The Finale Copypocalypse 2: Mob Justice

Whelp, that was quick. This week, MakeMusic announced that no, they would not be including what was to be a flagship feature of the latest edition of Finale: the ability to apply optical character recognition to a PDF. The details, as always, at Sibelius Blog.

For some reason, any mention of the word “copyright” seems to end all reasonable discussion on a topic. I don’t know how we got to this point, but it’s alarmingly common. As soon as Famous Creator says the word “copyright,” their fans dutifully line up behind them. It’s instantly asymmetrical. MakeMusic can’t say “nope” to copyright, and anybody else siding with MakeMusic is easily branded a Free Culture hippie. I shared my thoughts on the matter last week.

I still believe that the vast majority of the loudest voices opposing music OCR in Finale fundamentally misunderstand the technology. It makes me both sad and angry that a fearful Internet mob can halt the distribution of a useful technology.[1] However, in a conversation with one of the leading anti-OCR composers[2] earlier today, I was assured that at least some of the agitators do understand the tech.

Still, I am a person of science, as much as a person who has no formal study of science after high school can be. I try as much as possible to construct opinions empirically. And, I contend that there is no evidence that music OCR has any significant impact on anybody’s income. Note that I’m using the present tense here. This isn’t a hypothetical. We can actually look at what people are doing with it now.

Having said all that, this thoughtful composer, whose music I value highly, reminded me of crucial detail. MakeMusic/Finale has a rather cozy deal with “the world’s largest educational music publisher” (just ask them) Alfred Music. Alfred does not want to get into any fights with composers and does not want to let people scan music to use with SmartScore that it could sell them a second or third or fourth copy to use with SmartScore.

So maybe, the bigger problem than technology misunderstandings, intellectual property norms, or social media mobs, is that the software companies that we rely on to develop the tools on which we build our careers, don’t need us nearly as much as we need them. There are lovely folks working on the teams developing Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico. And all of them have bosses at MakeMusic, Avid, and Steinberg, who are not likely to make decisions based solely—or even primarily—on what is best for the weirdo composers using their software.[3]