Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections

MUSX is the proprietary standard music notation format (which stores the visual representation of a musical score but no actual audio data) for the Finale software starting with the version released in 2014. As summarized by Tyler Thorsted in his Obsolete Thor blog entry on Finale formats, "Finale was originally written by Coda Music Technology, owned for a time by Net4Music, now [as of 2024] currently owned by MakeMusic." Until version 2012, Finale used MUS as the default format (link via Internet Archive). Finale software sunset in August 2024. See History for more information.

Publicly available documentation about the format is very limited. According to a discussion on Finale Forum (August 9, 2017), MUSX files are "basically a compressed .zip file." Thorsted includes a example of the contents of the ZIP file and explains that "the NotationMetadata.xml file stores much of the information needed and begins with the root tag metadata version="26.2" xmlns="http://www.makemusic.com/2012/NotationMetadata"." Along with the application/vnd.makemusic.notation media type (which is not officially registered with IANA), these data points "would be sufficient for identification in a container signature." Other components of the MUSX ZIP file include META-INF/container.xml, preset files and score.dat files. What is a MUSX file? adds that a MUSX file "has details like title, composer’s name, and copyright information." Comments welcome.

Finale Quick Reference Guide for Windows notes that "Finale’s native file format is the Finale Notation File (*.MUSX). These files are cross-platform, which means the same file can be opened on both Macintosh and Windows computers. Although Finale files created in the current version cannot be opened in any versions of Finale prior to 2014, you can export the file in Finale 2012 format (MUS) or MusicXML format." In addition, MUS files created in versions 2012 and previous are automatically converted to MUSX files if accessed in Finale 2014 and later.

Discussion on the Finale Forum in 2022 suggest that Finale was positioning itself for the educational market and that the lack of new features and slow roll outs may have an impact on adoption. A blog post, Special Announcement Regarding Finale Pricing by Jason Wick, Director of Product Development for Finale, indicates that Finale was facing some competition from other software tools (including the free MuseScore and needed it adjust its pricing models. A 2024 reddit thread, Finale and Music Writing Software, suggested that "Finale is on the way out. New composers don't often use it" in comparison with other tools. A related unofficial poll on Facebook (no log in needed) and also included in the reddit thread the reddit thread, indicates that Finale was behind Sibelius in user numbers but still held a 24% market share, compared to Sibelius's 32%. Finale software sunset in August 2024. See History for more information.Comments welcome.

Accessibility Features

MUSX files have no specific attributes to support accessibility. However, MUSX can be exported to MusicXML which does have some capacity. See also Born-Accessible Music Publishing: Enabling the Creation of Accessible Digital Scores. Comments welcome.

MUSX was introduced as the default format for Finale in version 2014. Previous versions used MUS. Finale version 1 was first released in 1988 by Phil Farrand and John Borowicz. Wikipedia details that they "wrote the original version software for Coda Music Software, which was later sold to Net4Music and then became MakeMusic. After Finale version 3.7, Finale's marketers made the switch to years as identifiers for each new release, starting with Finale 97." Many iterations followed with, as of August 2024, v27 which was released in 2021. User manuals for selected versions from Finale 2009 - Finale v27 are available for download from MakeMusic and include change logs.

Finale was originally written by Coda Music Technology, owned for a time by Net4Music, and later owned by MakeMusic. In the blog post The end of Finale (link via Internet Archive) posted on August 26th, 2024, MakeMusic announced that it was ending development for Finale software and ending technical support in 2025. Greg Dell'Era states that "four decades is a very long time in the software industry. Technology stacks change, Mac and Windows operating systems evolve, and Finale’s millions of lines of code add up. This has made the delivery of incremental value for our customers exponentially harder over time. Today, Finale is no longer the future of the notation industry—a reality after 35 years, and I want to be candid about this. Instead of releasing new versions of Finale that would offer only marginal value to our users, we’ve made the decision to end its development." MakeMusic points Finale users to the Dorico software, developed by Steinberg, the creators of Cubase and a subsidiary of Yamaha. However, Dorico cannot directly import Finale .mus or .musx files so these files will need to be exported to MusicXML to work with Dorico products.