MuseScore survey 2013 results
Last month we conducted the first MuseScore community survey. We received 722 complete submissions which are much more than expected. So thanks to those who participated! If you didn’t have a chance to add your voice, no worries, we plan to run more surveys in the future to follow up on how MuseScore is doing. That being said, what did we learn?
MuseScore software satisfaction level
Wow! You like the MuseScore a lot :) 72% of the participants to the survey gave MuseScore a score of 8 or more. We can deduct from it that the software is meeting most of your expectations. But we don’t want to stop there and aim even higher. So let’s have a look at the details and find out where we can improve on.
What does MuseScore do well?
Ease of Use
The MuseScore software is overall considered to be easy to use. That’s quite an accomplishment given that designing a simple workflow for a complex task such as making sheet music is very challenging.
Print Quality
You are quite satisfied with the print quality of MuseScore which can be attributed to the combination of the quality musical font, the engraving rules built into MuseScore and more.
Software Stability
The stability of MuseScore seems to meet your expectations. It is a good sign of the effectiveness of the MuseScore contributor and developer community in reporting bugs and getting those fixed.
What should MuseScore improve on?
Documentation
The documentation needs more attention. There is a learning curve to MuseScore so guiding our first time users to understand MuseScore’s workflow should be our mission. Thus we have a plan. A reference handbook will be created of MuseScore 2.0, available to everyone to dive into and learn about the internals of MuseScore. If you ever thought of writing a guide for MuseScore like Katie Wardrobe has done with her Essential Beginner’s Guide, this reference handbook will greatly lower your investment to get to know all about MuseScore. So we want to support anyone who has ambition to write books about MuseScore, even when it’s a book for purchase.
Audio Quality
Playback quality in MuseScore is ok but a lot of the respondents were somewhat disappointed. This is not a surprise as due to limited developer resources, MuseScore’s mantra has always been notation first, playback after. But this doesn’t mean that we are neglecting playback. As a testimony of that, listen to the sound of MuseScore 2.0.
Support & Forums
A lot of people answered ‘not applicable’ for the support, helpdesk, forums and community. Perhaps this means that they didn’t find their way yet to the MuseScore forums, or perhaps they simply don’t need support. In any case, we plan to improve the musescore.org website for the next MuseScore release and lower the barrier to ask for help.
Net Promoter Score
How likely are you to recommend the MuseScore software to a friend or a colleague?
Based on yours answers, we were able to calculate the word-of-mouth level of MuseScore, or in marketing terms the Net Promoter Score: it is a stunning 68!
It means that the net percentage of people claiming they would recommend MuseScore as music notation software is 68%. It was calculated as the difference between 74% (lovers answering 9 or 10) and 6% (detractors answering 6 or lower) following to the methodology used with this NPS approach.
Next year we'll do a survey again and share the results. Hopefully with even more submissions and more insight!
Comments
Hello team,
First, I should state that I like MuseScore and it's ongoing develepment, as opposed the the expensive alternatives. Each program has it's minor problems, be it too extensive and thereby unoverviewable, or lacking really handy utilities, or looking rather unattractive. One will get by if -at the end- it does what you need. MuseScore is on the right way.
But, as a player of balkan music and coping with a lot of irregular measures, there has been a problem from the start with MuseScore. That problem is, that MuseScore will take no notice of your wishes in connecting notes.
For example, create a measure of 2+2+2+3 (9/8) and MuseScore will not connect your notes as 2-2-2-3, it will at the end connect as 3-3-3 and that is unusable for new interpretors. The same goes for imported music, for example, import a correctly written 2-2-2-3 from Finale in XML, and MuseScore will display it generally as 3-3-3 which is completely false. The same XML though would be importeed in Finale again correctly as originally meant.
So firstly, I would recommend that a measure like 2-2-2-3/8 or 2-2-3-2/8 be hounored in their note connections, because such a scheme denotes where mayor or minor accents are in the music.
Secondly, nobody wants to see 2-3-2-2/8 at the start of any staff, we want to see 9/8 and the exact interpretation (2-2-2-3 or 2-2-3-2 or even 3-2-2-2) being described at a higher level, and much better even shown in note connections wherever possible., so novices have less problems.
The examples above are rather simple, but we are also talking about 11/16 and 15/16 etcetera, and really upto extremes such as 31/32. Therefore, the scheme (like 2-2-3-2-2-3-3-2-2-3 (total 24) should be separated from the speed (like 4th or 8th or 16th or even 32th), and that scheme should be hounored in note-connections.
We keep looking at MuseScore. But as long as that it does not take a 11/16 into any given scheme (like 2-2-3-2-2), and does not display11/16 rather than 2-2-3-2-2/16, and does not display at least the 16th notes correspondingly connected, MuseScore remains really unuseable as to our concern.
From a programmers view (I am a prgrammer) I would make the scheme a general default as proposed above, with the possibility to overrule at just measure level. After all, I know a song measured 7/8+4/8+7/8+9/8 (effectively a 27/8) , and that is only the general scheme..., so a 4/8 should be easily intermixed for 1 or 2 measures.
Most important is the note-connection as given by the user : 2-2-2-3 or 3-2-2-3 or 4-5 or 3-2 ... then we can adopt museScore as our preferenced program.
Greetings, flyingdm
In reply to about connected notes by flyingdm
You might consider starting a separate thread for your support request, rather than co-opting this survey discussion. It *is* possible to beam however you like.
Very new here. Not sure yet how to start a separate thread of discussion. But if there was one on compound meter I would have a little to add.
In reply to Compound metre by KGBOperative
Follow any indication:
http://musescore.org/en/handbook/how-report-bug-or-ask-support
Select the forum section that interests you, then select "Post new Forum topic" at the top, below the title.
Musescore is an absolutely fantastic scorewriting program!!!! Many thanks to those who developed this system and who make it available to the public.
William