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This article was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 21 December 2017 with a consensus to merge the content into the article Sibelius Software. If you find that such action has not been taken promptly, please consider assisting in the merger instead of re-nominating the article for deletion. To discuss the merger, please use the destination article's talk page. (December 2017)

The Save Sibelius campaign marked the first time a users group of a software application generated an organised mass response to a major technology company, petitioning it to reinstate developers whom it had fired in order to restructure its operations offshore, and then when that did not succeed, petitioning the company to divest itself of its flagship scorewriter application. The campaign attracted hundreds of thousands of responses, including an 11,590 strong petition, was featured on BBC Radio 4 and MacUser and prompted defensive public responses from the Sibelius application’s owners, Avid Tech.

The British scorewriter application Sibelius is the world's largest selling music notation program, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2005. In the following year, Sibelius creators Ben and Jonathan Finn sold their business to the American conglomerate Avid Tech for $16-23 million instead of floating the company as they had originally intended. Sibelius was deemed a good fit for Avid, who had acquired other applications of comparable stature, such as Pro Tools. However Avid soon began making cuts in the Sibelius enterprise, closing overseas branches and laying off employees, which was seen by users as asset stripping.

On 19 July 2012, after Avid Tech fired all but three of the Sibelius development team and closed their London office in order to relocate jobs offshore to Ukraine and California, the Save Sibelius activist group was formed by Derek Williams to try to save the application. Williams co-opted Richie Vitale and a small team of other musicians to petition Avid to reverse their decision. Because of past experience with orphaned music technology and abandonware such as the Mosaic notation program and OMS, it was feared that the Sibelius application would ultimately cease development, thereby leaving its users without updates to ensure the application would remain compatible with future operating system upgrades.

To raise public awareness among its half a million users, Williams and Vitale launched a Facebook campaign, duplicated on Google Plus. Within its first week, 485,000 Facebook hits were generated, with 12,000 followers joining the page, alongside growing music industry media interest. The Avid board of directors who had been targeted by a letter writing campaign initiated from the Save Sibelius website, began issuing public reassurances that they intended to keep Sibelius alive in public statements on their own blog websites and social media. After Derek Williams' 6 August 2012 Podcast interview with The Audio Podcast, there followed a BBC Radio 4 radio interview about the campaign on You and Yours with composer Paul Mealor on 24 August 2012 indicating that Sibelius users were not convinced.

By October, after attempts by the Finn brothers and other investors approached by Williams to buy back the application from Avid proved unsuccessful, Williams launched a Change.org petition called "chris-gahagan-senior-vice-president-of-products-sell-sibelius" to try to persuade Avid Tech to divest itself of Sibelius, which he presented in person to Sibelius Software executives from Avid at an extraordinary meeting called by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), held at its London offices on 3 October 2012. Amid subsequent collapsing share performance that involved Avid's delisting by Nasdaq, Avid Tech CEO Gary Greenfield stepped down, while Bobby Lombardi was replaced by Sam Butler as the new managing director of Sibelius. Since the conclusion of the campaign, Sibelius 8 has been launched and remains in the company's catalogue. The Save Sibelius Facebook page remains active as a support only site, and http://www/sibeliususers.org that was built for the Save Sibelius campaign has been archived, with the only the Home and Contact pages still active.

Central to the Save Sibelius campaign were the issues of orphaned technology, abandonware, planned obsolescence, asset stripping, and the perceived impact of Avid Tech's actions on employees, shareholders and consumers. The firing of the Sibelius development team led directly to their engagement by Yamaha Steinberg to develop a rival application to Sibelius. In February 2013, Steinberg announced they had hired the majority of the former Sibelius development team to develop Dorico, under the stewardship of former Sibelius boss, Daniel Spreadbury.

References

1. Sibelius Awards. Sibelius (software)
2. Hirschkorn, Jenny. (22 September 2003). Starting out. Publisher: The Telegraph (London, UK)
3. (2 August 2006). Founders net $16m as US firm buys music software group. The Independent
4. Cullen, Drew. (3 August 2006). Avid buys Sibelius for a song. Publisher: The Register (London, UK)
5. Hughes, Russ. (3 July 2012). Avid To Close UK Sibelius Office. Pro Tools Expert. (London, UK)
6. Rothman, Philip. (16 December 2013). Avid’s Michael Ost speaks about Sibelius’s past, present, and future. (New York, USA)
7. "Sibelius software's London offices to close". Rhinegold.co.uk. 4 July 2012. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
8. "Avid Divests Consumer Businesses and Streamlines Operations". Business Wire. 2 July 2012. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
9. Puff, Robert. (7 February 2012). Sibelius UK Office Closes : Avid Selling Consumer Businesses!. Of Note : Blog. Publisher: rpmseattle (Seattle, USA)
10. Kirn, Peter. (9 August 2012). Avid’s Sibelius Scoring Tool Marches On, But Without Its Creators, As Users Protest. Publisher: Create Digital Media (Berlin, Germany)
11. Derek Williams. (Edinburgh, Scotland)
12. 4-25 July 2012. OT - Sibelius London Office to close. Sibelius Software. (London, England)
13. Save Sibelius!. Facebook
14. Save Sibelius!. Google Plus
15. (30 July 2012). Save Sibelius campaign, Sound on Sound. Mac Music forum. Publisher: SOS Publications Group (Cambridge, England)
16. Banks, Adam. (17 August 2012). Avid hits bum note with Sibelius, 'MacUser'. Page 14. Publisher: Dennis Publishing (London, England)
17. Williams, Derek. (December 2012). Sibelius users speak out, 'Allegro'. Page 10. Publisher: Local802 (New York, USA)
18. Kloiber, Martin . (23 July 2012). Avid’s Commitment to Sibelius, 'Avid Community'. Publisher: Avid Tech (Cramlington , United Kingdom)
19. Williams, Derek. (6 August 2012). Podcast YouTube Interview: The Audio Podcast 67 Sib Synth Notation with The Audio Podcast. (United Kingdom)
20. Mealor, Paul. (24 August 2012). Sibelius Software, You and Yours. Transcript Page 14. Publisher: BBC Radio 4 (London, England)
21. Schofield, Jack . (7 August 2012). Users petition Avid to sell Sibelius music software arm, 'Avid Community'. Publisher: ZDNet (Cramlington , United Kingdom)
22. Castellanos, Sara. (24 February 2014). Avid to be delisted from Nasdaq. Publisher: Boston Business Journal (Boston, USA)
23. Rothman, Philip. (6 January 2014). Sam Butler named as new Product Manager for Sibelius. Scoring Notes. (New York, USA)
24. Clark, Kevin. (15 November 2012). Keeping Score: Spreadbury Speaks on Sibelius Team Transition. Publisher: New Music USA (New York, USA)
25. (20 February 2013). Sibelius Core Team Now at Steinberg, Building New Notation Tool. Publisher: Create Digital Media (Berlin, Germany)
26. Spreadbury, Daniel. (20 February 2013). Welcome!. Publisher: Steinberg (Boston, USA)

• Articles to be merged from December 2017
• Petitions
• Social media campaigns