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Black Friday 2024 deals for music notation software and related tech [updated]

November 25, 2024 · 25 min read
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’Tis the season to be thankful for all of the products and services in the world of music notation software and related technology, and for the Scoring Notes audience who comes here to learn about them!

Before, after, or while you read about all of the deals in the world of music notation notation software and related technology, you can also listen to our podcast episode where we summarize updates to MuseScore, Dorico, and Sibelius over the past year. Then, we do a little shopping to find some Black Friday deals and make a few recommendations for fun and productivity, discuss our take on the hottest deals, help make the most of your holiday spending budget, all while still leaving plenty of time to take advantage of some serious savings.

Support Scoring Notes while you shop

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Also, if you do your holiday shopping on Amazon, here’s an easy way to support Scoring Notes without it costing you anything extra. Simply start your shopping by clicking this special link for Amazon’s Black Friday deals, or click the image below. Then, add your items to your Amazon cart and make your purchase. For any purchase you make after clicking the link or image (even if it’s not a Black Friday special), Scoring Notes will receive a commission fee, at no cost to you. It’s as easy as that!

Click here before making an Amazon purchase and help support this blog!

 

Listen to the podcast episode

On the Scoring Notes podcast, we show our appreciation by bearing good tidings in the form of a summary of all of the updates to MuseScore, Dorico, and Sibelius over the past year. Then, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald do a little shopping to find some Black Friday deals and make a few recommendations for fun and productivity. Listen now:

Podcast

Stock ‘n shop

November 23, 2024 · 1:22:21 · with Philip Rothman and David MacDonald
0:00 / 1:22:21
View episode page →

 

All prices listed are in US dollars unless otherwise noted. Prices may vary by country or region, and may not all be available in your area. Be sure to verify pricing with the seller.

Sibelius and other Avid products

Avid is taking 33% off annual subscriptions through January 3, 2025, as follows:

Sibelius

  • Sibelius Ultimate: $133 (reg. $199)

Pro Tools

  • Pro Tools Ultimate: $399 (reg. $599)
  • Pro Tools Studio: $199 (reg. $299)
  • Pro Tools Artist: $66 (reg. $99)

These same discounts will be available to those renewing their subscription in my.avid.com through the end of the year.

However, if you already have a previous version of Sibelius Ultimate as a perpetual license and want to get current, we recommend that you not get the subscription, but instead purchase the “Sibelius Ultimate – Get Current” product, which will be similar to the subscription price, and will additionally allow you to keep your perpetual license.

Finally, if you have a qualifying competing product like Finale, you can get a subscription to Sibelius Ultimate for just $99, through the competitive crossgrade offer, or a perpetual license of $149, both of which are discounted until December 31, 2024.

As always, your best source for Sibelius reviews, tips and news is right here on Scoring Notes. Here are all of the updates released since this time last year:

Dorico and other Steinberg products

Steinberg has often had excellent “Cyber Weeks” promotions, and 2024 is no exception, with savings of up to 60% off of many of their products, with no coupon code needed, through December 11, 2024.

These include:

  • Cubasis (iOS/Android/ChromeOS): 50% off
  • iC Pro (iOS/Android): 50% off
  • SpectraLayers 11: 40% off
  • VST Live: 40% off
  • Groove Agent 5: 60% off
  • Backbone: 50% off

Many HALion-based instruments and sound packs are included in the promotion, including:

  • Iconica Opus: 60% off
  • Iconica Ensembles: 60% off
  • Olympus Choir Elements: 40% off
  • Swiss Grand 1860: 50% off
  • Harpsichord 1738: 50% off
  • …and a bunch of others

Missing among them, however — especially as it pertains to Scoring Notes readers — is Dorico, but don’t despair. Although Dorico isn’t included in Steinberg’s Cyber Weeks sale this year, if you have a Finale license and haven’t yet taken advantage of the special $149 offer for Finale users to purchase Dorico Pro through the MakeMusic store, you’re in luck. In addition to this price, which is already heavily discounted from the regular $579, for Black Friday, MakeMusic is offering an additional 20% off of this special crossgrade, bringing the price down to $120. Use the code CYBER24 during the promotion period, which runs from November 27 through December 4, 2024.

