On 4/20/2018 7:13 PM, Craig Parmerlee wrote: > I take your point that they "could" do some of the abstraction that is > inherent in the newer programs. I am not seeing anything that suggests > to me they are at all interested in matching up to Dorico. Indeed, the > only recent statements I could find were very much oriented to > SmartMusic and not Finale. If they actually are making a significant > investment in the program (which I question), I suggest it would be wise > for them to take note of the major advances in the past 2 years in both > Dorico and Sibelius, and communicate much more openly with the Finale > user base. > [snip]
Back when Coda was the owner and Finale was the major product, they knew they had to keep communicating with users and work hard to keep the program growing in order to satisfy their user base and attract new users. But with virtually no competition in the Windows area at that time they were the program that any newcomer had to beat. With the various owners the product has had along the way, coupled with the development of a new cash-cow (smartmusic) Finale has been pushed aside somewhat, seemingly more with each new owner, and improved mainly so that it could create more and better smartmusic accompaniments in addition to producing publication-ready engraved music. To that end, whoever owned the program worked to improve the program in obvious ways again to keep the user base somewhat satisfied and also in an attempt to attract new users but mainly to benefit the SmartMusic marketplace. But the current owners are not musicians, they were not involved in the music field at all before the acquisition of Finale and SmartMusic. Their athletic-training background sees a good fit for SmartMusic since it's a training software, just for musicians instead of athletes. And so Finale tags along because without it there can't be any new SmartMusic accompaniments created. But Finale upgrades generate an unpredictable amount of income and then only when the new version comes out -- once it's out and those who will upgrade have done so, there's very little cash-flow in the product. Especially with the less-expensive (free) but very capable MuseScore attracting ever larger numbers of people who formerly would have had to purchase either Finale or Sibelius (i.e. music students and recent graduates of music schools/colleges), Finale's market share among notation software users is constantly shrinking. And with the entry of Dorico at the truly professional music engraving level the potential user base is diluted even further and the recent entry of Forte and Notion is attracting those potential users who don't want to spend a lot of money and who formerly would have purchased the cheaper versions of Finale. But SmartMusic remains the only product of its kind and it has major educational market music publishers sewn up. With the annual subscription the only business model and schools willing to budget for it so that teachers have clearly objective ways of measuring student ability (there's no disputing when SmartMusic records a student's performance and gives a concrete number of mistakes), it is a golden cash-cow. We have to remember that in the early days of Finale when Coda was run by musicians who cared about making a product that could serve them as well as the user base the thrust of the company was to make a product that filled a need. These days when the company is no longer run by musicians but instead by accountants and entrepreneurs for whom the bottom line is the most important attribute of a product, the product isn't being made to fulfill their dream of usefulness, only to fulfill their dream of larger profits. So as long as SmartMusic remains profitable and as long as Finale is the only way to create SmartMusic accompaniments, Finale will remain viable to the company but not a great income generator in and of itself. If it were a larger income generator it wouldn't be getting sold every few years. -- ***** David H. Bailey [email protected] http://www.davidbaileymusicstudio.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: [email protected]
