This was exactly my point. And I didn’t talk about composition students, they will eventually go to the big three.
I was talking about instrumental/voice or even pedagogy students, who need to do some arrangement or some other university assignments.
They don’t think of their notations software as being analogous to their instrument, because they already have an instrument.
In the end they have a choice:
Paying a lot for a professional software, cracking a professional software or using a totally free software. Not knowing anything about the specific differences (how and why would they?), there is not only a financial, but also moral incentive to chose the last option.
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Obviously this is known, but it does seem to be a rather odd pricing structure for it to be cheaper for a student to buy Finale ($99) plus the Education Crossgrade ($179) than it is to just buy Dorico Pro at the Education price of $359. I’ve actually recommended that before and the usual response is, “if I have to buy Finale first, I’ll just try that and see if I’ll even need Dorico.”
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That’s great to hear, and the product line up is an enormous strength of Dorico and the reasons why my university didn’t just buy Desktop licenses, but also several iPads and the iPad subscriptions. The quality of output and thoughtfulness of the user interface then does enough to hear regular „wow“s in workshops. But they have to have the app open in order to be amazed.
So these are really great news!
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Have to say I’m really impressed with Musescore 4. I think it’s a fantastic achievement, especially Muse Sounds, which sound amazing for an “out of the box” sound engine.
The number of times I downloaded and tried to use its predecessors, and been gobsmacked that anybody can get anything done and be at all happy are innumerable. I can finally see the appeal.
To be able to have turned this around and provided something for free which is making pro app users nervous is an incredible achievement.
To me - the benefits to the community are enormous. Users adopting software early in their career will have a decent tool instantly accessible to them. It will give them a basic useful gateway to more advanced softwares, a bit like Paint 3D or Sculpt 3D leading to Maya, for example, or Swift leading to Objective C.
Students will be able to create much higher quality work without the burden of debt or reliance on campus equipment. Many more people will become fluent in using typesetting software and the burden will be slightly lifted from us regular users that have to hold their hand when they click a mouse.
What Dorico and the others need to do now is broker a progression from one to the other - you can do this, now imagine being able to do this. It’s an incredible gauntlet that’s been thrown down. Best of luck!
I’m still happy with Dorico btw (although increasingly annoyed when I have to hunt for something)
I can see the attraction for students just starting out, but one wonders how far serious students will get before they realize (or learn) that theater, opera, and published concert scores are unlikely to get very far in MuseScore unless its capability grows exponentially.
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Regarding opera and orchestra scores - on MuseScore.com there are quite a few good engravings of huge pieces like the Rite of Spring and Mahler symphonies. Folks have already tackled ambitious projects with earlier versions of MuseScore, and now it will be easier.
In my beginning composition class this fall, nearly everyone used MuseScore. But they know I’m a huge Dorico fan - I have to keep telling students that I’m not affiliated with Steinberg in any way! Advanced students, in my experience, have been much happier after switching to one of the big three.
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Not at all. Once they have an income and work professionally it is perfectly normal for people to switch to full pro applications, no matter what they used at university. You seem to be following Apple’s education market idea that if we sell all the students Macs they will go on to use them for the rest of their lives. I am not sure that’s how things really worked out. People are capable of choice, and its always possible to learn several and multiple notation programs.
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Obviously there are people who change, but I feel like musicians have the highest inertia when it comes to changing notation software. Most of them don’t seek a switch, but need to be actively presented with a convincing alternative.
And still: how many times have I heard „Dorico is great, even better, but I am just so accustomed to XXX“.
And again, I am not talking about professional composers or engravers here. They (some) will search and look for the best product.
I am talking about you local teacher who needs to quickly do a exercise sheet. I am talking about the performing musician who quickly wants to rearrange a piano part onto a harp for their Christmas performance. I am talking about the local band leader who is doing this thing totally voluntary. They will do it in the software they know, because they have a huge amount of other stuff to do, and it worked great so far. And they know the software from their studies because that’s where they started using it.
They don’t seek the best possible engraving. They seek continuity and ease of use. If they start with Dorico, the high quality engraving is a (highly needed) side benefit.
*obviously my experiences are anecdotal, but they are of a (to me) significant sample size.
