I made the mistake of downloading a free music notation program named Sibelius First.

WARNING: Don’t do it!

If you write your music in Sibelius First, you won’t be able to export the music unless you pay for the full version of Sibelius.

Sibelius First is holding some of my older sheet music hostage, and I can’t import it into another program without paying Avid. It’s an awful business practice.

Sibelius First Alternatives

Here are some free music notation programs that won’t lock your music into a proprietary format.

1. Dorico SE

There’s a free alternative to Sibelius First called Dorico SE that does let you export to MusicXML, even with the free version. Exporting the music to MusicXML lets you import it into other music programs, which means that you aren’t being tricked into vendor lock-in.

Also, Dorico is better software than Sibelius.

My one wish for Dorico is that the full version should be cheaper. If they had a $10/month or $100/year subscription, I would buy it, but the current price of $579.99 is way out of my budget.

There is a cheaper edition called Dorico Elements, but I don’t think it includes the ability to create custom guitar chord diagrams, which is a feature I need.

2. MuseScore

There’s another free program called MuseScore that is worth checking out, though I prefer Dorico.

Either Dorico SE or MuseScore is a better choice than Sibelius First.