Musicians to lose Finale notation app after 35 years
Mac and Windows notation app Finale has been used by musicians since Macs had nine-inch black and white screens, but now its developer is shutting it down and directing users to alternatives.
Finale music notation software
No app for writing music scores and notation would ever have become exactly mainstream. But Finale's passionate users have been talking about the app on the AppleInsider forums since at least 2002.
"Today, Finale is no longer the future of the notation industry -- a reality after 35 years, and I want to be candid about this," writes Greg Dell'Era, president of the MakeMusic development company. "Instead of releasing new versions of Finale that would offer only marginal value to our users, we've made the decision to end its development."
"While Finale development has come to an end, we know your musical journey has not," continued Dell'Era. "I want to sincerely express our warm and deep gratitude to all of our loyal and passionate users."
That development of Finale began in the 1980s, and the first version came out in 1988. It required a Mac Plus, Macintosh SE, or Macintosh II, and preferred those Macs to have 1.5MB of RAM.
To put this in historical context, Finale soon gained a competitor whose name is better known today -- but whose original function is forgotten. Apple's current digital audio workstation app Logic Pro began as the third-party Notator Logic in 1990, and was a rival scoring app.
Dell'Era says that over four decades since then, the constant development of the app has resulted in millions of lines of code. Making more than incremental improvements has become exponentially harder.
As of now, then, neither Finale nor its related PrintMusic app can be bought. Existing users can continue using the app, and until August 25, 2025, will also be able to re-download it.
After that date, the software will not be downloadable even for existing users, nor will there be any support. It will not be possible to authorize Finale after installing it on a new computer.
MakeMusic and Dell'Era are recommending that users migrate to Finale's major rival, Dorico Pro. Normally Dorico Pro 5 retails for $579, but users of any version of Finale or PrintMusic can buy it for $149.
Read on AppleInsider
Finale music notation software
No app for writing music scores and notation would ever have become exactly mainstream. But Finale's passionate users have been talking about the app on the AppleInsider forums since at least 2002.
"Today, Finale is no longer the future of the notation industry -- a reality after 35 years, and I want to be candid about this," writes Greg Dell'Era, president of the MakeMusic development company. "Instead of releasing new versions of Finale that would offer only marginal value to our users, we've made the decision to end its development."
"While Finale development has come to an end, we know your musical journey has not," continued Dell'Era. "I want to sincerely express our warm and deep gratitude to all of our loyal and passionate users."
That development of Finale began in the 1980s, and the first version came out in 1988. It required a Mac Plus, Macintosh SE, or Macintosh II, and preferred those Macs to have 1.5MB of RAM.
To put this in historical context, Finale soon gained a competitor whose name is better known today -- but whose original function is forgotten. Apple's current digital audio workstation app Logic Pro began as the third-party Notator Logic in 1990, and was a rival scoring app.
Dell'Era says that over four decades since then, the constant development of the app has resulted in millions of lines of code. Making more than incremental improvements has become exponentially harder.
As of now, then, neither Finale nor its related PrintMusic app can be bought. Existing users can continue using the app, and until August 25, 2025, will also be able to re-download it.
After that date, the software will not be downloadable even for existing users, nor will there be any support. It will not be possible to authorize Finale after installing it on a new computer.
MakeMusic and Dell'Era are recommending that users migrate to Finale's major rival, Dorico Pro. Normally Dorico Pro 5 retails for $579, but users of any version of Finale or PrintMusic can buy it for $149.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
I've looked at Dorico. It's not trivial to learn, especially when one has to unlearn how things are done in Finale. Also, having decades of Finale files, they can't easily be converted to MusicXML and imported into any other notation program flawlessly; it's good, but not foolproof. The free MuseScore is very much underpowered for many of us who use Finale or Dorico. So I'm in a conundrum; I have a recent MBA that should be able to keep running Finale (assuming no forthcoming macOS incompatibilities) for many years, and that is likely how I will continue to function. But it's pretty shabby for the company that owns Finale (MakeMusic) to leave us long-time and recent users alike in the lurch, with a sudden announcement and only a year before the app is no longer able to be authorized if a user has to transfer to a new computer. Surprised it is not being sold to another company to develop, or at least open-sourced. If the company merely unlocked it as of August, 2025, then if still compatible with macOS releases in the future, one could reasonably use Finale for many years, buggy or not, on a new Mac or Windows machine. That is somewhat irresponsible, at least in my mind.
Switching notation package is horrendous, and it takes a long time to get good at a new one, but I am pleased that Finale have at least negotiated a good cross-grade deal so that the pain is at least primarily one of time rather than financial also. The Dorico team at Steinberg are excellent, and anyone who switches to the application will find them accessible and responsive. I understand for the Finale users this is a tough pill, but at least you will find yourselves in good hands with Dorico.
For similar reasons it may be impossible to release a ‘sunset’ edition it’s very probable that they have third party licensed code or libraries which require periodic fees.
It’s very stupid but copyright law can make it prohibitively expensive or far too hard to allow software like Finale to continue vs forcing a hard end date.
Been trying the free version of Dorico, and having followed it for some time, I am very much aware it is better software overall (Finale was underwhelming over the past few years in terms of updates) and has a very responsive team of developers and managers. But it is painfully hard for me to conform to its way of doing things. Just like I found Numbers not very useful for me personally compared with Excel, or various databases compared with Access. When you get to know a particular application, especially one as feature-packed as either Finale or Dorico, it's quite hard to make the switch. Compounding matters: many of us have a lot of recent and older Finale files, and sometimes we do need to go back to them and tweak them or use them to record audio; converting all of them to MusicXML is not the ideal solution. So I likely will try a virtual machine and use that for many years to come. Not perfect either, but at least it's future-proofed.
As large and complex as such a thing is, it may actually be easier to document how it is meant to function, and rewrite from scratch: maybe. That’s not without risks, because the best set of tests one can come up with will almost certainly miss things users have counted on, breaking their files. New crashing/hanging bugs may also be introduced due to an imperfect understanding. And something of that complexity, even with a complete set of tests (you hope!) won’t be fully functional for a very long time.