Prices for Music Software

What prices would you guys feel comfortable paying to purchase Finale or Sibelius, either professional or student editions?

There is no difference between the "professional" and "academic" edition of Finale. Only price. Other than price, both are the exact same thing. As a matter of fact, once installed, there is no way of telling one from the other...

The only difference is that the "professional" license can be sold to someone else (ie: you can decide to give up your finale and transfer it to another person by going through MakeMusic) while the academic license is non-transferable.

That I understand. I am trying to get an idea of what people would pay for Finale/Sibelius or large priced items to make purchases on the YC store....

Can you offer what Finale offers? Like Trade-Up, which can save you upwards of $100 even if you only own a free notepad?

Full Finale is $600 now... how much would you be willing/able to cut off of that? Down to 550? 500? 400? $100 trade up from previous versions? What CAN you do?

Finale Allegro... $100? 150?

Print Music $60? 80?

Can you even offer the academic pricing?

I can offer discounts and educational editions.

These are my current prices for Finale.

These are my current prices for Sibelius.

Let me know what you guys think.

prices sound fair....but is a) yc getting profit if you cut the price? b)are you offering "free shipping" on orders $x amount as an incentive?

Well Finale 2009 pro edition is cheaper than $600 so that's fine I think. The edu version, is around the same price (or even more expensive) than what one can find around the net (in the States).

What I would suggest you strive for is to offer educational versions at THESE prices to the whole world, because I had a very hard time finding a store which would sell outside the States an educational version of Finale (I'm still a full time student officially :D), and only found one on my 4th try and had to ship it to the States and have him ship it to me and so on. A huge hussle. If I could avoid all that, it would be a blessing. (Same goes for Sibelius of course, I just don't know prices).

prices sound fair....but is a) yc getting profit if you cut the price? b)are you offering "free shipping" on orders $x amount as an incentive?

I cannot offer free shipping unless I increase prices by a little, and you want to wait like 2-3 weeks to get your package.

What I would suggest you strive for is to offer educational versions at THESE prices to the whole world

I could ship to the whole world, but the warning my distributor gave me is that users who I ship to in other countries would not receive the customer support. If I was to ship overseas, I could probably only afford to do this if the orders are $200+, and it would take awhile for the package to get delivered. To give you an idea, the only way I could ship overseas is if the distributor sends the package to me, then I have to mail the package to you. This could very easily take 2-3 weeks delivery if I want to remain cost effective for everyone. But since I haven't even started operations yet, I am sure I will learn a lot more once I get started.

Well... why not (customer service I mean)? I've contacted makemusic before (via e-mail) and had no trouble. I could easily call to the States as well, since there's no official office here, but in truth I doubt any student will want telephone support, and e-mail is available.

Time is another issue really, but (again) I don't know how the store works, but you could strike some kind of deal with fedex, (or better services, since fedex sucks big time), and offer them an exclusive deal from the whole store or something.

To give you an example, Finale 2009: Score Writing Notation Software for Win/Mac - Educational Price (214 GBP + shiping costs to the UK (or more elsewhere).

214.34 GBP=319.558 USD according to the net.

So in truth, anyone ordering for $200, would automatically save 100$ (which is effectively 1/3rd (or 1/4th depending on what currency you're looking at :D) off!) This is HUGE!

Also remember that Finale, and most software have huge packaging with minimum contents: Finale is a huge box with a DVD case inside and... the manual. This would be much less than 1 kilogramm, which again might be cheap to ship from the states. You could also check normal airmail, which is mighty cheaper, and would cost less, might take a few more days but nothing too important for any student who would be interested in saving a 25-33% off student price and a total of... 70% of the normal price of Finale.

I don't know that I have much to add beyond what Nikolas is getting at.

Essentially, I think that the biggest incentive we could possibly offer to get people to buy from the YC store instead of any other distributor is the possibility of making these (very good) discount prices available to ship all over the world. It may be a bit of a hassle on your end with the distributors, but otherwise I just don't see why someone would be more inclined to buy from here than any of the other available outlets.

Free shipping for orders over $x would be nice, and for some the extra time for delivery won't be so huge of an issue, but I think accessibility is our greatest possible asset....getting those really nice discounts available to users from anywhere, who may not otherwise have access to them legally.

On the other hand, if you could find other companies willing to offer their software as part of a series of "bundles" with further discounts (for example: Finale EDU + Garritan Authorized Steinway together for a price that cuts a huge chunk off of both MSRPs) that might also get people's attention.

Ultimately, it's probably going to be a matter of running the store for a few months and seeing the stats of who buys what and how, and then refining things from there.

