You probably haven’t heard of it, but the folks who brought Broadway music to life in the pit all woke up with fear this morning when MakeMusic (formerly known as Coda Music Technologies) announced that it was shutting down its music notation program Finale, effective immediately. The company will be selling Dorico, a product of Steinberg, a subsidiary of Yamaha – which also makes a popular music software called Cubase.
MakeMusic will no longer release updates for Finale or its associated tools (PrintMusic, Notepad, Songwriter). Starting in August 2025, it will be impossible to install or authorize Finale on new devices.
The news shocked the industry, where Finale had been the standard for clear, computer-aided music notation for decades. The software also allows users to play back their creations in real time using synthesized instruments. Those who have been in the business for decades may have thousands of files stored in a proprietary Finale format that they need to transfer to a new program.
For the uninitiated, Finale can create the entire score – from the piano/conductor score that the conductor is working with to the individual parts for each instrument in the pit. It allows for quick in-room adjustments – with changes made during rehearsals being incorporated into the pianist’s book the same day. Changes made to previews during rehearsals can be incorporated into the show as soon as the pages are printed.
Finale can export files as midi or MusicXML, but translating to new software would lose much of the original work and formatting.
While alternatives like Avid’s Sibelius have found their way into Broadway rehearsal spaces now that Finale has fallen somewhat out of favor in recent years, older titles and many composers’ archived works are likely to be stored in Finale format. While there are competitors, Finale is still used by a large segment of the Broadway community. Grand Hotel was the first Broadway musical to use computer-aided notation in 1989.
A small selection of Broadway productions or reruns that used Finale for their original formatting include Beauty And The Beast, The Secret Garden, Jelly’s Last Jam, The Goodbye Girl, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, The King And I, Little Shop Of Horrors, Bring In Da Noise Bring In Da Funk, Flower Drum Song, The Boys From Syracuse, Once Upon A Mattress, Titanic, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Music Man, Footloose, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Little Mermaid, Young Frankenstein, Oklahoma, Aida, 42nd Street, The Producers, The Sound Of Music and Wicked.
Charlie Rosen, whose work on Broadway includes Some Like It Hot, Moulin Rouge, A Strange Loop, Be More Chill and Prince of Broadway, wrote on Instagram: “There goes the entire Broadway music workflow! Been using Finale for 20 years.” He also noted that he would have to keep a computer running the current version of Finale to access old files, implying he’ll be doing this forever.
As Broadway licensing companies increasingly move to providing materials on demand rather than maintaining a vast library of books that are mailed and returned for reuse, scores saved in Finale format will certainly need to be modified and preserved for use in new notation programs.
