Finale Notation Software Ends Development After 35 Years

Finale's parent company has endorsed Dorico as a replacement, and will offer its users a substantial discount on Dorico Pro

Finale, a notation software run by MakeMusic, has announced that the program will be discontinued. When it was first released in 1983, Finale was a revolutionary piece of software, and by the year 2000 the program was dominating the scorewriter market — alongside its competitor, Sibelius.

First authored by Phil Farrand and John Borowicz, Finale won the prize for Best Book/Video/Software at the 2015 Music & Sound Awards.

However, MakeMusic's current President, Greg Dell'Era, noted that Finale is no longer at the cutting edge of the notation industry, and said that he would prefer to wind the program up than go on offering increasingly less useful updates to it.

In place of Finale, Dell'Era and MakeMusic are endorsing Dorico, a younger competitor to Finale and Sibelius that was first released in October 2016. Dorico's team boasts a number of developers who were laid off in a corporate restructuring of Sibelius in 2012.

The program claims to have a straightforward and intuitive interface, as well as offering aesthetically beautiful scores.

MakeMusic has partnered with Steinberg, Dorico's parent company, to offer a Dorico Pro discount to current Finale users. For a limited time, these users can purchase a Dorico Pro subscription for just $149 (it usually costs $579). You can find out more here.

"Four decades is a very long time in the software industry," said Greg Dell'Era. "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."

"While Finale development has come to an end, we know your musical journey has not. I want to sincerely express our warm and deep gratitude to all of our loyal and passionate users. Our entire organization thanks you for your trust, and we believe you have a bright new phase of creativity, productivity, and efficiency ahead with Dorico."