Rocky Road wrote:
My school here in Sydney, Australia uses Finale, but this is because I like it and I introduced it here when we brought computers into the music department some years back (being head of music has its privileges :-)
Indeed it does! There has to be some sort of tradeoff... :) ). However, all around us, it seems to be all
Sibelius. Most Music Technology and Music Education stores sell both, but only seem to push SIbelius. The nearest Music Education store regularly promotes Sibelius in their literature and technology training days (and the other Sibelius - linked products like Auralia). They are quite happy to sell you Finale products, but you usually have to ask specifically.
Finale is close to dead I think the secondary-school educational market here in Australia, Notepad notwithstanding. Sibelius has won the battle there: and I can tell this from marking/judging student compositions from around the place.
Partly this is because the Australian distributors of Finale have employed a part-time Sibelius advocate/tech support who is outstanding.
[snip]
I am probably going to have to buy a copy of Sibelius soon, just so that our school can cater for students who already have this package at home and are more used to it. If a student from our school goes to a shop without talking to me first, they always seem to be directed to Sibelius.
I have done the same thing at Sydney Uni - the majority of students I deal with use Sibelius, until they do our Music Publishing course which is based upon Finale. I too get the "why don't you teach Sibelius instead" comments on a regular basis. From talking to the students, a sizeable proportion of them use cracked versions of Sibelius, which, being more powerful than Finale Notepad, yields them better results. While Finale Notepad is free, so are cracked versions of Sibelius.
It is great to be able to tell students to download Finale Notepad though. For a lot of them, it's all they need anyway. And those who have bought the AUS$299 education priced Finale certainly seem to be happy enough.
You (and I) might stick to Finale, but I don't think you are the typical education user (you make your own fonts for goodness sake!). The average B.Mus/B.Ed from UNSW or Sydney or Newcastle or the Crematorium are still not greatly technology savvy (or interested) and will go with the marketing flow.
Well, that's right, but for the time being, the Music and Music Ed students at Sydney Uni (and Melbourne Uni as well) will be using Finale for their coursework. So there's still going to be a few bastions around the place for a little while longer.
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