorico is not going to supply a print copy of the 1600 page manual.

As somebody myself who speaks Chinese and has spent time working in Asia, I would say that complaining about piracy on Taobao and similar sites is an exercise in futility. How would Yamaha combat this to begin with? You can’t. It’s miserable, depressing, and bad morally and ethically that this happens, but it will never stop, given China’s overall disregard for intellectual property rights - they never enforce them.

Leakage due to piracy will be with us until hell freezes over. Sad but true.

It’s good you raised the topic, but it’s just reality as it is, nothing to be done. Personally I would not be assigning blame to Yamaha.

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YAMAHA China and YAMAHA Japan were doing differently in recent years.

Previously I complained about YAMAHA Japan a little. However, they are doing fairly good now (still weaker than MI7 reselling MakeMusic Finale). At least, fully localized manuals are helpful… It’s just one more necessity that those manuals need to be printed into books to invade those local bookstores (incl. where they can buy paperback books online), because that’s where Japanese academic music learners prefer to buy textbooks from.

At least, YAMAHA China is simply not smart enough in letting hardware selling experts selling softwares despite that these sub-resellers know a heck about those software they are selling (in order to provide sufficient technical support). This is not only an issue with Dorico but with all sales of Steinberg softwares in Mainland China.

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one more thing to mention: Both Waves and Native Instruments have applied both legal procedures and their own local after-sell supports to make sure that their genuine users in China can have exclusive services, comparing to warez users.