On Oct 17, 2007, at 7:54 AM, Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
[some excellent commentary snipped]
Then there's the question of other revenue streams from the same product. Both S~ and Finale bring in money from the flagship product, but in addition to this, MakeMusic has the additional revenue from the other members of the family, for which S~ does not have analogous products.
Not exactly true. Our school uses their Auralia ear training software, which is quite good for basic training (except for jazz rhythms). I can recommend it for music schools. I think they have other things out there, but I am not familiar with them.
Lastly, I see an issue of price. I wonder how many would be considering a switch to S~ if you had to pay full price. I also wonder why Sibelius feels the need to offer a price to a substantial part of their market to offer their product for such a low cost.
[snip]
I don't mean to suggest that S~ is going out of business, but one has to wonder about the low price on their product, even if it is temporary.
They aren't idiots. They can smell the discontent and bad word-of- mouth over Finale, and they are striking while they see a weakness. If they can gut Finale's professional usership, even at a loss, that will work out well for them in the long run.
For all we know, Finale is going to come roaring out of the gates in 2009 with its best product yet, which it has been working on for years. But they play such a close hand that we never know what is up next.
When I was first about to buy a computer (to run Finale on, no less!) I was waffling between PC and Mac. I phoned up Finale tech support to ask which was best for a new user, and she hemmed and hawed. Two days later, I got an excited phone call back from the tech person I had spoken to. She had traced my number to call me specifically and tell me that the announcement was made today, that the Power Mac native version of Finale was shipping, and it beat the pants off the Windows version of the same vintage in terms of speed. She couldn't tell me that two days ago when I specifically asked, but she was triumphant about making a special call to me once she was allowed to say it! (Of course, I bought a Power Mac!)
They seem to be working the same way nowadays. Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