I purchased my version of Finale 2009 from this website: Musical Progressions - Music Software for musicians, Notation, Guitar, Audio Recording, Ear training and More. because it has the lowest price for Finale that I've seen (academic).

They didn't even ask for academic proof.

They also offer free shipping.

I was skeptical about buying from a website that I've never heard about, but it wasn't a bad experience.

I'd rather buy expensive products from places I know, like YC. It'd be nice to have those prices here.

I "could" match those prices, although it would be very hard, and I would have to get rid of my customer service plan! I plan on giving users here an attentive customer service experience so there will have to be some kind of balance between prices, and reliability. Although my prices cannot be quite that low, I made sure that I had someone helping me with orders and questions about orders. I also figured I should insure every shipment (adding to the expense) so that all shipments can be tracked in order to ease a customer's mind of the status of his/her shipment.

They didn't even ask for academic proof.

YC will not ask for academic proof either, however please be aware that it is the responsibility of the user to correctly input the academic information. Retailers are not obligated to accept returns if this information is falsely input.

See here, for a reference.

Thanks for your input so far. I may offer international sales, but I think only at a minimum of a $200 or so order.

Chopin -

I know only Sibelius and am not as technologically savvy as I should be - one of my goals is to take a Music Technology course. Anyway your price is fine - about $100 less than what the Sibelius home site is offering for the Professional version now.

The shipping sounds like the main hurdle - if you offer a reasonable shipping cost that still is less than the cost offered by buying directly from Sibelius then I don't think customers would mind a wait of up to 3 weeks. Also customer support is important too.

As Marius and others have implied if you can offer reasonable overseas shipping costs and customer support then you'd get much more sales.

Last Chopin I think you are due for a short review for your broader goals for YC. The store is a great idea - I have thought of opening a shop in my nabe for scores and CD's directed to composers but the idea hasn't attracted me so much that I have done it - but to make it really fly at your stage you have to offer good shipping rates, fantastic customer service AND publicity - the Store tab is a good start but I'd make it much more visible. Also, if you get what you want you will have many more visitors of even a greater diversity of professional and compositional development to this site than now - leading to greater management of the Composer site as well as the store.

Now please chopin I don't mean to make it sound overwhelming - I think your ideas are excellent and address a strong need for many composers. I just think to make it work you doublecheck what are your resources and if you have enough to make your offer of Sibelius and Finale stand out from the competitors. To reiterate, what would make you stand out would be customer service + reasonable shipping rates. Oh and another suggestion do something with the Sibelius and Finale forum so that it REALLY stands out from what you'd get from searching the instruction manual. There are some threads in the Sib/Finale Technical Help forum which are needless and repetitive - it seems the poster didn't take a moment to seek the info in the manual to read and digest it carefully (understandable as the Sib 4 full manual is 500+ pages)

Sidenote - What is happening to the notation program you were offering?

Thank you for your suggestions. I do plan to ship internationally. My distributor continues to warn me that if someone purchase Sibelius or Finale (or any software) from the US, they will not receive tech support. His words exactly:

You technically are not supposed to be selling software internationally. If you do, they will be refused customer support.

Despite his warnings, I do think I should sell internationally. Besides, most people go on internet forums (like this one) to figure out solutions to problems. I like the idea of putting more focus on the Finale and Sibelius forums, maybe we can even create wiki articles dedicated to these popular software.

Sidenote - What is happening to the notation program you were offering?

I am still selling it, and I just put the product up today here:

Personal Composer

Thank you for your suggestions. I do plan to ship internationally. My distributor continues to warn me that if someone purchase Sibelius or Finale (or any software) from the US, they will not receive tech support. His words exactly

I repeat: I've contacted makemusic, over the phone in the US (when I was there), bought Finale 2009 FROM the States, had it shipped TO THE States and then to me, paying all normal fees, import taxes etc. Whenever I have trouble I e-mail makemusic and they respond withing 24-48 hours (don't remember the time exactly). E-mail ticketing qualifies FULLY as customer support so your distributor is talking about something else (most probably talking about phone support?) or he should research his "facts" more closely.

Lastly: an open critisism. I've no idea why you started the store really, and not sure if it will work, but your only hope would be the large community you already have here: Not that they will buy anything, they largely won't. BUT they can offer further support, community support to people who buy from the store, maybe reviews of the products they do own. There are already a few tutorials about Finale, and links to tutorials on Sibelius. Use those as well. Advertise what is different in YC store than any other store in the world. Otherwise I really don't see the reason to buying from you rather than Soundsonline-Europe while they offer BOGTF (Buy 1 Get 10 Free! :D), which is in Europe, there's no waiting time in customs for me, the Greek citizen living in Greece now, and any other surprise fees. The price alone is a very good incentive but maybe it's not enough...

