Hello, I know this is off-topic, still I want to share my experience.
Today I went to the funeral of my neighbour.
Arrived at the chapel, sat down in the last row, hoping to get a glance of the organist— who never came.
No singing of hymns, just some background music “from tape”, disappointing.
They did play Mozart’s slow movement of flute/harp concerto, which was nice, but besides that some very flat piano plunking, sort of bar music.
As I was sitting in the last row, I discreetly pulled my smartphone to “Shazam”, which music they played. It was some piano composition I had never heard of.
Side note: My personal preference would be 30 minutes of silence before a service would begin— in respect to the deceased person and as a possibility to have some private thoughts.
This evening I checked my email, and the almost daily MuseScore “Your personalised scores playlist awaits” “Your curated music selection - Enjoy a personalised playlist of scores based on what you love most.”
And wonder over wonder, the boring piano piece was one of the first suggestions…
To be honest, sometimes it is daily - with gentle pressure, like
“ Score alert: your personalised scores playlist awaits”
but even the weekly dose feels slightly threatening:
“ We’re missing you”
“ It’s been a while and we’re missing you”
Any composer could upload the score of “My Piece What I Wrote” to MuseScore, and an audio file to Spotify. I don’t know if the connections go deeper than that; though I wouldn’t be surprised.
MuseScore (the app) has always been “the free tool that you use to get the paid content”. On the one hand, it’s great that there is a free notation app, subsidized by the subscriptions and payments for downloads.
The content has always been where the money is. And now they own Hal Leonard, so if you are a subscribing member, you can upload your own arrangements of copyrighted works, because the rights are cleared. MuseScore takes your subscription, and a cut of the sales of your scores.
I have to say, I’ve been caught out by the … “unintuitive” … interface when wanting to purchase a score. £1.49 is in big green numbers, under “buy this score” – but the smaller, greyer print below shows that you’ll actually be charged £44.99 for 3 months’ subscription.
The other option: to purchase the score alone, for £2.99, is only available if you click that unlabelled switch.
It has to be said that MS has become a near monopoly for “notation data”, e.g. editable .mscx files or MusicXML.
However, a lot of the transcriptions of standard repertoire that I’ve seen have been riddled with errors.
These were among some of the considerations in wanting a site for hosting Dorico files. Computer-readable notation data of standard repertoire, which is part of our cultural heritage, should be freely available, just as much as images of Urtext editions or original manuscripts.
The sneaky offer of a 3-month subscription is generating quite a few angry reactions. My publishing house MusicScore is often confused with MuseScore. I regularly receive emails from angry or distressed MuseScore customers who accidentally signed up for a subscription and want to cancel it immediately or want their money back.
That’s probably unavoidable with an uncurated collection that anyone can add to, but yes I recognise that. I’ve had students come to me with a tune that they’d like to play, only for me to take one look at the page and see that it’s basically unplayable due to how badly notated it is. And then when I sit down with Dorico to notate it properly I might find that I’m better off doing the transcription from scratch.
But it’s still cool that it exists! I have had other students discover pretty good sax quartets on there and start up an ensemble of their own, only asking for my help after they’d gotten started. That was wonderful. (The notation still looked bad, but I don’t know if that’s the fault of MS or due to inexperience of the part of the arrangers.)
Score alert: your personalised scores playlist awaits”
interface when wanting to purchase a score. £1.49 is in big green numbers, under “buy this score” – but the smaller, greyer print below shows that you’ll actually be charged £44.99 for 3 months’ subscription.