Today we’re very excited to give you a sneak peek at something we’ve been working on for over six months now, coming this spring to forScore and forScore mini. It’s called Groups, and it’s a brand new service that lets you automatically share read-only copies of your music and setlists with colleagues. It’s the easiest way to keep everyone on the same page, no matter where you are.
What it does
Many musicians work in groups, and sending PDFs back and forth or rearranging everyone’s setlists at the last minute can be a huge hassle. Now, as a group manager, you’ll be able to assign specific scores and setlists to your group. As you work, changes will be uploaded automatically and efficiently in the background. Your colleagues can join your group and, once you’ve approved them, will receive updated scores, metadata, annotations, and setlists even if they’re miles away.
How it works
Groups is built on top of CloudKit, so there’s no additional account to create or separate system to use. As long as you’ve set up a free iCloud account, you’ll already be logged in and ready to use Groups. Since we’re securely sharing information between iCloud users, your group’s files won’t count against your personal storage limits, they’ll count against ours.
CloudKit is a new technology and there are a lot of important details that we just don’t have yet, such as how much Apple will charge developers for exceeding their complimentary quotas. Because of this, Groups will be a paid service and we’re taking a conservative approach to rolling it out. Although anyone can become a member of a group, a monthly subscription will be required to create and manage your own groups. Once you do, you’ll be able to share up to 250MB of content with up to 10 group members, and we expect these limits to increase over time.
What’s next
We think Groups will be a fantastic new tool and we can’t wait to show it to you. We’ll be beta testing it and a few other tidbits in forScore 8.2 and forScore mini 1.1 over the next few months, so if you’re interested in participating please let us know.
Today our app TuneWave was featured in The New York Times! It’s on page B9 of many print editions and a version of the article is also available online. We’re very happy to see our tuner app in the spotlight and we’re grateful to the Times for considering us.
When we introduced our in-app purchase storefront back in 2012, we knew it had the potential to address the needs of our users, artists, and music publishers alike. We knew that by combining the simplicity and ubiquity of standard PDF files with forScore-specific features and enhancements, we could provide a fantastic experience without locking people in.
Our customers could quickly and easily access popular music perfectly optimized for the iPad (and would gladly pay for it). Artists could provide a much more personal product by including their own notes and annotations (we’ve had conversations with a number of musicians over the years looking to do just that). Publishers, of course, could benefit from the incredible popularity of the iPad and give their customers the chance to enjoy sheet music on their own terms.
We’ve had great support from our first few partners including Oregon Catholic Press and Janet Lanier, but our talks with major music publishers over the years have repeatedly stalled. From accounting and formatting requirements to more fine-grained logistical questions, somewhere along the line we meet institutional hesitation. Originally, the biggest sticking point was our choice to not use DRM (Digital Rights Management) since we believe such technologies most often hinder legitimate usage and make customers feel like criminals. Eventually it became clear that this wasn’t something we had enough leverage to influence and we designed a DRM system for publishers to use if they choose to. Yet here we are in 2015 and we still get emails from customers asking why our selection is so limited and if we’ll be adding more music soon.
Ultimately, this is up to the music publishers. They’ve shown that they understand the importance of making their music available on the iPad: many of them have their own apps, though the music they sell is viewable exclusively within their app. We know our customers don’t want to have to remember who supplied the music, switch apps, and then find it and play it. They want to use the music reader they prefer, and they want to have their entire collection available to them at once.
If you’re a forScore user who wants to see more music in our storefront, consider getting in touch with the publishers who sell the kinds of music you’re eager to buy and let them know. As a small company, there’s only so much we can do to convince them. If customers start giving them constructive feedback, they’ll be much more likely to listen.
If you’re an artist, consider the kind of experience you can offer through digital music that you could never offer with paper. Your music could be enhanced, brought to life, and made available to even more musicians with our powerful accessibility tools like Reflow. These musicians might never be able to play your music otherwise.
Finally, if you work for one of these publishers, please contact us. We know we have a lot to offer, and we can’t wait to work with you.
Today we’re very excited and proud to announce the release of forScore mini, the complete forScore experience for iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s been a long process and an incredibly rewarding one, and the final result is a relentless pursuit of the mission forScore started over four years ago: to remove barriers between musicians and their music.
Now, with your entire repertoire in your pocket and the world’s incredibly diverse library of music just a few taps away, there’s no doubt forScore mini fulfills its mission and significantly broadens the variety of ways musicians can benefit from digital sheet music. The music reader that so many people love and depend on every day is now more accessible and versatile than ever, and we can’t wait to hear what you think.
Available immediately and exclusively on the App Store, forScore mini is just $6.99 (USD) so be sure to check it out today!
Today we’re proud to introduce our latest creation: TuneWave. First unveiled as part of forScore 8, TuneWave is a no-nonsense tuner that uses a beautiful sine wave animation to give you a visual sense of focus by reducing amplitude as you zero in on your note. You can transpose as needed and adjust the base frequency to fit your needs, and since it’s a universal app, you can use it on any of your devices.
That’s not all, though, because today we’re also announcing our first App Bundle, the forScore Music Box. It combines each of our accessory apps into one easy package and offers them for just $2.99 (USD, international pricing varies slightly). That means you can get the brand new TuneWave app for free if you’ve already purchased the other three apps individually! Otherwise, TuneWave is 99 cents when purchased separately.
If you haven’t had a chance to check out these apps previously, now’s a great time to do so. From our slick metronome to our recently updated pitch pipe (complete with a ‘today view’ widget for instant access from just about anywhere), it’s a steal. Get TuneWave as part of the new forScore Music Box on the App Store today!