MuseScore — create, edit and learn
This article was published to be a reference to other articles about business processes, monetization, company culture, to tell you more about MuseScore itself.
Musescore is a music notation software available on MAC, Windows and Linux comparable to Sibelius and Finale, besides one crucial advantage: Musescore editor is free. It is also paired with the online community on musescore.com, where users can share and discuss scores. Furthermore, it is paired with a mobile application, where one can play or practice any score from musescore.com or one’s own work. Last but not least, Musescore has the unique quality of being open source software. Therefore, the improvements are made and prioritized according to the suggestions coming directly from the community. The updates are being released as quickly as every 2 weeks.
Musescore software supports a variety of different input methods and formats. It includes everything that is commonly used in sheet music: automatic transposition, midi input and output, unlimited staves, lyrics, linking and the extraction of parts and many more. Moreover, a free Musescore Drumline extension was designed specifically for marching percussion, including templates, realistic playback, and sticking as a recent major improvement.
Since 2014 Musescore has a mobile app available for iOS and Android, that is linked with the Musescore score sharing website. The app is not only a score viewer with a playback, allowing transposition and part extraction, but also has a Practice Mode feature. The latter is designed specifically to play along, adjusting the speed and being able to loop a particular part of the score.
Musescore was originally created by German developer and musician Werner Schweer, together with Nicolas Froment and Thomas Bonte. Musescore.org was launched in 2008, while the first stable Musescore software version was released in 2009. In 2017, Musescore was acquired by Ultimate Guitar. Since then Musescore has shared the benefits of Ultimate Guitar’s successful model of working with large and independent music publishers. Such advantage contributes to the mission of making Musescore world’s number one destination for legally licensed sheet music.
Music is a powerful thing. It makes us all better people; it connects us to each other. It makes the good times better and the bad times a little less painful. I want to empower the MuseScore community to build the platform and create the content that will allow everyone to have music affect them the way it already moves those of us who are here today.
Eugeny Naidenov, Ultimate Guitar founder
Musescore is planned to remain open source software, as well as to continue to be free. The major change after the acquisition is that now there is a full-time development team working on implementing the suggestions coming from the community. The improvements and updates for Musescore desktop and mobile products are released faster and more efficiently than ever before. In June 2019, Musescore 3.2 was released with many new features and improvements.
If you want to learn more about the digital music industry, MuseScore business practices, apps, monetization, and much more, stay tuned for our next articles.
