Sorry, Stephanie, but Finale was under no obligation in 2020 to tell you that the product would sunset five years later. If they even knew.

Most of us just shook our heads, vented a bit, and moved on.

The retail price of Dorico Pro 6 is $579.99. The discounted offer price is $149.99 in your MakeMusic account - plus an additional 15% off with the promo code. And - MakeMusic will upgrade your version 26 to 27.4.1 so you can take advantage of xml 4.0 when you export. (I think that meets your 75% request)

There are literally hundreds of Dorico tutorial videos on youtube - directly from Steinberg or from active Dorico users. Plus the Dorico blog is one of the best places to get your questions answered. Several of the Dorico development team respond directly to many of the posts. BTW - Dorico has a 60 day free trial.

Go to the ScoringNotes web site and read the several posts on this topic. Very well written. Lots of options… The articles discuss all three of the big notation programs - Dorico, Sibelius, MuseScore.

I started with Finale using the floppy disks and a dot matrix printer back in the 80’s… so I get it. I did purchase Dorico and really like it - my workflow is actually quite a bit faster with Dorico. Good luck as you move forward!

I second Mike and Doug’s comments. This was publicly revealed last fall, so it’s been known for nearly a year. Some of us also had an inking that this might happen simply because bugs were not being addressed for quite some time, nor were there any meaningful enhancements to Finale aside from adding a few JW plugins as a likely stopgap measure in hindsight.

I was pissed at first but went through the anger and denial phases pretty quickly and got to acceptance. Since early September, I’ve now composed seven works in Dorico after using Finale for several decades. It took me about a month or so to really get up to speed, but as mentioned, there are tons of resources online. One of the best ones is their user forum, which is heavily trafficked. has many users who respond quickly and insightfully, and the developers also read every post. I also read the manual, which isn’t as good as the old Finale manuals from the early 90’s, but still got me to the point where I could compose a pretty lengthy and complicated piano work (https://dbtmusic.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/verbigeration.pdf).

It’s understandable to be angry, but there are other options and if an old guy like me could figure out how to use Dorico in a few weeks, anyone can. Good luck!

I just purchased the Dorico Pro Crossgrade at $149 (did not see any 15% off promo code as mentioned above). Can I get credit for the 15% or is there something special I was supposed to do in order to get it?

The promo code is DORICO15 and has been around a while - you must not be getting email from MakeMusic...? I believe there is a spot on the final purchase confirmation page to enter a PROMO-CODE, then the total is recalculated.

You would need to contact MakeMusic customer support via email to ask about the additional 15%.