MakeMusic has announced that, after 35 years, it’s the end of the line for Finale notation software.
Here’s the official statement from MakeMusic President Greg Dell’Era:
“35 years ago, Coda Music Technologies, now MakeMusic, released the first version of Finale, a groundbreaking and user-centered approach to notation software. For over four decades, our engineers and product teams have passionately crafted what would quickly become the gold standard for music notation.
Four decades is a very long time in the software industry. Technology stacks change, Mac and Windows operating systems evolve, and Finale’s millions of lines of code add up. This has made the delivery of incremental value for our customers exponentially harder over time.
Today, Finale is no longer the future of the notation industry—a reality after 35 years, and I want to be candid about this. 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.”
Effective immediately:
- There will be no further updates to Finale, or any of its associated tools (PrintMusic, Notepad, Songwriter).
- It is no longer possible to purchase or upgrade Finale in the MakeMusic eStore.
- Finale will continue to work on devices where it is currently installed (barring OS changes)
- Beginning in August 2025, it will not be possible to authorize Finale on any new devices, or reauthorize Finale.
- Technical support for Finale v27 or any other version of Finale will no longer be available
MakeMusic has partnered with Steinberg to offer a crossgrade discount for Dorico Pro. For a limited time, users of any version of Finale or PrintMusic can purchase Dorico Pro – the highest tier of the product – for $149 (retail price $579).
See the MakeMusic site for details.
It’s been an impressively long run for MakeMusic/Finale. I guess the writing is on the wall though that they’ll work harder and harder for a smaller slice of the pie.
One thing I’ve learned from using Finale, Sibelius, and MuseScore– is that making notation software must be very difficult to do right. None of those programs are particularly easy to use. Finale is powerful, and difficult, but I could always find answers to my user-questions one way or another.
Their choice to pass the ball to Dorico was sensible I think. And the cross-grade is clever– Dorico can take advantage of that big user-base considering their next moves.
They should open source the entire DAW. this is going to destroy countless music archives and projects. why brick wall the software if they are not going to sell it anymore?
Good point. Open source is the answer!
The community could take good care of the software and make sure Finale stays alive for those who want it.
Sort of reminds me about what Steinberg is doing with older versions of Cubase that is still using the dongle. After 2025 sometime – you loose all your upgrade rights and will have to start from scratch. The problem is severe for guys using older Windows OS, like Win 7/64 – they cannot upgrade to newer Cubase. Ok – new OS will be due the next time you build a new music computer… but the old one is still doing its job just fine – so why hurry? The similarities here are Steinberg and a total end of service.
So you’re saying Finale is having its finale?
That’s the issue with closed source proprietary software. There is no legal obligation to provide the source code or maintain their software if it is no longer profitable or they get a new deal. Hundreds of thousands of files are now rendered useless, countless hours of editing will be wasted if one attempts to convert a finale file to MusicXML as crucial parts of editing and formatting will be lost.
I’m happy this happened. It was an inexpensive way to migrate to Dorico which is easier to use and far more capable, at least for my lead sheets. It was also nice that MakeMusic allowed me to install v27 of Finale which has improved musicxml features. I had been using v25. Conversion to xml can be done in one shot if your Finale files are collected in one folder of folders. Opening in Dorico has required minor tweaks, but mostly due to Finale issues that required manual edits. In any case, nothing has been lost and old files don’t need to be redone from scratch.