The private-equity firm that backed Muse Group’s acquisition of Hal Leonard has cashed out. On June 3, 2026, Muse Group — the Cyprus-based parent of MuseScore, Audacity, Ultimate Guitar, Hal Leonard, Audio.com, and MuseHub — announced the “successful conclusion” of Francisco Partners’ investment in the company, ending a relationship that began in 2023.
The ownership change caps a period of significant change at Muse Group, and some of it lands squarely in Scoring Notes’ wheelhouse. Across 2025 and 2026, MuseScore Studio has lost its two most visible leaders, Martin Keary and Bradley Kunda, as well as Simon Smith, its head of engraving, amid a broader run of senior departures at the company, even as Muse Group says the application is being developed “more actively than ever.”
Investor exits
Francisco Partners first invested in Muse Group in 2023, providing the backing for Muse Group’s acquisition of Hal Leonard, the largest publisher of sheet music and educational books. As Scoring Notes reported at the time, the firm’s involvement was tied directly to that deal, and, as a condition of the acquisition, Francisco Partners supported the appointment of a chief operating officer, Michael Richards. Today the company is led by founder and CEO Eugeny Naidenov alongside Mo Chahdi, its executive chairman and COO.
The exit was, by the companies’ own accounts, an amicable one. Muse Group framed it as the conclusion of a “successful partnership,” and Francisco Partners managing director Lee Rubenstein said the firm was “proud of the company’s accomplishments.” Matt Spetzler, a Francisco Partners senior advisor, said the firm had helped Muse “more than triple in size” over the course of the investment.
What stands out is how the buyout was financed. According to Muse Group, the transaction was supported by senior credit facilities arranged by J.P. Morgan and cash on hand, without a new equity investor stepping into Francisco Partners’ place. The financial terms were not disclosed. The practical effect is that Muse Group used debt financing and cash on hand to buy out its minority backer while keeping Naidenov in majority ownership and control, rather than bringing in another equity investor. Francisco Partners had held its position for about two and a half years, having come aboard when the Hal Leonard acquisition closed in December 2023.
Francisco Partners’ broader retreat from music
Viewed on its own, the exit is unremarkable — private-equity investments are made to be concluded. But it fits a broader pattern.
When Scoring Notes covered the Hal Leonard acquisition in 2023, it noted that Francisco Partners’ interest in music was expanding: the firm had recently taken a controlling stake in the rights manager Kobalt Music, held a majority position in Native Instruments, and had even been reported as a bidder for Avid.
By mid-2026, much of that has unwound. Francisco Partners agreed in March to sell Kobalt to Primary Wave, it is no longer invested in Native Instruments (now part of inMusic), and it has now concluded its Muse Group position. Music Business Worldwide observed that the move “lands amid a run of investor exits across the music business.”
At the corporate level, Naidenov remains the majority owner, with Chahdi continuing as executive chairman and COO. The company says it will keep investing in product innovation, selective acquisitions, and — a recurring theme in its announcement — embedding AI into the workflows its users already rely on, “including notation, audio, transcription, learning, content enhancement, and creative production.” The reshuffling has not been confined to the cap table, though.
The leadership of MuseScore Studio — the Muse Group product of most interest to Scoring Notes readers — was changing hands over this stretch, too. Asked whether those personnel moves were connected to the ownership change, Jack Sutton, Muse Group’s head of communications, told Scoring Notes: “As far as we’re aware, the FP decision was not at all a factor.”
Leadership changes at MuseScore Studio
Closer to home, the more consequential news for music notation users may be the turnover in the people steering MuseScore Studio.
Martin Keary joined MuseScore in November 2019, initially as a designer working with the open-source community, and quickly became the application’s product owner. He went on to serve as Muse Group’s head of software, overseeing MuseScore Studio, Audacity, MuseSounds, and Audio.com. Better known to many by his YouTube handle, Tantacrul, he was the driving creative force behind the ground-up redesign that arrived with MuseScore 4 in December 2022 — a release he described to Scoring Notes at the time as “the largest release I’ve ever put out.”
Martin left the company in March 2026 and discussed the circumstances of his departure publicly on the VI-Control forum and on Reddit in May. “I want MuseScore Studio and Audacity to succeed because millions of people rely on them,” Martin said, reflecting on his tenure. “They [Muse Group] placed a ton of trust in me. I was able to hire who I wanted, own the roadmaps without much interference, direct marketing, get new technologies funded, etc. and I appreciate that.”
Bradley Kunda, a classical guitarist and pianist by training, became MuseScore Studio’s product owner and the application’s public voice in the period following the MuseScore 4 launch. He fronted the release videos and detailed the roadmap through the 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 updates, and took part in a panel on the state of notation software at the inaugural MOLA Tech Fair in Berlin in 2023, alongside representatives from Dorico, Notion, and Soundslice. Jack Sutton confirmed to Scoring Notes that Bradley had left Muse Group and said that he “has moved on to a new product, and we’re very grateful for everything he did.”
