2025: A year in review

If you feel like you’ve barely blinked and 2025 has come and gone, you’re not alone. Sometimes this is the only week of the year to slow the pace and take a moment to reflect on the past twelve months, before it all starts again with that flip of the calendar.

As we close the book on 2025, it’s time to look back at another year of music notation news, updates, creativity, and conversation. Once again, Scoring Notes followed the action from the first downbeat of January to the ritardando at year’s end, documenting not just what changed in music notation software and related technology, but how those changes affect the way music is created, engraved, shared, and performed.

As always, we had some fun along the way.

A year that got moving quickly

2025 began with “people news” shaping “company news”. In early January, we covered personnel developments shaping MakeMusic and Avid. Then, right on cue, attention shifted to the year’s first major gathering — NAMM 2025 — but with the Southern California wildfires keeping everyone alert as we prepared for the show.

Fortunately, the show went on, and we were there — on the floor, in the rooms, and in the conversations. From there, Scoring Notes did something that’s become something of a happy tradition: talking not only about the tools, but to the people who make them. In the course of conversations with Avid’s Sam Butler, My Sheet Music Transcription’s Oriol López Calle, Muse Group’s Martin Keary, and Steinberg’s John Barron, we got current with the state of music notation software and clued in on where it’s headed.

Even before all that, Dorico managed to get a head start with their first update, while Finale users contemplating their next moves benefited from some useful housekeeping via finding a one-stop shop to install all of Finale’s official fonts — a reference we’ve been happy to hear has saved a number of readers from falling off the glyph… er, cliff.

Spring forward

As winter gave way to spring, concrete software developments began landing. Sibelius users saw the first significant update cycle of the year, setting a course for refinements in a year focused less on splashy feature headlines and more on strengthening the tools that many users rely on every day. From there, Sibelius continued building momentum, including adding options to note spacing and making it easier than ever to get Sibelius First.

MuseScore Studio 4.5 saw improvements in the areas of percussion, engraving, text handling, and input. Several features were designed specifically to appeal to Finale users switching to MuseScore Studio, and to revamp the entire experience around percussion.

Meanwhile, the Scoring Notes Podcast stayed busy, adding context and conversation. From thoughtful exploration of workflow realities to discussions grounded in practical musical life, the podcast once again acted as the friendly color commentary alongside the rapid play-by-play developments of the industry. Daniel Spreadbury returned to the podcast to discuss Dorico 6, its evolution over time, the influence of Finale and its users, and its bevy of new features for music composers and preparers. Ever wonder who a forensic musicologist is, and what such a person does? Brian McBrearty was our guest to provide the answers to those questions, and raise some new ones along the way.

Getting back on the road, we visited the MOLA 2025 Conference, connecting with librarians and professionals who live at the very intersection of notation craft and performance reality. And, on a more personal note, we reflected on the things we could all use a bit more of these days: friendship, community, and music itself, in a visit to Seattle.

Summer stories

By mid-year, the industry approached a few inflection points — and Scoring Notes was right there.

One of the more dramatic stories of the year unfolded around NotePerformer. First came the major rollout introducing new instruments and an overhaul of NPPE, followed just days later by an equally dramatic reversal removing support for third-party VST instruments entirely. Eventually, calmer waters returned late in the year with a stabilizing update to this tool many musicians now rely on daily.

Dorico continued strengthening its foundation with updates designed to make proofreading and final polish more efficient and musical.

For Finale users, this will be remembered as the year when long-developing concerns became impossible to ignore. We took time to honestly assess Finale’s future, explored what it means to continue using the software responsibly in an unsupported era, and reflected on what it feels like when decades of creative and professional history begin to shift in a  farewell that was both practical and personal.

We also made a little of our own news, reducing pricing permanently on Scoring Express for Finale to help make that transition just a little easier, and expanding creative possibilities with new Scoring Express Choral and Vocal templates for Dorico and Sibelius.

Meanwhile, the podcast kept things lively, with episodes that invited reader questions, dug into thoughtful answers, and reminded us that with freelancing comes responsibility.

Practical guidance and genuinely useful stuff

One of the hallmarks of Scoring Notes has always been the articles that don’t just inform — they directly improve how people work. 2025 delivered plenty of those.