(If you’re wondering why MakeMusic is selling Dorico in the first place, see this Scoring Notes article.)

Here are all of the Dorico updates released since this time last year:

MuseScore Studio and other Muse Group products

MuseScore Studio is free, but if you like the idea of paying something just so you get a discount, there are other ways to get deals on MuseScore offerings.

MuseScore.com is used by musicians to share their work with the community, for music teachers to share tasks with their students, and for performers to find digital sheet music, and a MuseScore Pro+ subscription unlocks scores that are licensed from print publishers. MuseScore Learn is a repository of online video course that run the gamut from learning how to play musical instruments to learning how to use MuseScore itself.

It seems that these products are regularly discounted, but at the moment a “Black Friday” sale is advertised for 90% off. Their regular pricing page is located here, so be sure to confirm your discounted price.

MuseScore is part of Muse Group, which also controls Ultimate Guitar, and that site also has a sale that is advertised to be 80% off. We find the pricing and discount scheme to be somewhat opaque, often requiring a login or other steps to be performed before the price is revealed, so do confirm these amounts before purchasing a subscription.

However, a real bona fide deal on a Muse Group product can be found on StaffPad on iPad and Windows. That product, the venerated tablet and handwriting-based app that boasts impressive music production capabilities, is discounted 25% off to $40, from the regular $50. StaffPad’s price has varied over the years since it was first introduced in 2015, but $40 is the lowest we’ve seen.

Muse Hub has been filling out recently, especially since this summer, with standalone apps, plug-ins, Muse Sounds, loops, and samples coming online. Products there are marked down to varying degrees at the moment.

Here are all of the MuseScore Studio updates released since this time last year:

Noteflight and other Hal Leonard sheet music products

Now that Hal Leonard has been acquired by Muse Group, we have started to see more integration of the two formerly separate companies. MuseClass re-launched earlier this year, and MuseScore now includes the Hal Leonard catalog.

For now, at least, the online notation editor Noteflight is still a separate product. Noteflight Premium, which affords users the full range of features in Noteflight’s web-based notation software, has a regular annual price of $49. In the past, we’ve seen Black Friday deals for Noteflight, so if it goes on sale, we’ll update this post.

Muse Group has shared the details of some of the other deals in the Hal Leonard family of sheet music products rolling out over the holiday sales period:

SheetMusicPlus

  • Black Friday: 20% off all print titles (November 25 – December 1)

SheetMusicDirect

  • Early Black Friday: 20% off all digital sheet music and audio tracks, with the code EARLYBF20 (November 18 – 25)
  • Black Friday PASS: 30% off annual PASS subscription. Includes 30-day free trial for new subscribers. Eligible students save 50%. Use the code PASSBF30 (November 26 – December 2)

Newzik

Newzik, the collaborative music score management and reading app, has a very special offer for Black Friday. Their Newzik Premium Lifetime option, regularly $149, will be discounted 40% to $89, from November 29 through December 2, 2024.

To receive this Black Friday offer, you have to download the Newzik app on the App Store before using the offer. If you have downloaded it already, just click on this special offer.

Newzik Premium Lifetime includes:

  • Unlimited LiveScore conversions
  • Unlimited collaborative Projects
  • MusicXML and MIDI export
  • PDF score transposition
  • Page-turning with face gestures
  • One-time payment

Newzik incorporates Maestria, a technology that Newzik introduced in 2021 that allows it to not just display a score, but also to understand it musically. The resulting score is a LiveScore, which includes the ability to view the score as with any other, and also the ability to play it back and export it to other software for further use.

Notation Central

At NYC Music Services we’re joining the Black Friday party this year with some deals of our own, on our marketplace for music notation technology. Notation Central is the place to make the most of the music notation software you use.

This is our biggest sale of the year, with 24% off nearly everything in the store, from Saturday, November 23 through Tuesday, December 17, 2024. That’s 24% off, in 2024, for 24 days… get it?

This includes items like:

Just use the code 24IN24 at checkout to see the discounts applied.

