Thoughts about the acquisition of Hal Leonard Publishing company by Muse Group

[Thurisaz]

Hi @ebrooks,

Pretty correct statement! Straight to the point.

I could make even clearer…

Yamaha is a pretty big corporation, and the music business area is probably the smallest one.
Personally I don’t expect the initiative for any serious transformation at Steinberg to start from Japan. This process should start at Steinberg and then submitted for approval to Yamaha.
I think that Steinberg is autonomous enough to make serious decisions, at least it seems.

So, if Steinberg doesn’t follow, in a short term, the same ecosystem model created by Muse Group and MakeMusic, the company will loose a serious amount of market share.
There are serious publishing companies in Europe, that Steinberg could deal with.
Steinberg should not only provide the same opportunities, but it should make them more attractive to the users.

As I said before, the score publishing business following the audio releasing one.
No matter that the audio recording came to the scene not long ago, the surrounding business evolving much faster and at the moment it’s far ahead before the score publishing. So, it’s easy to predict the future of the publishing business.

Steinberg can no longer relay only on software and hardware equipment development, from now on… especially since products like Dorico and Cubase “require” it somehow. The company should move forward.
If the company starts to create a serious Virtual Instrument libraries on their own… well, probably they will be forced to adopt many good decisions that were made in Pro Tools, related to the audio editing.
I hope the key managers at Steinberg are not going to miss this topic!

Best wishes,
Thurisaz

[cparmerlee]

@Thurisaz

Steinberg cannot relay only on software and hardware equipment development anymore, from now on… The company should move forward

I am still not sure what you are recommending. Are you saying that Steinberg/Yamaha should go out and buy one of the remaining hard-copy century-old publishing houses?

I don’t think that is the answer. I know that when I am looking to buy sheet music, I usually have a title or at least a specific genre in mind. The only time I even think about the publisher is if it is a smaller publisher that has made a reputation of a high quality catalog in the particular genre/ensemble type I’m looking for. I never start by saying, “Gee, I wonder what Alfred offers here.”

My personal view is that we are at an inflection point from hard copy to electronic. I think the way forward is digital distribution in a way that is easy for the customer, fair to the authors, and protects copyrights as much as possible. I really don’t see any big advantage for a notation program to be exclusive to a publisher or vice versa.

We have all seen China move up rapidly as a world economy, on the back of low-cost manufacturing. Many people have wondered when China would start selling cars worldwide, as that is probably the biggest product area where they have not established a dominant footprint. Well, we are getting the answer. Their strategy was to sell components to all the carmakers globally for internal combustion vehicles. China Inc. decided internal combustion was on the decline, and it was not smart to make a big investment in more global car brands for gas-powered cars.

Geeley did buy Volvo and launched Polestar as the extra-upscale sibling for Volvo. But even in that case, it is all about electric cars. Just this week, we see BYD announcing plans to build their electric cars in Hungary for distribution throughout Europe. In other words, China saw the one-time inflection point from gas-powered to electric, and they have invested heavily in electric, becoming the leading maker of EV batteries and controlling many of the raw materials that everybody needs to make batteries.

Just like the inflection point from gas to electric, I believe we have that same inflection point from print shop to electronic distribution of music at all levels. The world has largely already moved from vinyl and CDs to streaming for the consumer. We really don’t have any strong solutions in the online publishing realm yet. That is an opportunity, IMHO.

And having said all of that, let me clarify, my comments are about the music business as it relates to adult consumers. I recognize the education market may be a completely different thing with completely different pain points and solutions.

[Thurisaz]

@cparmerlee ,

I understand your point, but it’s very subjective to what you find important for you. And it’s a customer’s point of view, not an author’s / seller’s one.
This is a vital position, what every customer finds important.

The perspective of mine is a bit more general and let call it a bit more “objective”.
It covers both the author’s / seller’s and the customer’s views, as well as both digital and paper publishing. And the opportunity for direct trading of score sheets between the author and the client via platform that offers both legit contracts and copyright.

@cparmerlee

I am still not sure what you are recommending. Are you saying that Steinberg/Yamaha should go out and buy one of the remaining hard-copy century-old publishing houses?

What Muse Group got actually by acquiring of Hal Leonard? (briefly)

1. Their license and copyright agreements.
2. Their library of score sheets, books, student bookts… etc.
3. Their expertise in publishing (digital and paper) and engraving (this will have impact on MuseScore, no doubt).

So, in conclusion:
In order to have a legit digital trading platform for score sheets and various books, one needs all the license and copyright agreements that the publishing companies have. If the acquired publishing company is big enough, you are getting their library in digital and paper format, and could earn from it, too.
It’s simple.
By the way, the name of the acquired publishing house and it’s title aren’t that important in this case.
It’s cheaper and easier to buy an infrastructure that already exists and is on sale, and needs just an improvement, than building it yourself from ground zero.

