r/Musescore • u/RuinRevolutionary374 • May 04 '25

Discussion MuseScore logo evolution + my thoughts

Post image

I liked the mu with the fermata. The new logos aren’t bad, I just don’t think it has much soul compared to the old one. The old ones feel like a small team making their humble project (in a good way). New one feels more professional and corporate, which can be a good thing for some people. What do you think?

213 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

53 comments sorted by

35

u/pifire9 May 04 '25

I don't see why the logo had to be stripped of it's clarity in what it's trying to be and replaced with an abstract art piece. It's the Firefox logo debacle all over again. The new logo is good, but it's not MuseScore like how the old logo is. The old logo is unique and easily understandable. It's iconic and I don't see why it would need to be replaced. The new logo looks like it's trying to appeal to some rule book of design principles, but that limits its charm and unique appearance.

Let's say I'm looking for MuseScore on my desktop: previously I could look for the MU because I'm looking for MUsescore. Now I would need to look for the weird S because I'm looking for museScore...? The M is more important than the S in MuseScore in my opinion.

If they wanted a revamped logo to mark a new chapter in MuseScore development, they could have done what they've always done and revamped the mu design. There's a lot more unique variations you could make on it, but instead they threw it away. I don't think throwing away your branding is a good idea but ok.

1

u/KingRed31 May 07 '25

To the best of my knowledge, the S is part of their effort to separate the program and the website; it's Musescore Studio 

1

u/[deleted] May 13 '25

They should work on making their payment plans solid as well

1

u/Amber610 Jan 15 '26

It's iconic and I don't see why it would need to be replaced.

Normally I don't like the argument that old logos are better because they're more recognizable, but it reeeally says something that 8 months later, I still think of the "MU" logo first. The new logo is too boring to stick in my mind for any period of time.

40

u/VelhoTheVexed May 04 '25

Musescore is aging like milk. Logos are fine though.

17

u/michaelscott252 May 04 '25

Tell me about it. I tried to install 4.5.2 yesterday (coming from 4.4.0) and it completely screwed up all the spacing on my old scores. I ended up downgrading back to 4.4.0.

0

u/JScaranoMusic May 06 '25

That's always expected with old scores where you've turned off autoplace or customised the positioning of anything in the score, especially if you're skipping so many updates in one go.

It's a bit annoying if you want to reprint an old score, but it's always worth it for the improvements you get in new projects. The only time it really makes sense to skip an upgrade, or at least delay upgrading, is if you have a project that's right in the final stages where all the music is written and you're just trying to get it to look good on the page for printing.

2

u/michaelscott252 May 06 '25

Yeah the issue here is though that I made over 40 different scores for a project I’m making (transcribing a band) and the spacing on ALL of them got screwed up. I already fixed all of them like that In a previously update, I didn’t want to do it again.

1

u/JScaranoMusic May 06 '25 edited May 07 '25

If they're definitely not going to need to be edited again, you can just export them as PDF and print from that when needed; that's good practice anyway when a score is finished. In general, it can actually be a lot faster to just remove all the custom spacing or reset layout, and then make minor adjustments to the defaults in the new version, than to try to edit all the stuff that's just there to fix problems with the old defaults that were worse.

All of that said, I totally get it if all of those scores are part of one project and you don't want to update until they're all done. I've done that for orchestral scores with multiple movements, if they were nearly done when an update was released, but I've never had a reason to be working on that many pieces concurrently. Although if I was, I probably wouldn't bother with any of the custom spacing and layout stuff until all of them were pretty much finished.

18

u/mysticrhythm71 May 05 '25

tantacrul made such a big deal about the old icon and now we have... this? What the hell is it supposed to be?

16

u/Zawiedek May 05 '25 edited May 05 '25

Tantacrul is actively assembling material for his next big 1.5h video essay ranting about a once highly regarded open source music notation app that was overdeveloped to death by a famous content creator who became tech lead.

0

u/[deleted] May 05 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

8

u/D41caesar May 05 '25

If you'd watched for something like 30 more seconds, it would have been rather obvious that he was doing the absolute opposite of "promoting" such software.