There are some extra savings to be had, too: Use the code SMUFLME to get 25% off when you purchase two or more SMuFL fonts from NorFonts together. This includes BlueNotes, BopMusic, CapoScore, Concerto, Da Capo, Graphira, Groove, Mezza, Mezzo, RealScore, Rhapsody, Scherzo, Scordatura, Soli, The Copyist, Tutti, and Vintage BH, for use in Dorico and Finale 27. Stack the code SMUFLME with the Black Friday discount for super savings of more than 40% off.

It’s been a big year for Notation Express and Scoring Express. In March of this year, we released Notation Express for Sibelius 2024, with finally brought a similar experience to Sibelius that Dorico users have enjoyed for a while. With the introduction of Sibelius Connect in Sibelius Ultimate 2024.3, we now send commands directly to Sibelius from Stream Deck, instead of relying upon a custom keyboard shortcut profile as the intermediary. That made it possible to add more than 75 new buttons  to Notation Express XL for Sibelius Ultimate and more than 40 new buttons to Notation Express (15-key) for Sibelius Ultimate. It also means that the same version of Notation Express for Sibelius is fully cross-platform on Mac and Windows, and across all languages and localizations, out-of-the-box.

Then later in the year we rolled out Notation Express Keypad for Dorico and Sibelius, priced regularly at $20 but only $15.19 with the code 24IN24. Notation Express Keypad uses familiar numeric keypad layouts on your phone to make using Dorico or Sibelius quick and fun. The Stream Deck Mobile Pro app on iOS/iPadOS or Android is required. Because there is no concept of the keypad in Dorico, Notation Express Keypad closely follows the arrangement and order of the Sibelius Keypad in both applications — perfect for when you’re working on a laptop, on a computer without a numeric keypad, or just want to add more power and speed to your existing setup. Whether or not you already know how to use the Sibelius Keypad, you will be right at home in Notation Express Keypad.

 

We also made major updates Scoring Express, our collection of professional templates, based on the same templates we use at NYC Music Services.

Leading the charge are playlists of approximately a dozen short videos, one each for Scoring Express for Dorico and Scoring Express for Sibelius, that demonstrate Scoring Express features and tips for using the templates. Some of these are specific to the Theatre & Studio collection, but others are applicable across the Scoring Express line.

Further, we’ve made use of the commenting feature in each program to update one of the example files that comes with the Theatre & Studio collection in Dorico and Sibelius. The “Rock band + strings landscape” example file is now annotated with comments that provide contextual tips for many of the features found in Scoring Express, along with links to the corresponding help videos from the playlist.

The annotated example file in Scoring Express for Sibelius – Theatre & Studio

These resources are helpful, whether you already use the software or are coming anew to it from Finale.

Everything looks great, whether you only use one program, or, if you use more than one software platform, to use Scoring Express to make your finished output look as similar as possible, regardless of what program it originated in. The Sibelius and Dorico bundles are ordinarily $60 off compared to buying each genre separately, so this is a great opportunity to pick up the bundle of all the Sibelius collections and the bundle of all the Dorico collections, and stack your savings by using the 24IN24 code for an incredible value of more than $98 off. It’s like buying the Chamber and Jazz collections and getting the Theatre & Studio one for free, and still having nearly $20 left over in your pocket!

We know that many people still use Finale, and those Scoring Express templates are still available and eligible for the same 24IN24 discount. They are fully updated for the latest (and last) version of Finale 27, and the Jazz templates are still freshly minted, having just been released last year.

If you’re looking to pick up the Stream Deck console itself, the Stream Deck and Stream Deck XL consoles can be found at Amazon. Those prices can vary, but they have typically been on sale during Black Friday:

Many other retailers carry the Stream Decks as well, so shop around to see if you can find a good deal.

PDF Expert

PDF Expert is a Mac and iOS app with robust PDF editing, annotating, and enhancing features, without the visual clutter and higher costs of other products. It’s developed by Readdle, a company specializing in useful, attractive software for Mac, and it aims to strike the balance between simplicity and utility.

They are running weekly deals that can only be accessed via a special link, like this one, here. See, reading Scoring Notes is worthwhile!

PDF Expert has all of the PDF tools that are “table stakes” these days for a PDF application: editing; annotation; markup; easy conversion from other formats; signing (but not secure e-signing like Adobe Sign or DocuSign); page organization; merging PDFs; and optical character recognition (OCR).