[/lastly]

Thanks for taking into our advice and critisism. :)

there is ONE thing you should immediately change in the Store, whoever...

there is no such animal as "Finale: Educational edition" nor "Finale: Professional edition".

There is Finale. Period.

institutional (ie: student/teacher) PRICING.

and then there is PRICING for everyone else.

There is no difference other than the pricing.

Period.

I think it's important that it be specified that the only difference between "professional" and "institutional" is the price. You get the exact same software for the price difference.

Sibelius, on the other hand, I am completely confused by what is in the store...

is their "student edition" any different from "Sibelius: professional edition"? there's a vague comment in the description that it contains "JUST the features they need". Does this mean the student edition is a watered-down version?

What the hell is the "educational bundle"? "Sibelius first notation"? etc...

Is it really necessary to carry MakeMusic's "lab" license? are any schools REALLY going to be ordering site licenses from YC?

Sorry if I sound scallopy and gripy... I find software marketing one of the most annoying things on this planet (it ranks somewhere between telemarketers and used-car salesmen, in my opinion).

I've no idea why you started the store really, and not sure if it will work, but your only hope would be the large community you already have here: Not that they will buy anything, they largely won't.

Why do you feel this way? Are the prices too high? Would you be questioning our customer support? I will be marketing outside of the site, and within the site. I hope that the extra stream of traffic coming into the store will increase our member base. And I am thinking right now, that my model would be to place custom designed advertisements to our own store throughout the site, rather than affiliate advertisements. But this isn't set in stone yet.

there is no such animal as "Finale: Educational edition" nor "Finale: Professional edition"

Hmm, these are the descriptions I got from my distributor. The educational edition is just offering the discounts, and I think it is the same for Sibelius. I categorize them like this because if someone wants the cheaper edition and goes to a university, they can easily find it on the site.

What the hell is the "educational bundle"? "Sibelius first notation"? etc...

I'm not that sure, but the person doing customer support for me will have answers to all questions concerning what items are if the descriptions are too vague.

Is it really necessary to carry MakeMusic's "lab" license? are any schools REALLY going to be ordering site licenses from YC?

When doing business, there is always a huge unknown factor. I don't know to be honest, but it can never hurt to try.

Sorry if I sound scallopy and gripy... I find software marketing one of the most annoying things on this planet (it ranks somewhere between telemarketers and used-car salesmen, in my opinion).

I figure that if I can offer competitive prices, why not sell the products that composers use directly on this site? I don't mean this store to be intrusive, I want it to be an alternative resource for our members and visitors. This shouldn't be nearly as intrusive as affiliate advertising since we own all the assets here and can control which ads are being shown (and the design of ads). Of course I am open to suggestions, and if prices are not good enough to win your business, just keep letting me know what I can do and I will try to make this work.

I will also be selling EWQL soon, and I will be looking to increase our selection as time goes on.

I've heard a lot about inflation in the market lately but is it really necessary to make the store button on the top left bigger than all the others? :innocent:

(IE7)

Are you linking via Amazon and such too? they tend to compare prices and things, you get a rating and such. if you get a cheaper deal overall, things like amazon will guarantee people find you and purchase from you. Though I don't know personally how to do all that

For now let me put it this way... if you can offer Finale 2009 for less than Makemusic offers it with an educational discount... you'll have one more buyer in the coming months. :shifty:

Chopin -

Go to this link from the Sibelius site to read the difference between Sibelius and Sibelius student.

Sibelius Student - feature comparison

As for the difference between Educational and professional Sib 5. The difference is you receive a complete reference manual with the Professional Edition. Also when registering for the Educational version they may ask what school or educational organization you are from - but I am not sure.

So, unbelievably, you are paying close to $200 for a 500 page SOFT COVER reference book when you buy Sib 5 Professional.

I'd buy from you Chopin any day. Want to clear a little debt for now, so either I'll get Sib 5 or Sib 6 from you when it comes out.

Hmmm, just wondering why Cubase 4 is more $$$ than Cubase 5. :blink:

A bit off topic for the thread but please do everyone a favor about the sheet music - list the COMPOSER, not just the title of the work. So far I see this happening in the study score section.

Hmmm, just wondering why Cubase 4 is more $$$ than Cubase 5. :blink:

Because it's antique!