Who Owns Sibelius?

Twins Ben and Jonathan Finn began writing the program as students in 1987, naming it after the composer Jean Sibelius. After graduating from Oxford and Cambridge they founded Sibelius Software in April 1993 in Cambridge, England, to sell what became the first widely successful intelligent notation editor.

Through the 1990s Sibelius expanded to Windows and Mac, opened offices in the US, Australia, and Japan, and became the best-selling notation program in the world, winning the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2005. With roughly 180,000 users and limited room to grow alone, the founders agreed to Avid's $23 million takeover in August 2006, netting about $16 million for their majority stake.

The Avid era proved turbulent. In July 2012 Avid closed the London office and dismissed the development team despite a public campaign, then rebuilt development elsewhere. Steinberg hired the displaced team to create Dorico, which became Sibelius's strongest rival. Under Avid the product moved to a subscription-first model as Sibelius Ultimate, with perpetual licenses still sold, and it remains a standard in education and publishing.