On 11/20/2013 9:07 PM, terry cano wrote: > This is my opinion only guys. > I can happily do my projects in F2008 and you can also. Yes, there are some > additions that would be nice but the fact is we are dealing with a system, > music notation, that was created many years ago and hasn't changed > significantly. Finale, Sibelius and now Steinberg give most of us the tools > we need. And the fact is that notation is becoming less important with > younger pop musicians. So the market is shrinking. > As already stated companies have to make the stock holder happy. I remember > Dick Grove once said to > "your success as a composer or arranger/producer is not being made by someone > that understands creativity or even like music, it is being made by a bean > counter." > I sincerely feel we are at the start gloomy period for Finale. I also hope > I'm wrong. > Musically, > Terry
In any tech business, if you sit still, you lose ground. And you correctly identified some specific reasons for that in the notation business. The only way to counter that is to evolve the product to have substantially greater value for the existing customer base or to make the product attractive to new customers -- ideally both. There is absolutely no question that there is a body of potential customers who would like to use computer notation, but the products have such a steep learning curve that they give up. We all know people like that. Offhand I can immediately think of 15 fellow musicians that meet that description. And curiously, about 1/3 of them have purchased a Finale or Sibelius release sometime in the past and given up. If they aren't buying upgrades, they aren't helping the product move forward. And there is another body of users who are very tech savvy and would use notation, but work primarily in the DAW space. Many of these people spend hundreds -- even thousands of dollars every year on VSTs and other software. Many of them would drop hundreds on a notation product if it fit into their world. Without reaching one or both of those markets, I have to agree with your assessments. But those customers are reachable by a supplier who understands that we don't have to stop once we have perfected the emulation of quill and parchment. Will it be Finale and their intrepid base of loyal, long-term users or will it be somebody else? That is the question, I believe. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
