I think it puts more context around the Newzik / Dorico conversation. As in - what will the future flow be like from composer to musician, and how will it ultimately be consumed?
The previous Newzik conversations were a lot about starting with a document scan and going backwards into Dorico. But I think a composer starting with Dorico is more the future of publishing. -In that that world, using the mature XML from Dorico to drive extra capabilities of Newzik is quite the advantage I think.
The ecosystem I see is from composer/Dorico to music/teaching/distribution and then all the way to the instrument and performance world. That is where I think the bigger picture is for Yamaha. I could see the face/top of a piano become a directional/translucent integrated Newzik type display. Guitars with integrated electronic set lists/lead sheet instead of paper taped to the body. Electronic Marching Band Lyres? Realtime distribution of sight-reading material for contests?
Well, Finale and MuseScore are completely different products.
Finale is used by many professional copyists around the world and required by many publishing companies, plus itās more than 30 years oldā¦ It canāt be easily transformed into something even much better. The habits of the users are a key factor.
On the other side weāve already seen that MuseScore went through a serious transformation, it became a completely new product.
The acquisition of Staffpad brought the MuseSounds to MuseScore.
Iām pretty sure that the acquisition of Hal Leonard will turn MuseScore into a real competitor to Dorico, Sibelius and Finale.
Donāt forget that the genius - Martin Kaery a.k.a. Tantacrul, is a big figure at Muse Group, and he was the one who started the transformation of MuseScore.
Now the Muse Group has everything needed to turn MuseScore into something very serious - expertise, enough manpower, plus it will be freeā¦
Itās just a matter of time, nothing else.
The question is: How Steinberg will answer this serious marketing strategy change?
As we all know, Steinberg has amazing products, but when it comes to the overall long-term marketing strategy, they are behind many othersā¦
The last serious step made by Steinberg was to hire the ex-Sibelius team and the creation of Doricoā¦ This was long agoā¦
Hi @benwiggy,
With all my respect, Ben, but in this statement of yours you are completely wrong. I would recommend you to spend some time reading those books, especially āThe Art Of Warā. Sun Tzu wrote his book following the canons and the spirit of the Taoist philosophy, which is directly related to universalism and transformation. This means every text from āThe Art Of Warā could be applied in every aspect of our life, just we need to find the way to properly transform the universal knowledge behind the principles.
If you would like to dive a bit deeper into the Taoist philosophy, I would recommend you to read āTao Te Chingā, by Lao Tzu.
So, nothing from the 80ās, or pretentious here.
Probably AVID also āunderstoodā their market position better, but they ended acquired by a private equity firm STG.
In the past there were many good companies who made good products, but they āunderstoodā their market position better and nowadays they donāt existā¦
Dorico isnāt the entire Steinberg.
The team behind Dorico really know their job well, but the situation with Cubase is completely differentā¦ like two different universesā¦ the situation with Cubase isnāt as bright as the one with Dorico. The team behaves completely differentā¦
No balance in the development between the users needs and the teamās plansā¦
It seems that every team at Steinberg has itās own strategy about the product they are working on, which makes the general strategy very fragmented and unstable.
The team behind Dorico is the best and it should serve as an example for the others at Steinberg. They really know how to create well balanced and amazing software.
Finale is pursuing a strategy of school music and is doing absolutely nothing for the professional musician (composers, arrangers, engravers) these days. That may be wise, but obviously nobody is willing to pay hundreds of dollars for that 30-year-old code that is at end-of-life as a notation system. There is plenty of inertia keeping many people on Finale, and the old line publishing houses may stick with that, with everybody just trying to milk the cash cow. That poor cow. This is not the future for notation or publishing.
Muse is a serious product. When you give something away for free, there will be a lot of takers. And for a free product, it is very good. Their strategy is to make money on ancillary services. It could be a good business, and it might fund a considerable amount of development of value to professional musicians. But I donāt see any real strategy in the acquisition of an early-20th-century style music publisher. I assume the dollars of the acquisition work out. I donāt think the Muse people are stupid. But I donāt see that as the future. Their MuseScore code base, together with Staffpad, may be a product with a future for professionals.
