David wrote:
Hmm -- I was under the impression that a subscription just allowed you to use the files for a limited time, not download them and use them forever. What would keep a band director from having a couple of high school computer geek students simply such down all the smartmusic accompaniments in a short subscription and then never renew the subscription again?
A subscription gives you a license of limited duration to use the SmartMusic Studio, which you have to have to use the SmartMusic music files. At the moment, Makemusic! provides a large number of Smartmusic Files for free with the subscription, and I have run across a few third parties who also offer smartmusic files. Long term I look for much wider availability of SmartMusic files from third parties, or from MakeMusic!, but you will have to buy the files. In order to use them, you will still have to have an active subscription to the Studio. Sort of like the razor / razor blade analogy. You not only buy the razor (once, or infrequently) you regularly go back for more razor blades, and while you get (or at least you did the next to last time I purchased a razor) a limited number of free blades, when you need more you have to buy them.
I have held off on getting a subscription for that reason -- I don't want to have to keep renewing to use what I've paid for, and something on the web-site lead me to believe that the accompaniments don't become your files to use after your subscription ends. Maybe it's the program which won't run anymore, rendering your downloaded files worthless, unless they can be opened in Finale2005. Hmmm, maybe I'll investigate further!
You really need to read the license agreements more carefully when you install your software. Neither in the case of the SmartMusic Studio, nor in the case of Finale, have you purchased the software. Rather, for a one-time fee, you have acquired a non-exclusive right to use the software that MakeMusic! owns. Through 2k4, the fee was a one-time permanent fee, and there was little enforcement of any restrictions that existed with the license. With 2k4, MakeMusic! imposed restrictions on that license, limiting registered users of single user licenses to at most two registered installations. It is not difficult at all for me to envision MakeMusic implementing further restrictions on licenses up to, and including a drop-dead scheme at some point, under which that, and future versions of Finale will stop functioning after a certain elapsed time after installation.
Which gets back to the annual subscription model for Finale -- I pay my annual fee in ordering the upgrades but if the program ever makes itself a "renew by such-and-such a date or you won't be able to run it" program I'll be stuck on the current non-subscription version until it just won't work for me anymore and then I'll be using Sibelius full time, with all its warts (assuming it isn't also a subscription model.)
and the problem with this position, is, IMO, that no more than two versions after one of these two goes to a shorter forced renewal period, (they are both subscription models already) the other will follow suit.
This movement is already under way. I see frequent ads from major software vendors about the value of their new software where only the data resides on your computer, and the program itself is invoked from an on-line, off-site source. The only significant reason to use such a model is to invoke a shorter term mandatory renewal scheme, IMO.
ns
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