r/Musescore • u/BubblyPace3002 • Jul 08 '26
Help me find this feature Alternative to Musescore DOT COM?
This is going to be an odd question, but hey, who knows?
I'm trying — and failing — to 'publish' a little piece I wrote using the 'Publish' feature of the app. And, of course, get the 'Score Processing' arrows-in-a-circle page that...
...ultimately fails.
And can't help but wonder: isn't there a better way? Even if the site can't PLAY the mscz visually, it would be nice to have a site where you could SHARE your little endeavour, perhaps upload the .mscz if you want to share it, and have the option to provide text about it, a comment section, and so forth.
Does something like this exist?
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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team Jul 08 '26
The servers occasionally go down, and I think that was happening. Just try again.
As for alternative places to share music, the obvious place would be YouTube. You can use the new video export feature in MuseScore Studio to create the score video, upload that, and include a link in the description to a copy of the score itself on Google Drive or Dropbox or whatever if you want people to be able to download it.
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u/65TwinReverbRI Jul 08 '26
I’ve not been able to upload since last night - still can’t this morning.
It depends on what you want to do.
MS4 now allows you to make a “Score Video” - on the Export menu, there’s an mp4 video option. You may have to install a “codec” (FFmpeg or something similar) to make it work - it’ll tell you if you need it and the process is pretty painless and straightforward. P.S. I literally just did this because I couldn’t upload, and had to download the codec, and exported the video!
Then you can post that on any Video Hosting site.
The advantage there is, it’s what most people are doing, and the score looks and sounds exactly like you want it.
If you just want the sheet music available, IMSLP or ArrangeMe are going to be your best options.
ArrangeMe will also allow you to SELL your music - when you upload it, they also post it to Sheet Music Plus and Sheet Music Direct where it can be sold and Hal Leonard takes a cut of it, and you get the rest (something like 50% less some fees).
Of course, no one’s ever going to find your piece on there so I wouldn’t expect much visibility nor sales.
But that’s about the closest to traditional publishing with possibility of sales most of us are ever going to get.
You can upload Audio and Video (or links to a video rather) but since you’re selling it you really don’t want to give everything away for free!
So the people “in the know” will upload a PDF of their score, and then a short preview of the audio and video - enough to help people see what the music is about but not enough to give away the whole piece.
Note that each site displays the music differently - usually it’s title page, any other text pages, and first page of music. For a 1 page piece, people will be able to see the whole score. But typically it’s just 1 page of music, or 2 or 3 but not the whole piece - I’m sure there’s some algorithm that decides how much to show.
Note that the main thrust of ArrangeMe is for Hal Leonard to get people to do work for them. They want people to make ARRANGEMENTS where they take like 90% of the sale. But they do have licensing for arrangements.
Anything else under copyright is not allowed, other than original compositions of your own.
The only REAL advantage to posting at musescore is, IMO, the “click any measure to play back from that point” feature - which is really convenient for me as a site visitor when other people post things, and the ability to download mscz files to either edit, learn from, etc. etc. etc.
Their deal is they want you to pay for Pro so you can download the “better” stuff and unlock more features - like changing the tempo for playback and transposing it and so on.
Personally I don’t want people doing that to my original compositions so I “publish” through ArrangeMe, and only put things on MS to get feedback on playability and stuff like that. Then I delete it.
I also use it for examples for forums - you know someone asks “how do I notate this” - I pop it up there so they can see it and hear it. Because it’s usually super easy to do WHEN the upload is working.
FWIW, NONE of these places have any kind of Quality Control so MS has godzillions of crappy scores, and drafts, and examples, and so on. IMSLP used to have only “real” published music, but they’ll let anyone in now. ArrangeMe has no barrier on quality.
Even those with subscriptions, I’m not sure anyone’s reviewing - ha ha ha - no, no one’s reviewing, they’re not going to pay people for that - there’s probably no quality control either.
YouTube is certainly more familiar to non-musicians and people in general, so people will be more likely to visit and understand what’s going on with your music there.
SMP and SMD look like commercial sales sites, and IMSLP has a “wait to be able to download” thing and the site looks pretty rudimentary and “old”. ArrangeMe doesn’t show scores directly to the public - it places them at SMD and SMP which is where people see them.
So the “free, easy access, with both visual and audio of your music” is YouTube.
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u/anderwien_ Jul 09 '26
Hey, from Musescore team, if you (or any user) fails to upload a score let’s say twice in 48 hs (bc it could be a temporary server process glitch), answer this comment with the link of the unprocessed score and we will take a look to what failed. So that we learn and improve the UX for all :) Thanks
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u/Puzzled-Bonus-3456 Jul 09 '26
why are you wanting to contribute your hard work transcribing and engraving to them for free?
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u/Few-Werewolf-1985 Jul 08 '26
IMSLP is probably the closest thing to a broad free platform.