I think there is a considerable gap between Dorico and MuseScore and I donāt see that closing. I assume MuseScore must have heavy use in schools and universities. It is good enough for anything people want to do in any music school, short of the top conservatories, and free fits a studentās budget very well.
It is the old expression, āCourses for horsesā (or maybe I have that backwards. My British friends always seem to think I have that wrong.) Steinberg has a set of products that are world-class in their chosen niches. Ultimately, the question is not if some other product can cut in on those niches, but whether the niches are big enough to sustain the Steinberg business. And that is where the Yamaha question comes in. Yamaha is surely one of the most respected companies worldwide in the music industry. Iād like to think there must be much more synergy possible between Steinberg and Yamaha.
Yes, I doubt that Finale will go any further in itās evolution, but still MuseScore 4 + is a completely new generation software, and it will evolve and mature. Iām even sure that the Muse Group will be targeting even the professional engravers at some point, not only the schools and the students.
The acquisition of Hal Leonard provides not only legit agreements on wide range of music scoresheets, but expertise how MuseScore should create a publishing ready scores.
Of course the publishing business from the 20th century will evolve, too, in itās own way. Probably as direct mediator between the composer, arranger, orchestrator, copyist and the client, by providing an online service?! Who knows?!
Currently the gap between Dorico and MuseScore is really big, but with enough manpower and knowledge it can be filled within a few years. Already Muse Group has both the manpower and the needed knowledge base.
Iām not against the cloud based services, in case they are not obligated.
If one finds those services beneficial for her / him, then let her / him use them. If not - the people are free to not use them.
If the cloud service is a good source of income for me, I wonāt mind to pay the deserved commission to the provider company.
This is really interesting and I hadnāt heard about this until I saw this thread. I canāt really think of a strategic reason for this pairing beyond what others have speculated. I happen to have done some work for Hal Leonard about 20 years ago both as a musician recording demos and some copywork which probably eventually became published material from the Finale files. I have no idea what the prevailing software is there but Iād guess itās still Finale given the years of investment for templates and such.
Maybe they see it being more profitable if they can cut some of those operational costs like paying for live recorded demos, etc.? Plus as some have pointed out they have a pretty large library of exclusive arrangements.
Just to clarify, is that referring to Hal Leonard? Their Essential Elements beginning band and orchestra methods are probably the most widely used in the US. Thereās even the Essential Elements Interactive series that obviously is a competitor to MakeMusic Cloud. If MuseScore wants to compete against MM in that space without building something from scratch, purchasing Essential Elements Interactive is probably a pretty smart move.
At least where I teach, probably 90+% of my undergrads use it, and probably 75% of grad students too. A pretty huge shift compared to maybe 2015 when it still would have mostly been split between Finale and Sibelius. Hard to compete against free.
Perhaps that was the main driver. Their business model depends on getting some ancillary income. It looks like they intend to mostly leave the print business alone for the moment. I donāt see anywhere that the terms were disclosed, and I donāt know how healthy HL was before the acquisition. If HL is able to carry on as a viable print business for the time being, and Muse paid a not-too-insane price, then there is probably more upside than downside.
I found this statement from HL interesting:
āNow musicians can look forward to learning more from Hal Leonardās high-quality arrangements and top-selling content in digitized, interactive formats on Muse platforms. With over 300 million annual visitors and over 40 million accounts on Ultimate Guitar and MuseScore alone, a whole new global audience will discover Hal Leonardās library. Muse Group will also bring significant creator software and technical innovation to Hal Leonardās digital offerings,ā
So it seems the targets are at least twofold: cutting into the school market and boosting HLās traditional business with better digital delivery.
