On 3 Oct 2009 at 8:18, Aaron Sherber wrote: > I think I wouldn't mind > all of this so much if Makemusic just came out and said that they're > switching to a subscription model. I'm not crazy about subscription > models, but it's a more honest description of MM's business practices, > and somehow I don't think I'd grumble so much about shelling out that > $100 each year.
How, exactly, would that work for someone like me? I'm a relatively casual user of Finale (I don't use it every day, though I've done quite a lot of work in it since I first bought it in 1991 at the $250 academic discount -- I was an enrolled NYU grad student at the time, so totally legit), and have purchased only 3 upgrades, Finale 3.52, Finale 97 and Finale 2003 (were I not in the economic doldrums, I would have purchased one of the recent upgrades, keeping with an every 5 years or so schedule). If Finale were a subscription program, would I be paying every year to keep using Finale 2003? Would I pay less each year to keep using it? Or would I not have to pay anything unless I wanted the current version? If the latter, I can't see how this would be any different at all from what you already have. If you want to always have the current version, you pay $99 (or whatever) each year and get the current version. If you don't want to get the current version, you don't pay. Were MM to go to a true subscription model where you paid each year and the software would stop working after the subscription was out (like AV software, for instance, which everyone HATES), then I'd abandon Finale immediately for something else. The only thing that would make that viable is if the price were substantially lower. If, for instance, the yearly subscription were $35, then that wouldn't be so terrible, but it would also be, I think, a huge drop in revenue for MM. I just can't see how there's any other option for MM than the current one as long as they have a revenue and programming model that is structured around yearly releases. In order to switch to a once very 2-3 years release schedule, you've got to know you're going to have a significant revenue stream in the off years, and I don't believe MM is doing so well (from the published financial information) that they have a lot of leeway in that regard. Also, the first such "mega-release" would be harder than the later ones, and also would be under more pressure to have major features. And they'd have to charge a higher price, but surely it couldn't be the more than the price the yearly releases would have cost, or they'd be losing revenue while having higher costs. I just don't see how there's any way for them to get off the treadmill. Finale *users*, on the other hand, can get off the treadmill any time they want. I've for years argued that the knee-jerk upgrade is silly, except for the pro engravers who need to keep up with the current version and need to exchange files with others. I think there are a lot more Finale users who don't have the interoperability problem than there are those who do, so I think most people oughtn't be considering the upgrade very year. In the last five years, there's been a big change in almost all non- free software categories, and that's that many classes of software have reached a level of maturity that there's very little to be gained from upgrading to new versions. The most widely used Windows software, Microsoft Word, is really unchanged in terms of major features from Word 97 on. Sure, lots of small things have been added, and UI tweaked and shuffled, but the Word of today offers almost no significant capabilities that were absent in Word 97. In my opinion, music notation software is reaching that same point. Sibelius's automatic spacing is a great example of a huge feature, but once that's in place (and working reliably), what else is there? Exactly what can be added to music notation software that is not there already that is going to be a major productivity enhancer? Sibelius needs to fix it's slurs (so does Finale), but other than that, what? Because of that, the music notation software package either needs to get better UI or it needs to become significantly faster. I guess one area for Finale would be that page layout could get smarter, but it's such a complicated thing that I'm not sure it's possible without imposing rigid rules. So, I'm just not sure how a company like MM is ever going to be able to muster the resources to do something major like revise the file format so that it can be cross-compatible between versions. That kind of thing is a huge operation, and it results in no new functionality, and it only serves to suppress sales (if you can work with people with later versions, why should you upgrade?). I'm not suggesting that MM decides not to do this because they want to force people into buying, just that the cost/benefit ratio is such that it would put significant downward pressure on their revenue stream. They may very well want to implement something like that, simply because they know it would bring them to parity with their main competition and because it would be a big win for their users (who would be quite happy to have it). But if they are running the spreadsheet scenarios and seeing that X number of current users would upgrade to this new cross- compatible version and then forego upgrades that they might otherwise have purchased in the future, they have no choice but to decide not to do it -- to do otherwise would not be fiduciarily responsible, either to the shareholders, to the employees, nor to all of us users. Would you make a decision that would improve your product, but that could suppress future sales enough to put you out of business? How would that serve any of the stakeholders? Anyway, short of MM being acquired by someone with deep pockets, or being taken private by someone with deep pockets, I think that the status quo is going to remain in place until it becomes untenable (if it ever does). At that point, MM either bites the bullet, or goes out of business. Sorry to ramble, but I just don't think there's anything nefarious or incompetent about the way MM is handling the development of Finale. It's just that these things are hard, and cost a lot of money, and their market is just big enough to make it possible to make the kinds of investments in the codebase that would solve all the problems at once. Incremental improvement is the best we can expect, and really, all that is fair to expect. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