What truly astounded me, though, when I reviewed PDF Expert earlier this year,was its relatively new Enhance Scan feature, found amidst its other useful scanning tools, like Split Pages, Crop Pages, Clear Margins, Recognize Text, and Content Selection.

The PDF Expert Black Friday deal:

  • Discount: 20% off the first annual subscription of PDF Expert ($64, reg. $80)
  • Active Dates: November 25 – December 1

If you’ve missed the Black Friday deal, you can still get 10% off your first annual subscription of PDF Expert by using the promo code GIFT10 at checkout. This coupon is valid through December 31.

Acon Digital

Acon Digital, purveyors of cutting edge audio editing software and processing tools, has a Black Friday  special on the entire wide range of products they offer, from audio editing, restoration, mastering and effects processing — all conceived with ultimate audio quality and usability in mind. This year’s sale is the biggest we’ve seen from Acon.

We rely on their Restoration Suite to help produce our Scoring Notes podcast. Whether you are an audio production neophyte or a top-flight professional producer, you’ll want to have their tools at the ready.

Onto the deal: Acon products are on sale during the special period for anywhere between 30% and 70% off their usual price. This includes new purchases as well as any updates to any products, such as the Restoration Suite, the Mastering Suite, the audio cleaner AudioLava, the Acoustica Premium Edition bundle, and various other plug-ins.

Acon’s sale period runs through December 5, 2024.

NotePerformer Playback Engine affiliated sound libraries

NotePerformer, is the user-friendly solution for realistic-sounding playback of Dorico, Sibelius, or Finale projects that’s just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Since its first release in 2013, you were limited to using only NotePerformer sounds, but with NotePerformer 4, the connection is now made with third-party sample libraries, allowing you to play those back through NotePerformer.

This is done via NotePerformer Playback Engines (NPPE). There is a separate NPPE for each of the 13 sound libraries supported by NotePerformer, and they each cost between $69 and $89.

Although the NPPEs are not on sale, we thought we would point to each of the currently supported libraries, because many of them are (or will likely be) on sale during Black Friday. This is a great time to take advantage of sales on those libraries — keep in mind, you can use them anywhere, not just in NotePerformer.

Capella

Capella software is running a sale through December 4, 2024. All of their products are 20% off the usual price.

In addition, they offer the free capella reader and capella score reader app.

If you already have other music notation software — and if you’re reading Scoring Notes, you probably do — you may be eligible for an even better price through a crossgrade offer. The crossgrade price is $119 for the notation application, or $238 with their scanning application included in a bundle. When purchased separately at the regular price, the applications cost $248 and $218 respectively, so this represents a discount of approximately 50%. Registration via a special order form is required.

More sample libraries

Cinesamples

Over at the Cinesamples web site, they are offering up to 67% off sitewide, through December 31, 2024.

EastWest / Sounds Online

EastWest / Sounds Online is making their products available for 60% off the usual price in their EastWest Cyber Month Sale.

In addition, new subscribers to ComposerCloud+ can obtain access to the entire collection of 42,000+ virtual instruments for just $149/year, during their Black Friday sale.

Some of the thousands of instruments in the East West ComposerCloud+ collection

Best Service

Dozens of Black Friday deals can be found at Best Service on more than 1,000 products such as sound libraries, plug-ins, and other music production software.

Vienna Symphonic Library

The entire list of deals is at the VSL Black Friday Deals web site. The sale runs from November 18 through December 2, 2024.

Native Instruments

An enormous catalog of sample libraries, sounds, and effects is on sale during the Native Instruments Cyber Season Sale.

This sale is active now and runs through, December 5, 2024.

Spitfire Audio

The Spitfire Black Friday sale runs from through December 3, 2024, where you can save up to 50% on some of their bestselling individual products, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra range, Albion Colossus, Abbey Road products and Spitfire Chamber Strings, and up to 75% off their bundles.

A Sound Effect

Independent sound community marketplace A Sound Effect has a number of deals on 2,200 premium sound effects libraries, plugins and virtual instruments.

Affinity

It’s not music notation software, but you can pick up all three of Affinity‘s applications for macOS, Windows, and iPad for one low price of $83, which is 50% off the regular price of $165, during their Black Friday sale. This is a one-time purchase, and not a subscription.