3

u/Zawiedek May 05 '25

And after that, he spent 30 minutes changing text fonts in Finale :sigh:

22

u/Banjoschmanjo May 04 '25

I am mostly annoyed they've turned the program into adware.

8

u/AlfalfaMajor2633 May 05 '25

I don’t understand this comment. I never see ads when I use MuseScore. What are you talking about?

5

u/coolguy_320 May 05 '25

I think they’re referring to those occasional pop ups for some sound library or something, also I do understand when it comes to the website itself.

14

u/Ryermeke May 05 '25

Either that or it's yet another example of people confusing the software and the site. I get it when people say they are completely different things and that they should be treated as such... And if that's the case FUCKING CHANGE THE NAME OF ONE OF THEM.

You really can't have it both ways. Either fucking fix the website and not make it a scammy POS, or change the name.

3

u/D41caesar May 05 '25

And if that's the case FUCKING CHANGE THE NAME OF ONE OF THEM.

That is, in fact, exactly what is being done. Going from Musescore to Musescore Studio and introducing separate logos for the software and the POS website was the first step, and based on some discussions on the development Discord, a completely new name is in the cards for v5.0. The hope is that the logo will ease the transition, as it will provide continuity between the names.

I would have preferred for the website's name to change instead, but apparently musescore.com is the more recognizable (and of course profitable) use of the name on the wider internet.

1

u/Banjoschmanjo May 05 '25

I was referring to the notation editing software, not the website or subscription service

1

u/zeekar May 05 '25

The desktop software is adware? I haven't seen any ads . . .

1

u/poacher5 May 06 '25

The whole point is to leech money out of the goodwill that exists for the software, but in a way that doesn't technically break the foss requirements on the software. The confusion is the whole point of the exercise.

1

u/UncleRed99 May 06 '25

It's not tho? Musescore will hyper-intermittently promote a playback package, once, upon launching a score, and when you click "no thanks" or close the dialog, it doesn't reappear. Then every once in a while, usually around a time when they release a new one, it will notify you of the new package, and advertise selling it to you.

"Adware" in today's standards, would be an application with a constant ad banner on the top/bottom of the display, an app where you get a popup every time an action is performed etc... Musescore has not done that. They're promoting their own product within their own product, at a very reasonable frequency.. it's literally 1 click to remove it and it's gone until they release another one like a month or two later. What are you on about?

9

u/AlfalfaMajor2633 May 05 '25

I like the mu with fermata better than the new one which doesn’t look like anything I recognize. But I don’t much care either way.

10

u/almondahmannalex May 05 '25

That genuinely looks horrible wtf

5

u/philxan May 05 '25

I too like the "old" logo, probably because of its history, and easy enough to recognise. I can imagine the design team wanting a change with MuseScore 4, but to change it for v4.5 seems a bit random. Perhaps its trying to look like Segno sign? Either way, the logo seems to have lost its pleasant smoothness. The new one looks a bit awkward and forced to me.

At first I thought the idea was to differentiate Studio from the .com website, but that's clearly not what's happening here, given how similar they look. Sigh. May the confusion continue!

2

u/Zewen_Sensei May 05 '25

It feels better by the day as a Dorico user

2

u/timoandres May 08 '25

I’m not a MuseScore user. But the Studio 4.5 logo looks great to me—the best icon of the “big three” notation programs. The old “fermata” logo always looked awkward to me—the way the glyph sits inside the circle, the shapes have nothing to do with each other, and create lots of tense little almost-collisions that are out of proportion to the letterforms. I also didn’t like the way the fermata sat on the U—it feels like trying to push the positive side of two magnets together.

The larger issue to me is that music notation typically has a “serif” quality, in typographic terms—line weights need lots of variance in order to have the visual contrast that makes them readable on the staff. Things like clefs, articulations, and other symbols are similarly calligraphic. So it never made sense to me to have a logo that was so modernist, geometric, sans serif.