As far as Dorico is concerned, it seems clear that there is no way to win a numbers battle when competing with a very capable notation product offered for free. I donāt think it would be wise to commit major resources to that battle front. Dorico has achieved clear separation from Finale, Sibelius, and MuseScore when judged on the needs of the professional composer/arranger/copyist. This is the center of strength. I do hope everyone at Steinberg (and Yamaha, for that matter) understands that the people at the top of the craft increasingly work in the DAW realm, particularly those scoring for film/TV/Streaming productions. In my view, that is the biggest flaw in Steinbergās strategy ā having chosen to not exploit the available synergies between Cubase/Nuendo and Dorico. This ought to be Steinbergās āunfair advantageā over the other products.
I also missed the news that Avid has been sold again, this time for $1.4 bn, I assume most of that value is attributed to Protools. AFAIK Avid, in its Russian incarnation, did absolutely nothing to develop any synergy between Protools and Sibelius, and did essentially no development on Sibelius. That seems a lot of money to pay for products that are both seen as past their heyday.
it seems like they were losing money consistently. The acquisition became a cash buyout of existing shareholders, and the money for the buyout is now on the company books as a $1.4Bn liability. Before this transaction, their TOTAL liabilities were $412M. Thatās a lot of debt for a company with about $400M of annual revenue and about $50M of annual operating cash flow.
This suggests one of two paths (or both):
Split up the properties and sell them off individually, hopefully for a total of more than $1.4 Bn
Fire most of the staff and try to make up the $1.4Bn by milking the cash cow.
Personally, Iām not feeling either of those, but the buyers are experienced vulture artists, so they must have worked out a plan that gives them a payday.
If someone thinks that Muse Group will afford to loose such amount of user base just because MuseScore isnāt good enough for publishing engraving, she / he is totally in a wrong direction. They will do their best to bring MuseScore to the whole publishing standards. Actually thatās why MuseScore 4 was completely codded from scratch, in order to remove the old bits and make it easier for much major improvements.
The following questions comes to my mind:
What will happen when MuseScore is powerful enough to provide the same Engraving as Dorico, or Sibelius, or Finale, plus legit platform where the composers, arrangers, orchestratorsā¦ could sell their works directly?
No doubt such an ecosystem will become a very attractive to the professionals, too.
How this is going to affect Dorico and Steinberg?
At Steinberg already missed the initiative, but if they miss the momentumā¦ this could have a very negative results for the company and the product.
In the topic that I have shared in the first comment of mine, I wasnāt taken seriously about the things I was proposing. But the scoring business, in general, gradually going in the direction I was discussing there, more than 2 and a half years ago.
I donāt think that is the issue. I think any of the 4 products (Finale, Sibelius, Dorico, Musescore) can be used to produce a score that would meet publisher standards. The issues are:
How much work does it take? How productive can the composers/copyists be?
What marketing channels are accessible from each of the notation products?
On the first point, even though MuseScore may be more modern code, it is still based on the 40-year-old concepts. Dorico is the only product that has a modern orientation, and I find it is always at least twice the productivity, probably more like 4X the productivity, including getting error-free copy out on the first edition. There is only so much that can be done following the old philosophy. I donāt think any of those products will significantly narrow the gap in 10 years. (I donāt think Sibelius and Finale will even try.)
The other side of that coin is that the Dorico concepts can be mind-bending. And many people just arenāt up to learning the new way. It is a major undertaking to learn the new concepts to the point that they really pay off. And if most people are starting with MuseScore or the other old-style programs, this will always be a barrier to market share for Dorico. The upshot is that Doricoās market is really the top 10% of composers/arrangers/copyists ā maybe even the top 5%.
On the second point, generally speaking, no channels have been off limits for Dorico, but the ages-old publishing houses may be far more comfortable receiving copy in the old-style programs, just because they already have house style templates, and they donāt have staff competent to do editing in Dorico.
The great unknown is whether there will be channels (e.g. Hal Leonard and Alfred) that become exclusive to the notation program that is in their family, so to speak. There have already been cloud distribution systems tied to some of the notation products, but those catalogs are about 98% junk or freebies. The big question is what becomes of publishing channels that want to carry the products people are willing to pay real money for.
Personally, I rarely use the big ones. I am much more likely to buy music from Aebersold, Marina Music, Hickeys, eJazzLines, Sierra or others that are more specialized than the big houses.