The turnover reaches deeper into the team than its two public faces. Simon Smith — the concert pianist and engraver who led MuseScore Studio’s engraving team, and who worked with Martin Keary on the program’s Leland music font — lists his tenure on his own website as running from 2020 to 2025, across versions 3.6 through 4.6. Counting Martin, Bradley, and Simon, MuseScore Studio has lost its head of software, its product owner, and its head of engraving across 2025 and the first half of 2026. Scoring Notes is aware of additional recent departures from the MuseScore Studio team, but could not independently verify the details sufficiently before publication.
The churn isn’t confined to the Studio application. Nick Moro, the product owner for the MuseScore.com score-sharing site, left to become chief product officer of the music-learning app Yousician in September 2025, and has served as its interim CEO since May 2026.
At the company level, Daniel Ray, Muse Group’s head of strategy and a familiar voice from Scoring Notes podcast conversations over the years, announced that the end of December 2024 “marked my last day with the company,” after seven and a half years. His departure occurred some time ago, but Scoring Notes had not previously reported it.
Muse Group’s response
Asked how product inquiries should now be directed and who is steering MuseScore development, Muse Group’s head of communications, Jack Sutton, and head of product, Julia Sazhina, provided a statement to Scoring Notes emphasizing continuity.
“MuseScore Studio is being developed more actively than ever,” Julia said. “Our direction is not changing. The rest of the team is in place, updates continue, and we’re working hard to release version 5.0 as soon as possible.” The company is recruiting a new product owner to lead the application, which it called “strategically central to the wider Muse ecosystem.” The release cadence has continued in the meantime: MuseScore Studio 4.7, the last version Scoring Notes covered, arrived in May, followed by a series of smaller point updates — most recently 4.7.4 on July 7, which added several East Asian and Spanish instruments and a File-menu shortcut to Muse’s beta audio-to-score converter. (A reminder that you can keep up with Dorico, Sibelius, and MuseScore version history at our Product Guide.)
The stated roadmap tracks closely with the AI-forward strategy in the Francisco Partners announcement. Julia described a longer-term goal of getting music into the application from wherever it already lives — “a PDF, a photo or scan of a score, an audio recording, a MIDI file, or a melody you hum” — and turning it into an editable score.
Two parts of that vision are already available on musescore.com: NoteVision, the company’s optical-music-recognition tool that converts a PDF, scan, or photo of printed music into an editable score, and a separate, still-in-beta converter that does the same from an audio recording. Muse says both will eventually be built into MuseScore Studio at no cost, in keeping with the application’s free, open-source core.
Version 5.0 of MuseScore Studio, meanwhile, is set to bring playback automation for on-staff control of dynamics and Shared Staves, which will allow multiple instruments to be notated on a single staff while retaining independent parts — a longstanding request in orchestral, band, and choral writing. The company said specifics remain open, “because a new product owner and the finalized plan are ahead of us.”
Muse Group also reiterated that MuseScore Studio’s roadmap is community-driven, developed in the open on GitHub, even as professional publishers adopt it — Hal Leonard, now part of Muse Group, produces its piano/vocal/guitar editions in the application.
What to watch
People change jobs, and companies conclude investments; individually, these are unremarkable. But the concentration is hard to overlook: a private-equity exit at the corporate level and, at MuseScore Studio, the departure of its head of software, product owner, and head of engraving across 2025 and 2026. Muse Group’s public position is that development is accelerating, not slowing, and Martin Keary was explicit that his own exit was without drama.
The real test will be the next MuseScore Studio release and whoever takes the product owner’s chair. The direction Muse Group has laid out — version 5.0’s automation and Shared Staves, alongside the AI-driven features intended to bring music into the application from almost anywhere — is clear enough on paper. Whether it holds under new leadership, and whether continued work on MuseScore Studio’s engraving and notation fundamentals keeps pace with its AI ambitions, is what Scoring Notes will be watching in the months ahead.
Wow! I have to say that the MuseScore shakeup is more than “interesting.” As someone who once worked in the legal and systems sides of Wall Street and in banking, I’m too keenly aware that major shakeups in leadership and finances have implications far beyond reassuring public words. (I also did not know about the role of private equity with regard to MuseScore.) I understand now how MuseScore Studio can be offered free; I didn’t know it is the official engraving software of the globally dominant Hal Leonard company. However, I can’t help but be skeptical about a wholesale change in leadership and what it will mean in the direction of MuseScore Studio development when it is driven, ultimately, by a megabusiness whose primary goal is maximizing profit instead of serving ALL potential users.