OpEd: Thoughts on the end of Finale.

[benwiggy]

This post is divided into two parts: whimsical musings on the past; and practical suggestions for the future.


Finale never really survived the move to Colorado in 2014. There were significant lay-offs, and a lot of the talent didn't want to move 1000 miles away. Some, like Mark Adler, stayed to complete and handover in-house tasks, and then retired or moved on. Familiar staff members like Michael Johnson, and Yvonne Grover are no longer with the company. Michael Good, the creator of MusicXML, has also retired. Gary Garritan may or may not still be Director of "instrument sciences", but he doesn't live in Bolder, and there's been nothing from that side of the company for eight years. Some experiences hands did stay the course, however.

Even before that, the Finale 2012 release was somewhat underwhelming in its array of features and fixes. It marked the start of a near decade of "under-the-hood" improvements, which brought very little to the user, other than keeping their heads above the rising waters of progress, with Unicode support and the transition to 64-bit. We're very lucky that we got a build for Apple Silicon.

I was shown a beta of the SMuFL Maestro font, with libraries and FinaleScript converters, in 2015. SMuFL support eventually made it into Finale six years later; and represented almost the only significant new feature in a decade.

There were some signs of life with the introduction of slur/artic collision avoidance; though the implementation was not without problems for 'legacy files' -- that bane of Finale development.

But the problems go back even further: Even in 2010, Forums were full of users complaining about MM's sluggish development pace; the lack of bug-fixes. Suggestions were made that the biennial release was an unrealistic arbitrary deadline. I was one of several users who wrote a campaign of letters to the then CEO, Jeff Koch.

A recent Facebook post by a former MM staffer suggests that there were already problems with the state of the code before 2010, and that the ready technical solution -- to start a new product from scratch at that point -- was ruled out as commercially impossible.

I wrote a previous article on this forum in 2019, suggesting that Finale was all but dead. In hindsight, it's amazing it held out this long.

WHAT TO DO NOW

The problem, of course, has been that every Finale file you save gives you another reason to keep using Finale. 36 years is a long time -- the best part of most people's careers -- and for a publishing company, it represents thousands of projects.

You can continue to use Finale, and many will choose to put a computer “in stasis” for this task: never to be updated in hardware or software. But old OS versions are vulnerable to security issues; and old hardware is a single point of vulnerability. (I once worked for a publishing company whose entire operation depended on an ageing Beige Mac, which ran a bespoke database on Classic MacOS, as late as 2008. The man who created it had left the company. One day, the machine stopped...)

Virtual Machines are a good option, but really, they should still be seen as a sticking plaster, rather than “business as usual”.

There is a fundamental fragility to digital formats -- particularly those that are proprietary and undocumented. While I don't begrudge commercial companies their right to keep it under their hat; open, documented formats are clearly to be preferred. However, even they are no guarantee -- someone still has to write a utility to parse them correctly.

PDF files provide a decent, permanent asset for displaying online or printing. (Indeed, many publishers are still printing their pre-digital back-catalogue from digital scans of printed pages.)

Limited editing to each PDF page can be made in software like Affinity Publisher or Acrobat; but you can't reflow measures onto new systems. Exporting to XML is essential, as the lifeboat for your data, even if you have no immediate plans to do anything with it.

Someone's created a video about batch-exporting XML from Finale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdpykIdXZBk
(TL;DR: XML options has a checkbox to include subfolders.)

Migrating the digital data to another app -- whatever it is -- will require additional work. It's probably best to consider these "new editions", rather than continuation of the same thing.

In 30 years, I dare say we'll be trying to move our digital files away from Dorico and MuseScore to the next thing. Luckily, those apps have much more detailed data structures — Dorico for instance, stores Figured Bass as Figured Bass, not as a custom Chord Suffix or Lyric. Hopefully, in those days, we'll have much greater help from technology.

[John Ruggero]

Enterprising entrepreneurs take note: on Farewell Finale Day, Aug. 26, 2024, a new industry was born: Finale file migration and cleanup.

[benwiggy]

Yes: I dare say "give me your Finale files and I'll return a Dorico one" could be lucrative.

[benwiggy]

And indeed, a copy called (ironically) Coda Scores has just started advertising this service on Finale and Dorico forums.

[John Ruggero]

Just saw that and was about to post. Proof that while old computer programs may fade away, the enprepreneurial spirit will never die.

[Coda Scores]

Thanks so much for noticing us! We've also posted on this forum thanks to someone kindly alerting us to its existence!

[Harpsichordmaker]

I am reading a lot of complaints for the Finale shutdown, and on the Facebook often they take the form if a grieving loss: one has written: “I’ve been dumped after 27 years, now my work of 27 years is lost forever.” it seems excessive to me, but then it occurred to me that in fact I don’t know the specifics of professional engraving work, as I only do it for personal use or for 3-4 books by me or by friends who asked a help.
So I ask: is there any necessity to actually have the source files readily available after a works has been finished? I mean, isn’t enough to save it in xml and in pdf for re-printing when needed? How often has a professional the need to re-open an old file to revise it thoroughly? Small touches can be done in the pdf itself.

[Fred G. Unn]

So I ask: is there any necessity to actually have the source files readily available after a works has been finished?

What does "finished" even mean? The top Broadway shows now can run for 25 years, plus touring productions, a zillion cast changes, pop orchestra versions of the hits, etc. Film music needs to be revised for sequels and standalone concerts. Even in Jazz, I've had to take something I've recorded and years later simplify it for the educational market when I've had performance/masterclass gigs. Certainly "finished" is not really a concept in those genres.

From 2010ish to 2016 I had a client who is a very well-known vocalist who had a huge worldwide pop orchestra tour spanning several years. The logistics on this were insane and I think I had hired 20 different copyists at various points of the gig. The night before she was to perform at the Obama White House she caught a cold and couldn't reliably hit the high note at the end of one of her most famous songs. I got a call from her musical director at 11pm and stayed up most of the night transposing and reorchestrating it before the morning rehearsal. (String parts obviously can't simply be transposed down as formerly open strings aren't any more, can't write low F#s for violins, etc.)

I certainly would have been even more stressed if I had to convert the file, proofread everything, and make necessary corrections, before starting the transposition/orchestration work. This sort of stuff is certainly routine in the Broadway world, as a new cast member who joins 20 years into the run might prefer a different key, etc. "Finished" just isn't really a concept in certain genres, so it is a huge problem.

[Harpsichordmaker]

Thanks Fred, now I see what’s the problem with not being able to edit one’s old files. I don’t know anything about musicals movies etc. as I only work with music approximately 1600-1799, which doesn’t need much revision once finished and printed.

[OCTO]

Well put, benwiggy.

I think... I need to go through all my Finale scores, proofread, fix mistakes, and create the final PDF scores/parts.  Not that I am afraid I will not be able to open, but I am afraid I will forget all the commands and workarounds.  Sadly, I am using Sibelius now.