Sibelius is currently we believe turning over $18 million a year. So now, with no overheads of development team and offices, for Avid that becomes clean profit as Sibelius is slowly killed off over the next 3-4 years. To Avid’s Wall St mentality, that is smart business. Run on empty, make your fortune, then leave the carcass behind to hunt for the next pot of gold. Short term thinking that brings on the Harvard High Fives.
It looks like there will be a Sibelius 8, but that will be it:
The programmers who left yesterday will have had enough code pre-written for a very slim Sibelius version 8 to be released in a year or two, so Avid can pretend that development is still going on. It isn’t. Development on Sibelius ceased yesterday.
The sibeliususers.org site gives more background on Avid’s decline and how it impacts Sibelius:
Based on its latest published figures Avid is in financial trouble. Right after the most recent stockholders meeting, all the Avid board of directors sold significant shares of stock, clearly a co-ordinated sale. Simultaneously, several key executives resigned, including Vice President, CFO and CTO. Avid is short of cash and desperately trying to shore up its liquidity with reckless cost cutting. Sibelius is viable as a standalone company, but without sustained pressure from its users, Avid will try to run it offshore, most likely in the Ukraine. This short-term thinking is solely to ease Avid through its present cash crisis, not in any way for the benefit of Sibelius users. In fact it will effectively destroy Sibelius.
Bad news.
Ronald Richard Duquette says
Archive User says
Pamela Marshall says
Phoebe Jevtovic says
Timothy Banks says
Emeritus Professor, School of the Arts, Samford University
T&W, LLC (Performing Arts Consultants)
http://www.timbanks.org
Archive User says
Sig Rosen says