@cparmerlee

And having said all of that, let me clarify, my comments are about the music business as it relates to adult consumers. I recognize the education market may be a completely different thing with completely different pain points and solutions.

Don’t underestimate the Educational sector, cause it’s more important than the Adult consumers, and it’s far bigger source of income. So both should be treated equally well by the owner company.

I hope my point is more clear to you, now!

Best wishes,
Thurisaz

[lafin]

I recently needed to purchase a Hal Leonard collection and I assume it was published before the MuseScore deal.

I’m appalled by the poor engraving and typo errors. I think their descent into mediocrity happened well before this purchase and I imagine things will only get worse in terms of engraving.

[cparmerlee]

@Thurisaz

Don’t underestimate the Educational sector, cause it’s more important than the Adult consumers, and it’s far bigger source of income. So both should be treated equally well by the owner company.

Beware the “Two billion Chinese” fallacy. Having worked in and adjacent to corporate marketing organizations for several decades, the biggest mistakes they make are usually with this fallacy. It goes something like this:

1. We are in the xxx business and we’d like to expand.

2. Wow, look at China. That’s almost 2 billion people there. (It is really fewer than 1.5B, but marketing people tend to exaggerate.)

3. Hey, let’s run some numbers. Let’s say we could sell our xxx product to, I don’t know, say 3% of that market. We ought to be able to do 3%. Anybody can do 3% of anything, right?

4. That would give us 60 million customers. That is 1200 times as many customers as we have today. What are we waiting for?

The school market is something. There are lots of schools and lots of students. But it is not clear to me that Steinberg has any particular assets in this area, and that is not at all aligned with the customer base the company has earned over 4 decades.

So no. Everybody can’t automatically get 3% just by hanging out a shingle and saying “Here we are.” it would be a radical departure to shift the focus to the school market, and then Dorico would be competing head on with a free product.

I think there are better marketing targets than this.

[Thurisaz]

@cparmerlee ,

Of course the Educational sector is part of Steinberg’s strategy, somehow, since they collaborate with some music academies and schools.
Dorico is the official scoring software at “Film Music Academy of Europe”, which is part of “Pulse College”, Dublin, located in Sofia, Bulgaria. Probably Dorico is the official app at Pulse College, too?! Just an example.
Currently only at software and hardware level.

I don’t know how this “Two billion Chinese” fallacy is related to this topic?!
I’m talking about an ecosystem that allows the authors not only to create content, but also to promote and sell it via digital platform worldwide.

@lafin

I’m appalled by the poor engraving and typo errors. I think their decent into mediocrity happened well before this purchase and I imagine things will only get worse in terms of engraving.

The publishing house could have it’s own high quality editions engraved to their requirements, and at the same time they could bring a platform for the third-parties to directly share/trade their works legally with copyrights.

Best wishes

[pianoleo]

@Thurisaz

Their expertise in publishing (digital and paper) and engraving (this will have impact on MuseScore, no doubt).

I don’t really understand this. Even if Hal Leonard were some sort of gold standard for engraving, what is there that MuseScore’s developers couldn’t learn by spending some time in a library?

[cparmerlee]

@pianoleo

what is there that MuseScore’s developers couldn’t learn by spending some time in a library

I agree with you. I only really use MuseScore to test MusicXML things, and occasionally when collaborating with others. But I believe there is enough meat in MuseScore already to meet the house standards in the vast majority of cases – if a person is willing to do enough twiddling. But that’s really the issue – productivity.

Maybe I am completely biased, but I view all these other products as essentially the same. They are like word processing for musical notes. You can eventually push everything around enough to look the way you want, but it takes a lot of work, whereas if one uses Dorico smartly, 90% of that twiddling is unnecessary.

And perhaps even more importantly, I know with Dorico, unless I do something really stupid (and I do on occasion), the notation will be correct. The notes will be beamed correctly. The cautionary accidentals will be observed properly, and so on. This saves me so much mental energy, that I am much less likely to make big mistakes harmonizing or with rhythmic clashes, or counterpoint collisions, or what have you. IMHO, it is not just familiarity because I was extremely familiar with Finale for 20 years, and I was still making plenty of errors in year 20. Now, it is really unusual to have a flat-out error in music I hand out at first rehearsal. Of course, there are things that I decide to revise, but really very few errors now.

So I really don’t buy into the idea that the products are on a path to converge or are otherwise equivalent. They really aren’t. Sibelius and Finale get almost no development other than in support of their cloud strategies. MuseScore may get more development effort, but it will still be using the 1980s philosophy at the end of the day.