But I seriously think that we should consider that the things we Forum users look for in a notation software (best possible engraving/playback/whatnot) is very different from what many other people look for in a notation software (something that kinda notates music and can print it, maybe do parts that would be rad)
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I’m sure both of you are correct. With varying degrees of regularity, people do make changes that better accommodate what they want to do. In Dorico’s case, many (most?) users on this forum made a change from another notation product. Equally, though, getting “first users” familiar with a particular piece of software bodes well for its longterm financial success because some of those early users will pay for updates long into the future.
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Well Dorico has educational pricing, and an excellent price for those eligible for a competitive crossgrade. None of this compares to no cost, but still., neither does the other product in question compare.
I got the educational cross grade a few years ago. Moving from Finale to Dorico pro 3 was a revelation, and is probably a main cause of at least a few scores getting past the “hmm, that would be an interesting project”-stage. With musescore 4 as an alternative though, I’m unsure if I would have made that same extra 2-300 euro investment today…
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One of the best things about my being a Finale user (before Dorico🙂) was that it qualified me for the Dorico crossgrade discount🤗
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Absolutely. In retrospect, it’s the best decision I could have made. Not sure if, with the knowledge I had at the time, I would have chosen the (vastly better) upgrade to Dorico over the upgrade to musescore though… The trial version ought to have been pretty damn convincing.
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The subscription model of the PRO functionalities of Musescore is already a no go for me.
Subscription was one of the reasons (not the main one) for the switch from Sibelius to Dorico.
And so glad i did it!!
Musescore 4 is a quite good upgrade for sure, but besides the plugin sounds, what i see is an upgrade from an unususable version 3 (to my standards) to a buggy but usable one.
Still lightyears away from the functionalities of Dorico 4, but i can understand all the excitement for Musescore users, is a big step forward.
Having said that i must recognize that the sounds plugin (same idea in Staffpad i guess) is a great one.
I will happily pay to get a sound plugin with good sounds for orchestra and jazz big bands and save me all the time and pain to go thru the expression map set up.
Not sure why the big sample vst houses (including Steinberg) are not so keen to develop this architecture.
Maybe is more commercially viable to sell the whole library instead of a plug-in?
I see this as a key strategic option, look at NP, a simple plugin that just works and its huge success (i don’t own it though, the sounds are still not comparable to a sampled library and for jazz is simply horrible).
Since i’m at it, even better would be hybrid sample-modeled plugins, since they offer the best midi/performance control with a small footprint and a seriously great sound (just listen to the Acoustic Samples Saxes and Brass).
I know is a late request for Christmas but i hope the Dorico team would consider this something worthy to look into it for 2024…
Just my 2 cents…
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I’m not aware of any subscription for Musescore. Perhaps you’re thinking of their score sharing service?
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I guess, I read it somewhere.
Sorry I’m not too familiar with their services since i’m not that interested.
I did the switch to Dorico after 25 years of Sibelius two years ago, and if the team keep up with the innovation i think i’m done switching notation programs in this life😂.
Btw, one amazing thing in this forum, is the tolerance to freely talk about competitors etc… i did once in a facebook post in Sibelius and i got banned!
MuseScore (the software) is free forever because it’s open-source. Musescore.com (the file-sharing site) offers a paid subscription to access premium scores.
Yup, this I imagined, must be under some gnu type of license, but pro services are not (as any distributor of open source software).
I spoke with @dspreadbury about trying to be aggressive in capturing student users for their platform, but he never replied after saying he’d explore it, so I assume he was unable to get traction with the others at Steinberg.
With MuseScore 4 now at such high quality for a free program (I actually think in many ways now superior to Finale and Sibelius…Finale still notably wins in avant-garde notation), Dorico may relegate to the champagne of the market…only for the monied boutique lovers. My students surely will go MuseScore instead, with student pricing 3.5x the cost of Finale, and MS for free. They drool over what I can do with Dorico, but probably wont as much now.
No.
Obviously I have no idea about what goes on at Steinberg, but the bigger the company, the longer it takes to make changes, especially massive changes to pricing structures.
Sorry, I get weary of this one. It amazes me that 1.2 billion people will pay hundreds of dollars for a miniature idiot box like an iPhone so they can post pictures of their dinner on Instagram, but musicians won’t pay the same amount (or less) for professional software they can use the rest of their life. Seriously.
And yeah I own an idiot box and am enslaved to it. Guilty as charged. 
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