The End of Finale: What It Means for Musicians

What Are Your Options Now?

We've helped dozens of musicians migrate their scores since the announcement. The three main alternatives are:

• Dorico — MakeMusic's own recommended successor. Known for its automatic engraving and layout capabilities, including powerful features like condensing, allowing composers to focus more on their creativity and less on formatting. Steinberg offered a crossgrade discount for Finale users.
• Sibelius — The other long-standing professional option. Familiar interface for many working composers and arrangers. Available as a subscription or perpetual license.
• MuseScore — Free and open-source. MuseScore 4 has improved significantly and handles most notation tasks well. A solid choice if you don't need advanced publishing features.

What About Your Existing Finale Files?

Finale's .musx files don't open directly in other software. You'll need to export them as MusicXML—the universal exchange format—and import into your new program. The catch? MusicXML doesn't carry over everything. Layout, articulation positioning, custom expressions, and page formatting often break in translation.

For a handful of files, the export-import process is manageable with some cleanup. But if you've got a large catalogue of scores—say, a publisher's backlist or a composer's full portfolio—that's where professional music engraving saves serious time. We re-engrave scores in the target software so nothing gets lost.

Beyond file conversion, we also offer music transcription, transposition, and a full range of sheet music services.