Dear Avid,¹

Monday, after noting that my copy of Sibelius 5 would not install on my new MacBook Pro – no surprise, it is after all 5-year-old software – I looked for some solutions online. It became clear that I wouldn’t be able to get it going, so I started looking at upgrading to Sibelius 7, about which I’ve heard many good things. Upgrading was an easy decision: I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Sibelius since I bought a copy of Sibelius 3 back in 2004.

Along the way, I stumbled on this blog post by Daniel Spreadbury. Curious what he meant by “the recent news about Avid’s corporate restructuring”, I followed the link.

By now, I’m sure you can see where this is going: like many other long-time Sibelius users, I’m more than a bit disgruntled by the news. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Today, it came to my attention that Avid, maker of various audio and video processing tools – tools you’ve heard of if you’re in those industries, high profile names like Pro Tools – has closed down the main office responsible for developing Sibelius and sourced the development to a team in the Ukraine.

Nothing against the Ukrainians, but shutting down the London development office responsible for nearly two decades and replacing it with a team a third its size does not bode well for future development.

This came out in as underhanded a way as possible, with the sorts of PR doublespeak and carefully prepared press releases I’ve come to expect from large corporations. Avid’s statements indicated that they were consolidating their engineering efforts in order to save money. Since Sibelius seems to be quite profitable, it’s clear that Avid is choosing to bleed the product to support its other goals. This move, in other words, reeks of bean-counting trumping any love of product or any real concern for the customers that have invested in Sibelius over the last several decades – invested more than money. Read on, intrepid explorer →