The crossgrade offer from Notion

Hi Daniel,

According to official website in English language,
the crossgrade is offered for Finale, Sibelius and Notion users.
But, in Japan, it’s offered for Finale and Sibelius users only, Notion users are excluded.
More precisely, it was stopped suddenly a few days after Dorico’s launch (early in the last December).

Notion users in Japan including me are very disappointed.
Did you know that? What is the reason there?

I did know that the team at Yamaha in Japan decided not to include Notion in the crossgrade offer for Dorico after an initial period of two weeks, and the reason they told me was because Notion is so much cheaper than Dorico, they would prefer people not to be able to buy Dorico inexpensively by buying Notion and then buying the Dorico crossgrade.

Hi Daniel,

Not to beat a dead horse, but I was willing to give Dorico a second go after my first disappointment by crossgrading from Notion 6 to Dorico. Unfortunately crossgrading from Notion 6 is no longer possible. Since I have started working with Cubase Artist last year and have updated to version 9.5.40, Dorico is my logical choice, mainly because the software has evolved.

Regarding the reason for not allowing Notion 6 users to crossgrade to Dorico strikes me as all but logical. Don’t you guys want to see the customer base grow or is it only about nickels and dimes?

With all due respect Franklinspired, this is a little like saying, “I know I drive a Ford Focus right now, but don’t you want me to drive this Mercedes? Then give me more trade-in value for this drastically less-expensive car!”

[To be clear: I am not trying to compare these programs respective values based on feature sets to the cars above, as though either one of the cars or programs are drastically inferior to the other. I’m simply comparing from a price perspective.]

Now, I totally respect feeling a little put out that you had the “misfortune” of wanting to migrate from a different program that doesn’t qualify, but if the two are in completely different realms of price (which they are), it is not reasonable for the company to offer a cross grade price that would be cheaper than the value offered everyone else who cross grades. Framed a bit differently, (as Daniel mentioned) you could buy Notion 6, buy the cross grade and still come out hundreds of dollars ahead and now own both programs (when you owned neither prior to the transactions). That simply doesn’t make sense. To go back to the car analogy, if you trade a BMW for a Mercedes, (depending on the models) you’re approaching similar values price-point wise. Trade in values = cross grade values. The Notion to Dorico values just don’t make sense.

This. Notion 6 is $149, Dorico is $559.

The crossgrade from full Finale/Sibelius is already generous, and is intended to win over users from a *comparable product.

I think Steinberg should also do cross-grades from Musescore. :slight_smile:

There is an option for Notion users: crossgrade to Sibelius ($199), then crossgrade to Dorico ($279). It’s a bit less than buying Dorico outright, plus you’ll also own Sibelius for collaborating with others who use that.

A bit off-topic, but crossgrades have always intrigued me. I understand the business case for winning across users of a competitor’s product, but when you end up with a pricing structure that basically encourages your customers to buy your competitor’s product as well as your own… well, that is one interesting pricing structure!

Or you could buy a physical Dorico 1.0 crossgrade Retail Box for $279.99 and upgrade to Dorico 2.0 Pro for $99, e.g. at https://vintageking.com/steinberg-dorico-crossgrade-from-sibelius-finale-notion-box

MakeMusic do Black Friday deals. I picked up Finale 25 last year for $149.

@ dankreider: you confuse a comparable product with a comparable pricepoint.

@JesterMusician: We all know the Sibelius subscribtion policy, don’t we?

So it is a nickle and dimes story and excluding Notion from the crossgrade option has more to it than just the price, given their (Presonus) history.

Franklinspired - that hadn’t even occurred to me. One could rent Sibelius Ultimate for a month for $24.99 and crossgrade to Dorico…

No, to be clear, you can’t do that. People who subscribe to Sibelius can crossgrade, but they must have had an active subscription for at least a year.

Spoilsport :wink:

Thanks for the clarification, Daniel!

For all those who thought it was going to be easy to crossgrade to Dorico, using Notion or even Sibelius for less than a year, well… forget it!
We (Steinberg) welcome you as a new customer, but you’ll have to proof you’re worth the chance we’re giving you to use our special and unique software.

I love my freedom and the power it gives me to choose regardless of what is dictated by a company, institution, government or individual!
For 30 years now pirated software has a growing amount of users, because software companies - in their arrogance - just don’t get it!
Apple (for instance) is loosing Mac Pro users on a daily basis, because they have stopped listening to what their customers want or need.
I can easily pick a pirated version of Dorico Pro 2 anywhere on the internet if I want, doesn’t cost me a dime, but that is not my first choice.

As a Steinberg user (Cubase Artist 9.5.40) and Steinberg UR242 Audio Interface I have been supporting the company for some time now.
Having a company policy which dictates the amount of money you have to spend, before being able to crossgrade to their software is pure arrogance!
All the Finale 25 users I know working for many years with the software, do not feel the urge to change to something else, because they get everything done, be it jazz, classical music, etc.
Can one do whithout Dorico? Yes, absolutely!

Franklin

Some day we’ll all get to pay what we want for products.
Of course the companies that make those products will then go out of business, and the products we want will cease to be available.

It never ceases to amaze me how much people demand for free, or nearly free.

You want to pay $25 for one month of Sibelius and a full Dorico license? Why wouldn’t everyone do that? As Derrek said, you could say goodbye to Dorico then.

Apple are listening very carefully to what their customers want or need. But their favourite customers are the ones who throw away a perfectly good £1,000 cellphone every year and buy the latest model, just because it’s the latest model - not a few nerds who still want to use old-style computers!

Let’s face it, if you actually want a phone you can get one for a tenth of what Apple charges - so “needing a phone” can’t be what motivates Apple customers to pay Apple’s prices.

You don’t get the point. It’s the way companies think they can treat their customers.
The whole audio-software business charges overrated prices for their software, because they want to compensate for losses made through pirated versions, but at the same time they unknowingly encourage more to use such software because of the way too high prices they charge these days.
One could say, but they have student versions for low prices, but we all know that a student version lacks many options the pro version does have.
So what’s the point in using software which lacks the possibilities one might need at a certain time, but can not afford because of the high price of a pro version.

BTW who said I wanted to pay $ 25 for a month of Sibelius to buy a full Dorico license? I use Notion 6 and I’m not going to use Sibelius for a year so that that I can eventually crossgrade to Dorico by the grace of Steinberg!