Users Unite To Save Sibelius; Avid Still ‘Deeply Committed’

Users around the world are uniting to “Save Sibelius“, the best-selling music notation software that has been in public limbo since parent company Avid announced plans to downsize.

In July, Avid split off its consumer-focused brands, including M-Audio, and sold them to inMusic. Avid also announced that it was closing the Sibelius offices in Finsbury Park, London, where the notation software was developed and maintained.

Since then, users have been speculating about the future of an app many have large investments of time and money in.

Users have valid reasons to be concerned.

As of the end of July, Sibelius’ UK office is closed. Avid is in the middle of a major reorganization.

And addressing user worries may not be as pressing as Sibelius fans might hope, since the application’s primary competitor, Finale, is caught up in some major corporate changes of its own.

Sibelius Users – a group of ‘users and former developers of the music notation software, Sibelius’ – have organized to take action. They’ve created a website and social media presence to encourage users to voice their worries.

“We are concerned at the threats to its very existence following the recent decision by its parent company, Avid, to radically transform its main programming operation,” notes the organization.

They seem to have struck a nerve – their Facebook page has already amassed over 8,000 followers.

For its part, Avid has stated its ongoing commitment to Sibelius.

“Avid is deeply committed to developing Sibelius moving forward,” according to Avid VP Martin Kloiber. “Our plan is to integrate Sibelius development more closely with the rest of Avid’s audio development teams in California, and I’m confident we can leverage our innovative development teams and continue to raise the bar in the future.”

“We soon hope to be able to share more specifics as we continue with the transition. We appreciate everyone’s patience until we are able to make those announcements.”

If you’re a Sibelius user, let us know what you think of the platform’s current state – and what you think the best hope is for its future.

via Nick Dynice

9 thoughts on “Users Unite To Save Sibelius; Avid Still ‘Deeply Committed’”

  1. “Our plan is to integrate Sibelius development more closely with the rest of Avid’s audio development teams in California..” That would be the Chennai region of Calif would it? Lying gits.

  2. Does anyone know the status of tech support, maintenance updates, and compatibility with Mt. Lion?

    I just got Sibelius 7 and am about to commit some time to learning it.

  3. Sounds like they are determined to run Sibelius into the ground just like they did with M-Audio…I used to work at M-audio and the Avid reign was a comedy of errors reminiscent of Office Space…

  5. With a few more caes like this (and we already have the examples like Sounddiver, Logic etc.), maybe more people start to realize that Open Source software isn’t only about getting something for free but about sustainability and the freedom to develop software further (or let someone else do it). even or especially when it is abandoned by its original makers.

  6. It is a bit surprising that Avid is having trouble– but given the above comments, I guess a company can’t rely on a big user base alone to be successful. I hope they can learn from their mistakes and improve.

  7. Full Sail uses this, and they buy crap tons of copies of the student version. Thousands every year, even if they got a super discount at say $100 each (unrealistic but eh), thats still a lot of money they get, so I really dont see why they are giving up on it. I am sure other music schools require it too.

  8. It does not really mather if the product makes money or what the user base think. Avid has always cared about 2 products pro tools and Media Composer. Over the years the company has made many aquisition and most of them resulted in the dismiss of the original team and the integration of a subset of the functionality into the above products and at best for a few applications the company kept a minimal amount of developement to milk the user base as long as possible without making any meaningful investement (a good example is Avid DS).

    Good look but if I was in need of a long term option for a notation sw, I would start looking for alternatives

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