I’ve been watching for years with great excitement and the program looks awesome and what I actually want in a notation program. The draconian licensing system is a total deal breaker. I was exited to find that it was using a software licensing system but horrified to find out that it ONLY LETS ME USE IT ON ONE COMPUTER! I need to have it on my desktop and laptop THE WAY SIBELIUS LETS ME. I WILL NOT US A DONGLE. It would be broken or lost the first week.
I’M VERY DISAPPOINTED AND SAD. STEINBERG NEEDS TO JOIN THE 21st CENTURY AND LET US USE THE PRODUCTS THE WAY OUR WORK DICTATES.
Also a difficult thing for me to get through—as I work in church music, I have to have my scorewriter at the church as well as at home. This actually kept me from upgrading to Sibelius 7.5 from Sibelius 7.1, as the file format changed and the files wouldn’t have been compatible with each other between home and work (and other employees). Hopefully Steinberg can figure out how to enable multiple-installation licensing, as I’m sure the vast majority of those who work in our field will require such a capability.
I agree and disagree. It’s less generous than the other two apps, however, I was pleasantly surprised at the extremely competitive pricing. I think a concession to that price may’ve been the number of systems on which it can be installed. I was expecting Dorico to retail between $500-$999 for the market they’re after, so I don’t see it as a deal breaker for me.
I agree and disagree. While this is certainly less generous than the other two apps, but I was also expecting Dorico to retail for a much higher price for what it’s offering. This number of installs seems like a reasonable concession to get the price as low as it is.
Rather than have to carry hymnbooks between home and church I have copies at home and at church. I don’t blame the publishers for this situation. I have had Sibelius installed on my laptop for 7 years. I carry the laptop around with me so I don’t need two licences. If I wanted to use Sibelius (or Dorico) on a church computer I’d get the church to buy a licence. Given the power of the software I consider it very cheap. €600 would pay for about 15 hours of a professional copyist’s time.
Nowadays, the normal use is to have the software on 2 computers. A Dongle would in fact be broken/lost very quickly.
Software with iLok I’ll never buy…
An USB Licencer I use for Cubase and therefore I use some VSTs with that Dongle (but I’m not satisfied with this).
But it’s a road without future!
Me and more and more users switch to Software like Presonus Studio One that manage to sell without Dongle…
People who can purchase this Software WILL purchase this software. People who are not able to purchase this Software might get them somewhere else but will not destroy the company.
As a result perhaps they have to struggle with viruses and trojans and crashes but (on the positive side) they spread the name of the product…
Time to think about building a new software licensing system for Steinberg… Otherwise a good product is crippled and destroyed by marketing!
Perhaps if enough of us ask nicely, Steinberg will reconsider the licensing option. Surely it’s not too late to do that in time for the product launch?
I find it helpful to have Sibelius on desktop and notebook as I can take the notebook to rehearsals and make instant corrections, and on other occasions have done a fair amount of work, both composing and arranging, while on long train journeys or when I’ve had to be staying away from home. It would reduce productivity considerably if I couldn’t do that with Dorico and would mean sticking with Sibelius despite all the other advantages of Dorico.
So perhaps others who would like this feature could keep adding to this thread so we can see how high the demand will be?
As I’ve said in reply to a number of comments with similar sentiments on the blog over the last day or so, I hear you loud and clear on this point. We do not want our licensing technology to be an obstacle to buying Dorico. We are not going to be in a position to release Dorico without some kind of licensing system in place, and we are also for practical reasons limited to the options that our eLicenser technology provides. Please let me revisit this issue with my colleagues, and I will come back to you with further information.
The trend is away from dongles. And yes, dongles get cracked too. So you think that non-dongled software is unprotected? I don’t think you understand this subject very well.
Thank you for your response Daniel. I was truly heartbroken when I learned of the licensing limitation. I have followed you since the early Sibelius days and I have enormous respect for you. This post gives me hope and I will follow this issue with great interest. Thank you for all you do and have done!
No, sadly, they don’t but that is still not a good solution since I also use it for private lessons. Also whenever I have a little time I can work wherever I am if it is on my laptop.
Your hymn book analogy does not work for software. The price is comparable with the industry and is not relevant to this subject. Doing what you do will not work for me since I also need to run large projects that would not run on my laptop - only on my far more powerful desktop.
Thanks Daniel - fwiw, if you need to convince the folks at Steinberg you could use several arguments: 1. Sibelius has two licenses and you want Dorico to be at least as attractive as Sibelius in every way (including the licensing terms) so as to tempt current Sibelius users with a crossgrade; and 2. In terms of continuity, computers can break down for whatever reason (hard drive failure, a virus, etc.), and if they do and you’re in the middle of a project right before a deadline, you are dead in the water - unless you have a second machine and backup files.
I can honestly say, this will not be a deal breaker for me. I am rather interested to see more in terms of functionality to decide, wether this program will be able to replace Sibelius for me with v1 already.
However, I do support the OPs request, as for a notation program, using a second copy on a laptop is kind of essential. With Cubase, I don’t mind it a lot, as this is a stationary PC in my studio and I am not too keen to using it on laptop (although I think many people will be …). But with a laptop - even, if Steinberg would decide to give the customer two licenses - a USB dongle is a big PITA, so it does put me off in some way.
On the other hand: While USB dongles have been cracked, they are much more likely to stay safe - at least for a long time, while pretty much every software protection gets cracked in no time … so I do understand Steinbergs reasoning. And if the lack of business loss due to piracy will somehow be followed by reasonable upgrade pricing … AND NOT EVER A SWITCH TO SUBSCRIPTION MODE … everything is ok with me.
One solution could be the possibility of buying a 2nd licence at a discount. That’s the one real issue I have with all of Steinberg’s pricing; there is no discount for 2nd licences. Hence me having to pay full price for all three of my Nuendo licences.
… everything is ok with me.