I think Steinberg’s big challenge is to make Dorico as welcoming as possible to users who have been stuck in 1980 for decades. And for heaven’s sake, leverage the stablemates. Dorico + Cubase is an unfair advantage if that can have even the most basic interoperability. There is a whole universe of DAW-based composers who could be brought into Dorico through the back door (so to speak) if there were a more seamless connection.

[Thurisaz]

Hi @pianoleo,

@pianoleo

I don’t really understand this. Even if Hal Leonard were some sort of gold standard for engraving, what is there that MuseScore’s developers couldn’t learn by spending some time in a library?

Well, this question sounds like “Why do we need to go to school and university/academy since we can learn everything from the books and internet?”

The answer of your question is simple.

Yes they could learn everything from the books and score sheet examples, but the guidance from someone who already has enough experience is far more precious.

• They will save much time, because they will know what exactly should be done and how exactly the features should work.
• The coders have different way of thinking than the users, no matter if they are involved into music too. Very they need someone who is professional in Engraving for example, to explain them the things face to face. This always make the things more clear than just a plain text in a book.
• Very often the theory and the practice are a bit different things and one may needs someone to tell her / him how to practically apply the theory.

I hope this answers your question!

Best wishes,
Thurisaz

[Romanos]

@cparmerlee

But as a customer, I see little value in a catalog of 50,000 (or 500,000) titles.

I’m late to the party, but it’s the same for me. I don’t much care where my music comes from. It’s nearly all ordered online, and if it’s website A or website B, it’s of little difference to me. They either have the thing I want or they don’t. Whatever else their respective catalogues may have is immaterial to me.

@Thurisaz

What will happen when MuseScore is powerful enough to provide the same Engraving as Dorico, or Sibelius, or Finale,

Technically speaking, for more straightforward engraving, it is already possible. I nearly fell over when I met one composer at a special event where she was selling her scores. They looked quite good, if I’m being honest, and I was shocked when she said she did everything herself in MuseScore. I would have guessed she paid a professional engraver using S or F. That said, I have no doubt that she had to work a LOT harder to get that result than I do for even mundane things using Dorico.

@cparmerlee

My personal view is that we are at an inflection point from hard copy to electronic. I think the way forward is digital distribution in a way that is easy for the customer, fair to the authors, and protects copyrights as much as possible

I agree. This is why I self publish via my website. I might miss out on some visibility, but I also keep all but the payment vendor’s cut of the profits.

@pianoleo

I don’t really understand this. Even if Hal Leonard were some sort of gold standard for engraving, what is there that MuseScore’s developers couldn’t learn by spending some time in a library?

To say nothing of the fact that when the merger was announced, the powers-that-be said the two companies would continue operating independently for a good long while.

[Paolo_T]

@cparmerlee

There is a whole universe of DAW-based composers who could be brought into Dorico

This sounds to me as another fallacy. Most of the DAW-based composers I know can’t even read music. Why would they need Dorico, when they can just rely on the included Score page to print some rough parts for the occasional collaborator?

Paolo

[MarcLarcher]

I agree. What does exist is collaborations between composers and copyists, and making their lives easier (and overall, increase productivity) is a good path to follow. According to different YouTube videos, it looks like the MIDI import features of Dorico have been wisely thought out just for this.

[Thurisaz]

Hi @Paolo_T and @MarcLarcher,

@Paolo_T

This sounds to me as another fallacy. Most of the DAW-based composers I know can’t even read music. Why would they need Dorico, when they can just rely on the included Score page to print some rough parts for the occasional collaborator?

Paolo, yes you are pretty correct in your statement. Most of the DAW-based composers can’t even read notation.
Still there are people, like me, who combine both worlds and some deeper integration between Dorico and Cubase, like real-time project synchronization will be pretty beneficial. I’m working both with audio recorded instruments and virtual ones. To me is important to be able to do the whole composition by using Dorico and everything to appear instantly in Cubase, where I can record the instruments I play.

Mark,
The Smart MIDI Import is great, and solves many issues, but still isn’t the best communication tool between Dorico and DAW.
Long ago I did compose a Koleda / Yule (the pagan version of Christmas) piece for symphonic orchestra and traditional instruments & female choir…
This year came the time this piece to be performed live and I had to transfer it from Cubase, to Dorico via Smart MIDI Import. Well, no matter that I did quantization in Cubase, and no matter how powerful is the SMI, I ended up with a very messy score sheet. The fixing process + improving the composition and the orchestration, took me far much time than re-writing it completely from scratch. Unfortunately it was too late to start it on blank sheet. So, I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Of course the direct collaboration between composers, orchestrators, copyists and song writers is important. That’s why I’ve asked about the integration of the VST Connect / Performer for the needs of Dorico.

Best wishes,
Thurisaz

[Derrek]

@Thurisaz

Well, no matter that I did quantization in Cubase, and no matter how powerful is the SMI, I ended up with a very messy score sheet.