One price gets you:

And, if you’re upgrading from version 1, you can score an additional 25% off, bringing the total price to under $63, which is a fantastic deal. They will also throw in their Creative Collection, a curated bundle of four premium add-ons including typefaces, an illustration kit, and icons.

These applications can be the perfect complement to working with music notation software, whether you need an easier way to create cover graphics, preliminary materials for your score, worksheets or books, or create more complex graphical elements to include in your score via your notation software.

If you truly just need one or two applications on one or two platforms, you can get each of the products à la carte. The 50% off discount applies to those, as well. So, if you just want to use Affinity Designer on macOS ($35 on sale) and iPad ($9.29 on sale), and don’t need the Windows version or any of the other applications, then purchasing the two of those together would come to about $44, for instance.

Magix

Among the offerings that Magix has on Black Friday is Sound Forge, the digital audio editor that has been around for nearly three decades. Probably the best offer is the Sound Forge Pro 18 Suite, which is on sale for $379, which is 36% off the usual price of $599, through December 8, 2024.

The Sound Forge Pro suite includes a number of plug-ins; among those are Melodyne essential and Steinberg’s SpectraLayers Pro 11.

Magix has a number of other deals on their audio and video editing products, which run through December 3 and discount some of their products by more than 80% off.

Mindful Harmony

Mindful Harmony, a music theory and composition web-based application, is having a sale, through December 4, where you can get 3 free months using the code BLACKFRIDAY2024 at checkout, a value of $18.

Fun and practical stuff

On the Scoring Notes podcast, we mentioned items a little outside of our usual wheelhouse, but highly recommended nonetheless.

David’s picks:

Studio Neat Mark pens with satisfying click mechanisms that David demonstrated on the podcast; $85 for the classic Mark One or $125 for the pocket-sized Mark Two; 10% off if you sign up for their email list.

The Mark One

Sidekick Notepad, a 60-page notepad for all of your tasks, action items, notes, and thoughts; $39

Bambu Labs 3D printers, all significantly discounted until Dec 3.

SAMSUNG SSD T7 Portable External Solid State Drive, to store more of your tasks, action items, notes, and thoughts; $88.49 for the 1 TB capacity; $140 for 2 GB; other storage capacities available

LIGHTDIMS LED Covers and Dimming Sheets; so you can concentrate more on all of your tasks, action items, notes, and thoughts; $4.59 at Amazon

Philip’s picks:

Elaine Gould’s book Behind Bars, and the new Behind Bars: General Conventions: Available from Amazon for $74 and $35, respectively

Matthew Maslanka’s Beam Slants Reference Poster, based based on the timeless standards from Ted Ross’s reference book The Art of Music Engraving and Processing, this comprehensive guide showcases the ideal beam slants for every interval between notes, because you need to know this. 25% off; $40.50 (reg. $54)

Matthew Maslanka’s Beam Slants Reference Poster

Perhaps an original Henle Urtext lead engraving plate to go with your beam slants poster? 59 EUR from Henle, plus shipping.

The Nektar SE25 and Se49 MIDI controllers are $40 and $90, respectively — budget-friendly 2- and 4-octave additions to your desktop for fast note entry into your favorite music notation software. Or, the pricier Xkey 25 offers a slim profile and a discounted price of $111, which is 20% off the usual $139, and has long been a favorite around here. The Xkey Air is wireless $181, a pricier option still, but down 21% from the regular price of $229, and offers more portability as you go cable-free.

xkey-air-3
The Xkey Air

To complement your MIDI controller, you need a good alphanumeric keyobard. Logitech MX Keys S – Windows and MX Keys Mini – Windows, and the Logitech MX Keys S – Mac and Logitech MX Keys Mini – Mac are excellent choices, and they’re on sale at Amazon right now. The Mac version of the MX Keys S full size keyboard is currently $93 (15% off the regular $110), and the MX Keys Mini is $72 (28% off the regular price of $100). The Windows versions are showing as slightly pricier, but Amazon’s prices tend to fluctuate, so keep an eye on it. These keyboards have a sturdy feel, a satisfying typing experience, and are backlit for extra visibility during those late night music preparation marathons — they automatically illuminate when you’re typing and power off when you’re not.

Logitech MX Keys S for Mac
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