In Sibelius alone, we tackled better text handling with cleaner lyric hyphens at the end of systems, untangled notation headaches with ways to reset stubborn accidentals, streamlined importing files with irregular time signatures, did the math to figure out how to get triplets on single-note tremolos to both look and play back correctly, and — thanks to Bob Zawalich — we unlocked chaining together commands through the Execute Commands plug-in. Add in Bob’s new plug-in on setting bars per system, and suddenly not only do things look better — they behave better.

A popular and practical tip was an exploration of how to get better filenames with PDFs exported from Dorico. We even partnered with The Aaron Copland Fund for Music to republish an article about the practicality of Copland’s performance editions.

One of the most delightfully nerdy deep dives of the year was where we stepped away from screens and into the physical world to explore how paper weight, basis weight, and grammage actually work, bridging the gap from pixels to print.

Fall into autumn

As autumn rolled in, another familiar rhythm returned: navigating Apple’s newest macOS and figuring out what it means in practical terms. As always, we helped keep everyone steady with guidance on notation software compatibility with macOS Tahoe, so that updates could be made confidently.

A Dorico 6.1 release brought added functionality to condensing and proofreading, a new piano library, a playback template overhaul, and much more.

Typography lovers had a banner year. Early on, we accomplished a major milestone when we newly revised and re-released the legendary Music Type Foundry fonts, providing historic continuity while modernizing these beautiful designs. Later, the work continued with a fresh wave of new and updated fonts, expanding the palette for discerning engravers. MuseScore Studio users got to enjoy all of this goodness beginning with the 4.6 update, which included full support for custom SMuFL fonts for the first time. And to connect all of that to heritage, we revisited the story of Cleo Huggins and the origins of digital music font design.

Of course, our roundup of Black Friday deals and the companion shopping trip on the podcast, have become an annual event where ledger lines and bottom lines meet. Black Friday may have come on gone this year, but there are still lots of good ideas to take away from the product and workflow suggestions you’ll find there.

The finishing touch

While it may not have been the “December to remember” compared to previous years, the year closed out with updates across notation platforms. MuseScore wrapped up 2025 with Cantai support in MuseScore Studio 4.6.4, and Sibelius finished the year adding flexibility to part organization while also bringing clarity to pricing for perpetual licensees.

Meanwhile, the podcast wrapped the year with a dive into perfect pitch, thanks to our friends at Twenty Thousand Hertz.

Thank you — and onward

If last year was about anticipation, 2025 was about consolidation, reflection, transition, and refinement. Companies evolved. Software matured. Fonts flourished. Workflows became sharper.

What will 2026 bring? How will AI transform the work we’re doing? What new tools will emerge? What products will inspire creativity across all aspects of how we create music, and especially how it’s represented in notation?

Whatever takes shape in the next year, Scoring Notes will exist because there is a community of engravers, composers, orchestrators, copyists, educators, librarians, performers, developers, students, and curious readers and listeners who care deeply about doing musical work well. Thank you for spending another year with us.

I also want to personally thank my colleagues and contributors on Scoring Notes, without whom there would be a lot less informative content to bring to our audience.

My intrepid podcast co-host, David MacDonald, has been on the other side of the microphone for more than five years, incredibly — you should see the fan-following he receives at MOLA conferences! Ben Byram-Wigfield goes deep into the Dorico version history and extracts quality information and insights to bring to Scoring Notes readers with each update. Steve Morell remains on the MuseScore Studio beat with his wit and wisdom about what is now the most-used music notation software. Bob Zawalich keeps cranking out not only plug-ins, but also the articles that explain what they do as well as how and why they came into existence. İlkay Bora Öder is lightning-quick with his Sibelius power tips. Leo Nicholson and Joseph Trefler have not only contributed to Scoring Notes, but they’ve been indispensable in the continued development of the Scoring Express templates. Nor Eddine Bahha and Dan Kreider have expertly revived and expanded Abraham Lee’s Music Type foundry fonts to bring them to today’s users. Jake Winkler has been working diligently behind the scenes to help with some meaningful additions coming to Scoring Notes next year. And, last but not least, Jason Loffredo — I don’t think “Conquering Finale” will ever quite mean the same thing as it did when he started his peerless coverage.

Here’s to better tools, clearer scores, smarter workflows, beautifully aligned lyrics, excellent kerning, elegantly weighted paper, happy players, and — most importantly — great music in the year ahead.