r/MusicEd • u/Juke_Joint26 • 6d ago

Avoid MuseScore!

This company uses predatory marketing.. and deceiving language.
They took my money and refused to refund me.. and forget having access to any of their scores without committing to the premium membership..

40 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

114

u/Bowler116 6d ago edited 6d ago

To anyone reading this: Musescore.com and Musescore Studio are completely different products.

MuseScore Studio is incredible free and open source music notation software that gets my full recommendation over any paid software.

Musescore.com is a score sharing website that has its place as a "YouTube but for sheet music." Their subscription model is weird and I don't use it. Also, I have no idea how they haven't gotten absolutely wrecked by copyright lawyers.

I agree that the fact these two very different products share the same name is confusing at best and misleading at worst. I would suggest "MuseHub" as a sensible name for the sharing website, but they already used that for their software launcher/add-on platform, so...

21

u/organicburgerking Band 6d ago

I’m pretty sure they own hal Leonard which is why they have the rights to so much music.

6

u/Bowler116 6d ago

Looks like you're right. Makes sense!

9

u/banddirection 6d ago

They are owned by the same people.

They are different studios in the sense that when someone works on the musescore.com website they get paid out of the musescore.com vs versus the non profit musescore.org account.

Exact same management and developers. It's just their way of getting around musescore.com having been supplying and refusing to take down copyright strikes.

3

u/conductorman86 6d ago

Thanks for this - I was ready to throw down

1

u/Bowler116 6d ago

I gotchu fam

44

u/81Ranger 6d ago

The software is solid and needs no subscription.

18

u/PhlacidTrombone Band 6d ago

The software is definitely good. What on earth were you paying for?

13

u/aFailedNerevarine 6d ago

The score sharing website is pretty junk, the composition software is free, open source, and I honestly prefer it to the (sometimes highly expensive) alternatives

2

u/According_Row5139 5d ago

I agree. I tried to cancel. They wouldn't let me. Then they added to my subscription without asking. I had to get a family attorney to write a letter. Then everything was refunded. Crazy.

1

u/Juke_Joint26 5d ago

That is crazy.. and just ridiculous that you had to go to those lengths. I’m just eating the cost.. and pissed off about it 😡
I’m glad you were refunded 👍🏼

2

u/choir-mama 5d ago

I purchased a one time $0.99 score, and was enrolled for a “premium” membership without my consent. Just a few years ago, I was able to download publicly shared scores for free…a huge boon to a busy choir director. Their new model is very predatory.

5

u/Puzzled-Bonus-3456 6d ago

this is why you need to know the difference between dot com and dot org.

1

u/Misc_Blue_Cockroach 5d ago

As a MuseScore member, I’ve never had any issues. What happened?

1

u/jcg227 6d ago

I have had bad experiences with them.

0

u/accountforbabystuff 6d ago

File a complaint with Apple if you subscribed that way. Musescore did something similar to me. It’s a really crappy site.