Iām not sure this topic really belongs in the Dorico Category, better in the Lounge Category. Anyway.
That aside, all this concern about market share puzzles me. Why does it matter? Take an example from the automotive industry. In 2022 BMW had 3.1% market share globally. Is their business threatened? In no way. Are they about to go under? No way. They are a high end company, just as Dorico is a high end product for professional and skilled engravers. I wouldnāt be so concerned.
Because there is a very identical topic in this forum section, already by @Puma0382 , but no serious discussion going, unfortunately.
The Steinberg Lounge section doesnāt have enough attention by the users.
Why the topic should be in the Dorico section?
Because is notation world related.
Because the market is changing seriously, so this topic should be discussed by more people here. And for now itās going well.
The comparison between the car and the music notation businesses isnāt correct. Why?
Most of the people on the planet are driving.
Some people / families have more than 1 or 2 cars.
Many companies, nowadays, offer company cars to their major employees.
To change a car isnāt as affordable as to change a software.
BMW will always has itās place among the drifters.
The music notation world:
The serious amateur and professional musicians are a very small amount of people compared to the whole population.
Not every professional musician using a scoring software, not even every music teacher.
The notation software users are tiny group of people compared to the whole āseriousā musicians (amateurs and professionals). There are composers and orchestrators who prefer to write all their scores on paper and then to hire a copyist to make a digital copy.
Even the DAW market sharing is much bigger than the notation.
Nowadays those who are using scoring software, or DAW, are looking for the one that provides as user friendly, as possible workflow and powerful tools for their needs. Of course the affordability is important too.
Iām sure that when MuseScore provides equally powerful tools, stability and playback as Dorico does, many will move, just because itās free. And Muse Group already offers platform that allows people to even earn some money. How professional the scoresheets look depends on the person who made them.
The last, but non the least, we are the Community behind Dorico and Steinberg. We paid serious money for the great software we are using - Dorico, Cubase, Nuendoā¦ we are not just users, we have the right to share our concerns about the overall business situation. We donāt want Steinberg to follow the destiny of AVIDā¦ imagine $1.4 billion (just pennies) for the acquisition of AVID, a company that is a standard in the film (Hollywood relays on AVID, most probably Bollywood and the Chinese film industry, as well.) and music industry around the worldā¦ If something happens with Steinberg, it wonāt be sold even for the 1/3rd of this priceā¦
In conclusion:
Steinberg missed, not even lost, the initiative in this market ābattleā. Which isnāt good, but not too dangerous for the business.
Steinberg by no means, should not miss or lost the momentum of this ābattleā! The momentum, at the moment, depends on the improvement of MuseScore and the marketing strategy decisions that will be taken at Steinberg.
Thatās why we are here, discussing this topic and sharing our opinions.
If Steiny misses the momentum, it wonāt be without a serious aftereffect for the entire company.
Well, what Iām suggesting isnāt exactly self publishing, but more direct online publishing model.
After all since the contract and copyright provider between the sides will be the platform, no matter how itās named, it will be the main publisher. Of course it also should receive some commission (between 3% - 5% . The same as the property brokers and Paypal) for every deal.
The publishing company that provides the platform could also sign a contract with the authors in order to publish scoresheets, or books on paper, or digital format.
Well, this will be the future of this business. Similar to where the audio releasing is currently.
The actions taken by MakeMusic for sign with Alfred Music and the creation of MakeMusic Cloud, and the one taken by Muse Group with their MuseScore.Com and the acquisition of Hal Leonard are clear signs for that. The creation of the complete cycle from the scoresheet creation, to the publishing.
Muse Group is in the content business. They started off and became successful as a place for user-generated content. Everything since then seems to have been about perfecting an ecosystem around that.
Yamaha and Steinberg are not making any content, they are making equipment and tools. There is no publishing business to speak of and AFAIK, Steinberg has never even made a single sample library.
I get the very strong FOMO vibes, but this would be a radical transformation of a huge corporation of which Steinberg is a tiny part. And it has to start in Japan.
