David W. Fenton wrote:
On 14 Oct 2006 at 6:13, dhbailey wrote:
[snip]
As more layers of management get added at the top, local control gets
lost. As overall corporate focus shifts, development dollars get
moved from one department to another. Look at Finale and Smartmusic
Wasn't SmartMusic developed by the same team responsible for Finale?
I don't know which team developed it -- it is my understanding that the
two teams are different these days.
-- MakeMusic looks on Smartmusic as the big money-earner, not Finale.
Sure, the razor blade model. But MM has made SmartMusic and Finale
work together, so the existence of SmartMusic increases the market
for Finale (i.e., if you want to create SM accompaniments, Finale
provides you the tools, no?).
Yes, Finale provides the tools. And in the razor-blade example, you
can't use YOUR original finale-generated Smartmusic accompaniments
until/unless you pay the SmartMusic annual subscription fee, which also
grants you access to their vast library of files, so they are charging
you to use your own copyrightable materials. I know this isn't germane
to the discussion at hand, but it really bothers me that I can't use a
tool which I have paid dearly for (Finale) to create a file type which
is a basic part of that tool (a smartmusic accompaniment file) in an
application which MakeMusic gives away for free as part of my annual
Finale upgrade (SmartMusic) without paying the company a royalty, of
which they will never pay me a penny. Somehow that sounds very much
like a legal case to be fought but I certainly haven't the wherewithal
to fight it.
And Finale hasn't innovated anything other than the inclusion of GPO
since it introduced Staff Styles (something Sibelius still hasn't come
up with) -- all the rest of the improvements to Finale have come in
response to Sibelius improvements.
Yep, that's true, but that may have more to do with the fact that
Finale was already a mature product when Sibelius was introduced.
I'm not sure how the maturity of Finale matters, since Finale seems to
jump on every major feature Sibelius has introduced as soon as it was
introduced. Why couldn't Finale's development team have originated
those features (most of which have been begged for on this list for
years) and made Sibelius' developers have to jump through hoops to keep
up with Finale?
And nobody seems to ever criticize Sibelius for matching Finale
features (GPO anyone?).
Actually, Sibelius introduced sample playback via Kontakt BEFORE Finale
did. It was only after Sibelius had included Kontakt Silver as a
high-quality-sample playback engine (with Kontakt Gold available as an
increased-feature, extra-cost add-on) that Finale leapfrogged Sibelius
simply by changing the sample set they included with the Kontakt
playback engine. Sibelius offers GPO as an extra-cost add-on only. So
Sibelius users aren't forced to pay for it if they don't want to use it.
Finale users have no choice.
I'm not sure there are any other Finale-only features (as opposed to
music-notation-program-features in general) which Sibelius has copied.
When MakeMusic was THE product of
a company called Coda, it was the main focus and got all the
development dollars. No longer. The same may well happen with
Sibelius.
But it's *good* that MM is diversified, and in a way that increases
revenues and gets new buyers for Finale.
That would be an interesting fact to research, although I'm not sure how
it could be done. One would think that such would be the case, but the
vast majority of SmartMusic users are school music teachers who haven't
got the time to create their own SmartMusic accompaniments -- they use
the program for the large library of files which MakeMusic has made
available via subscription. And I'll be that many of these school
computers which have SmartMusic on them also have Sibelius as the
notation program since Sibelius has much greater school penetration than
Finale does. But again I don't know how that contention would be
researched either, so it can easily remain a contention I can't really
back up except by anecdotal evidence gathered mostly from this list.
[snip]
And given recent discussion on this list, this would be a *bad*
thing? Wouldn't a sequencer with Sibelius-quality notational output
be a Finale killer?
It would be as long as all those who use Sibelius for engraving mostly
and playback only for proof-listening (there are many on the Sibelius
list who are a lot like many on the Finale list who are
engravers/arrangers/composers predominantly and not the sort of
performers who want a sequencer program at all beyond what the notation
program already has for midi-entry.
And I don't think I would like that at any rate, since the appearance of
a Finale-killer would sicken me beyond belief -- I own Sibelius but I
would dread the day it remains as the only major notation program
available, since I don't like using it.
So whatever happens to Sibelius, it won't be an intentional killing
off, but just look at what's happened with Encore, which used to be
actually a major and very real competitor to Finale. If Encore ever
regains any market share it'll be a miracle. For the sake of Finale
improvement over the years, since it seems to improve only when kicked
in the ass by Sibelius, all of us Finale users need to pray that the
same fate doesn't await Sibelius.
I think these companies are too small to predict what will happen.
Agreed.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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