And teaming up with Hal Leonard would solve this?
This thread, dubious to begin with, seems to have gone through so many twists and turns to appear more like a personal essay project in and of itself.
I’m sure Daniel got your point within the first posts, and the Team will give it all the attention it merits. They seem to know what they are doing.

[cparmerlee]

@Paolo_T

This sounds to me as another fallacy. Most of the DAW-based composers I know can’t even read music

Yes, you are correct. That could come across as another case of the “2 billion Chinese” fallacy. What I should have said is there is a universe of people composing in DAWs, and some smaller percentage of them could be brought into Dorico if the connection were more seamless.

I am thinking of people underscoring for video as one example. That is a small cohort, and many of them synthesize everything and thus, might have little need for notation. But certainly there are some who compose on DAWs and eventually use human musicians for at least part of the final production – again that is a small number compared to the number of school band teachers, for example.

I note that, within the Cubase community, whenever there is any suggestion that the built-in notation is expendable, a riot ensues. What are all these people doing that makes them value the very primitive notation capabilities in Cubase so much? And the same question could be asked of the people who use the score editor in Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Max in Ableton Live, Notion in StudioOne, score sheets in FL Studio etc.

If those DAW users don’t care about scores, how come every major DAW has some kind of notation capability?

[cparmerlee]

@MarcLarcher

it looks like the MIDI import features of Dorico have been wisely thought out

Wisely thought out for sure, but not nearly enough IMHO. I use MIDI exchange often, but only for very specific tasks. It would be a real PITA to do entire projects in MIDI as a collaboration, if one collaborator is working in MIDI and the other in notation.

[Sergei_Mozart]

@cparmerlee

If those DAW users don’t care about scores, how come every major DAW has some kind of notation capability?

Because there are things you can input in a DAW that aren’t idiomatic for the instrument in question, that’s probably one of the reasons they have that kind of notation capability. I could also think of one giving “MIDI score” converted to a notated score for another person, which in this case would know how notation and the practicality of the passages, etc.

[cparmerlee]

@Derrek

This thread, dubious to begin with, seems to have gone through so many twists and turns to appear more like a personal essay project in and of itself.

I disagree. This thread is less about “Steinberg should buy xxx publishing company” as it is about the important changes that are occurring in the music industry and what strategies Steinberg/Yamaha might pursue to remain relevant to the customer world.

I have some reservations about making such a blunt statement on Christmas Eve, but here it is. Steinberg is not a very strategic company. The Cubase/Nuendo people produce a grab bag of features with no particular direction or priority I can discern. Who can complete the statement, “Cubase wants to become the very best solution for _______.”? The Dorico team has done amazing work, bringing a marvelous product to market in a relatively short time, that is fundamentally better than the other products in the market. The user interface does reflect great care and planning. But even so, there is no real sense of strategy. How would you complete the statement, “Dorico wants to be the very best solution for __________.”?

And more importantly, how would Steinberg executives answer the question, “Steinberg wants to be widely known as the company that has the very best solutions for __________.”?

And really, how would Yamaha answer those same questions? Without really strong answers to these fundamental questions, the world will pass them by. Maybe not in 2024 or 2025, but in another decade, for sure.

[Paolo_T]

@cparmerlee

If those DAW users don’t care about scores, how come every major DAW has some kind of notation capability?

There is a degree to which a score page is useful even to people who don’t care for notation. Mostly, that limited score feature is used to give a rough conductor score and separate parts to ensembles and individual player who will add an acoustic layer to a mostly electronic piece. I’ve seen this done several times, and it works fine enough.

A score page is also used for copyright registration.

Dorico is a different beast. You need it, even in the SE version, when your work is mostly based on notation. SE for composers of ballads at the piano; Elements for composers of ensemble music without odd avant-garde complications; Pro for the professional copyist of composer working on large scores or complex notation.

The same applies to MuseScore.

I understand the needs of some composer working in a hybrid context, but I just doubt their needs can result in a major turnout in a notation program development. As a hybrid composer myself, I would be happy of any advancement in audio tracks management and MIDI editing in Dorico. The latter seems to be going fast. Let’s see what will happen with the former.

Paolo

[Paolo_T]

Concerning integration between Dorico and Cubase: it might be useful to remember that there are other DAWs out there. Compatibility with Cubase would therefore be limiting integration to just a percentage of DAW users.

Switching DAW? I don’t know, but I feel malaise each time I’m forced to open Cubase. You know, one of those nervous reaction that you can’t even explain. So, for sure not for me.

There are and have been generous attempts at linking musical apps locally and remotely. Maybe a new impulse to these technologies (of which Steinberg is a pioneer) could be a desirable perspective.

Paolo