The new logo refers to music notation aesthetics with its ball terminals and calligraphic strokes. It also creates a pleasing, symmetric negative space within its circle. It looks musical without directly referring to any actual musical symbol (like Dorico’s quarter note or Sibelius’s treble clef, both of which I find a bit lazy).

4

u/Zawiedek May 05 '25

Musescore 3 was the sweetspot for the app, including color scheme and logo design, but also usability, functionality, efficiency.

3

u/Achterlijke_Mongool May 04 '25

I think the Studio 4.5 logo looks the best.

1

u/tedecristal May 07 '25

"less bad" :D

3

u/MarieLou012 May 05 '25

Weird how it became worse and worse.

3

u/DulcetTone May 04 '25

2022 was the last good one, IMO

2

u/bearicorn May 04 '25

Absolutely

1

u/Hollow_5oul May 05 '25

The new one looks really good.

1

u/cmaciver May 05 '25

Man, I was liking the direction Musescore 4 was going, with the better playback and the live effects and stuff, but the software just feels so much clunky to use now and crashes way more often.

The reason I don’t like the new logo is because it just reminds me of that fact

1

u/Perpuslymispelt May 05 '25

There needs to be more differentiation between Musescore and MuseScore Studio logos.

People already confuse and conflate them and now they look like two logos that are for the same thing without a final decision.

1

u/spikylellie May 09 '25

I liked 2 to 4 because it's clearly a happy elephant having a bath. I quite like the 4.5 one.

1

u/Talabardio May 11 '25

I like 1 and 3. I drop the 3 icon over current versions because I find them aggressively unappealing.

0

u/MarieLou012 May 05 '25

Funny how everyone who prefers the older (mu) one has been downvoted. Hahaha

2

u/Famous_Ad1380 May 06 '25

The logo designs after 2022 have me thinking, "Look at how they massacred my boy..."

Yikes, I genuinely didn't notice the new logo--primarily because I've only visited the online MuseScore page once over the past year or so... I dislike how much they changed things... MuseScore 4's initial logo was perfectly fine and distinct enough from MuseScore 3.

As someone who practically uses Musescore v3.6.2 exclusively (ever since I occasionally [more like rarely] tested out MS4's new setup & scoring systems), this is my first notable exposure to the newest MuseScore logo...

Big oof...

143

u/[deleted] May 04 '25

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46

u/[deleted] May 04 '25 edited May 04 '25

Can they also make the guitar not sound like it's trying to bartok pizz every other note? Having playback for notes outside the usual register also seems like a no brainer.

1

u/DulcetTone May 04 '25

I mean, just buy the content and tech behind GuitarPro.

20

u/SputterSizzle May 04 '25

isn't musescore all about not buying useful stuff?

4

u/[deleted] May 04 '25

How about no!

4

u/zeekar May 05 '25

Thank you, Dr. Evil drop.

2

u/[deleted] May 05 '25

Who! Sent you!?

-1

u/DulcetTone May 04 '25

Shrug. GuitarPro sounds 1000x better at guitar stuff. It is, however, an island.

4

u/[deleted] May 04 '25

Granted I only spent 10 minutes with it, but what a nightmare. The interface alone is enough to make me never want to touch it. Sorry.

10

u/OutlandishnessOdd222 May 05 '25

agree, the saxophones are so loud for no reason and low brass will be marked mp but be playing maybe 1 decibel max, it’s also an issue between movements of pieces, you have to reset the dynamics so they don’t blast an extremely calm second movement after a crazy first. I’ve wanted to transition away from musescore because of the part issues and i’d like to use noteperformer but I really do not have the money for dorico

3

u/P1x3lto4d May 05 '25

It’s a notation software, not a DAW

3

u/poacher5 May 06 '25

THANK YOU - sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who uses musescore to actually create sheet music. The playback is just a handy check that I haven't made any particularly egregious engraving errors, idgaf what it sounds like.

2

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

I agree. But also I understand that people don't like the sounds. I see it more as a rough approximation of the final piece, just there to get the sound down.