Rocky Road wrote:
[snip]> not greatly technology savvy (or interested) and will go with the
marketing flow. Even if Finale lift their game they will need to win
over the Retailers and Trade Show marketers.
It does make me wonder where Finale are getting their educational market
input from, since Sibelius seems to be winning the battle hands-down!
My city just built a new high school and rebuilt the old high school, so
now we have two 4-year high schools, and each school got a lot of new
equipment, including computers in the music department.
The notation software on those computers? Sibelius.
My question to MakeMusic is: WHY?! How could you let that happen?
Continue paying attention to SmartMusic, if you want to, but don't give
the notation market away to Sibelius, as it appears you are doing.
The inclusion of GPO (a subset, they admit, which will probably force
many of us to spring for the additional soundsets, once we realize the
limitations of the sounds included) may well overpower the computers of
those educational installations which do use Finale, to say nothing of
the casual users who may not be computer-savvy. Just look at all the
problems discussed by GPO users on this list, which I consider to be
populated mostly by people who are very computer-literate and who STILL
have had problems getting things to work correctly. Trying to get a
school computer installation to increase their RAM so that they can
utilize the GPO sounds (this seems to be the number-one suggestion when
new GPO users aired their problems and complaints) is not as simple as
going down to the local CompUSA and buying more ram.
Even in the US, Sibelius has found a way to twist retailers' arms to get
their product front and center (spiffs, buybacks, bonuses, deeper
discounts, whatever). Just visit www.jwpepper.com and look at their
e-print capabilities. The only software product mentioned on their
homepage is the Scorch viewer (Sibelius' free viewer) which serves as
the basis of their e-print program.
Whatever happened to Finale's capabilities in this direction? All it
takes is for a potential new user to work with jwpepper's e-print
services, download the Scorch viewer, realize it's a Sibelius product
and decide to go with the full Sibelius product since it did such a
great job with the e-print stuff.
Why isn't Finale working in this direction?
From the jwpepper home page click on the Music Technology link in the
left-hand column, and you are presented with a listing of 4 products,
two of them Sibelius products, Finale and a classroom training product
from Alfred Publications.
Why is Sibelius listed FIRST? What did they do to gain that product
placement? Why did Finale let that happen? Why doesn't MakeMusic come
up with a counteroffer which would place Finale first?
SmartMusic isn't even mentioned on this first page! Click on the
Accompaniment Software link in the left column from the Music Technology
main page, and the first product again is NOT a MakeMusic product, it's
Band-in-a-Box (I agree it should be first, it's a terrific product!)
Where is MakeMusic's marketing department in all this? Probably too
busy sitting in the company's development team meetings, dictating what
they think their marketplace wants. Everybody knows that product
placement is a major factor in gaining market share, yet MakeMusic seems
incapable of gaining product placement which will increase its sales.
Visit www.zzounds.com and click on the ComputerMusic tab and scroll down
to the Other Software line, where they list notation software. The only
2 products shown are Sibelius products. It turns out those are the only
notation products they sell. Why?
Visit www.musiciansfriend.com and enter Software in the search and as
you click NEXT to go through the pages listing their software, you get
to Sibelius products before getting to Finale products, although they DO
market Finale products. But anybody who is just investigating what is
out there may well stop at the Sibelius products. Why are they listed
ahead of Finale products?
I can go on and on, but it only frustrates me more and more.
Where is MakeMusic's marketing department and what are they doing?
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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