Getting MuseScore 2.0 into the media

• Feb 24, 2015 - 13:49

MuseScore 2.0 is a great piece of software, all of us on musescore.org know this. But we want the world to know this as well. Therefore we need your help.

We are preparing a press release for 2.0 and when ready we will call for translations. When it will be ready, we will need a list of media to send it to. Non-English magazines, websites, newspapers, … are very welcome as well.

Tell us your favourite source of music related news, whether it's technology based or more musical. Please leave it in the comments.


Comments

The list of media is still short. Nobody is reading technology news or music news in his/her own language? Please share and let's have MuseScore featured everywhere.

The way I see it, there's no harm in sending a press release to media that might not be interested in it. So, theoretically, you could just spend a while searching the internet for things like "music educators magazine" and compile a massive list of every possibility, and send the press release to all of them.

Those that have wrote music and develop with MuseScore for a while know your audience better than I do but I think magazines similar to these would be interested:

http://www.weeklyreader.com/

http://www.mtna.org/publications/american-music-teacher/

http://npr.org/

and the international equivalents.

A music teacher would really like such a program to make concepts clearer I think.

The Weekly Reader is a short magazine meant for school children and often includes short write ups of things that are learning and school related.

npr.org is the USA 'National Public Radio' and MuseScore should have a good chance to be featured in an article. For example, the game 'Crayon Physics' I heard of via npr.org. Most newspapers for very large cities have technology and lifestyle columnists.

When I lived in Zurich this is just the type of software that you could get a free daily newspaper like 20minuten.ch to write a story about. I think most countries in Europe have similar dailies, like 'Metropol' and so on. In the US these are unheard of.

Lastly I'd make sure all those places had both URLs: https://www.facebook.com/musescore & https://musescore.com/

In reply to by JackJura

All good ideas! Again I believe we know the audience. The key is to find in each country who can relay the information at large scale or very focus. Being in France, I know who is using MuseScore currently (students, teachers, etc...) but I have no idea which newspaper they read in the US or in Australia.

I couldn't find a way to contact the people at weeklyreader.com. Any lead?

NPR is indeed a good idea. Any show or host in particular? Sending something from here is probably not effective.

American Music Teacher magazine is a great idea too! Any contact email? Anyone knows a reviewer?

In reply to by Jon Foote

Yes, we have a collection of these links going back to 2008. With this call, we are very much interested in pursuing the media outlets where MuseScore hasn't been featured in yet. Hence the question which music/tech magazines you read, or general news-paper/websites which might be interested in the release of 2.0.

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

Hey,

For NPR.org the host that reported on Crayon Physics was 'Michelle Norris' on the show 'All Things Considered'.

All Things Considered is like a 5 minute report on good things that usually don't get considered.

And like it or not, short of one of us knowing members of NPR staff or any staff personally the link you gave would be how to contact them.

1. For NPR - You'd choose the menu -> I want to: 'Contact a Show or Blog' and Show or Blog 'All Things Considered'. For station you can give WEKF or use one of those internet stream radio programs that stream NPR from another station. And you can also contact the show 'All Songs Considered' and mention to both shows that you contacted the other show with regards to MuseScore.

2. For the American Music Teacher magazine I don't know anyone there personally but I would on their contact page click the link at the top right for their full staff listing and then send a personal introduction and about MuseScore to Mrs. Thomason (second from the bottom).

3. For Weekly Reader the best I could find was the Media Room at Scholastic. I think the best person on that page would be Mrs Sparkman and you could tell her that you think MuseScore is worth a continuing series of beginning music learning in the Weekly Reader by one of their staff. Especially since most schools have computers now and MuseScore runs on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS so most students already have access to one of those.

Be comprehensively terse as possible. If you have past stories about teaching a child music or a child using Music Score, even in French, let them know about it. Maybe before you contact them you can arrange such a thing with a French newspaper, radio, or local access television shown and make a short video of the instruction - but I guess I should leave the presenting of the story to the experts in the media.

You should get a fair listen. And your English is more than good enough. Mention you are in France though and these suggestions came from American that listens to NPR, read Weekly Reader as a child, and took music lessons at school as a child. I made these suggestions to you from the point of view of one that has used the services offered by the above 3 and I think reporting about MuseScore fits well with that. Probably France has similar institutes.

In reply to by Shoichi

I think you are right.

English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese are the languages typically targeted with most other places being bilingual in one of those languages and their native.

Mass media scan each other's news as often of they look for news independently because they don't like to be scooped.

If you want reporting on MuseScore to be international and also have a good chance of being translated to many native languages for broadcast then both the BBC and VOA (Voice of America) might be worth considering. They translate into many language for their broadcasts but I don't know how they choose stories for international translating and broadcasts.

In reply to by JackJura

I might suggest specifically "All Tech Considered" (a feature on "All Things Considered"). By the way, "All Things Considered" is a two-hour show containing two- to ten-minute reports on things that are often considered as well as things that usually aren't.

"Each show consists of the biggest stories of the day, thoughtful commentaries, insightful features on the quirky and the mainstream in arts and life, music and entertainment, all brought alive through sound."

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5002

In reply to by JackJura

I've been thinking about this more, and, realistically, All Tech Considered isn't going to do a story about MuseScore. However, there's a chance that, with a good pitch, they might do a story about open-source music software, including Rosegarden, Audacity, Mixxx, and MuseScore. Thoughts?

In reply to by Isaac Weiss

I think combining several different open source software won't help a bit. And don't forget, the creator of Crayon Physic's own mother thought Crayon Physics was junk.

Nice as the software is, that is not enough. To get the attention their definite needs to be a prior good story written about someone successfully using MuseScore to get the really big media to do a story. So the best thing to get there attention is point out a popular hit song written using MuseScore if that's been done yet or if someone knows of a classroom situation where Music Score is being used to successfully teach that likely would garner interest.

Of course, you know the general reader has not much interest in reading about high school, college and beyond educated people that like music also like MuseScore like it when they've tried it. Those NPR listeners are people that are more likely to take interest in MuseScore for their children anyway.

That's why I suggested Weekly Reader too. And it'd be very nice if American Music Teachers wrote a series of articles of teaching music with MuseScore. I can vouch that I'm learning music faster using MuseScore, but, well, and I take no offense, I'm and people like myself aren't newsworthy. For NPR you'll need examples that do have those qualities of very successful pieces published, teachers using it successfully as part of their curricula and the younger the students the better, or very successful musicians adapting it their own set of tools but that's to be expected. For Weekly Reader and America Music teachers, they'll look at things from a completely different perspective.

So you're right, NPR.org will get the story to a lot of folk but likewise those folk are less likely to not try MuseScore. Sorry, that's the demographics and reality of people that have a full time job. Success with MuseScore still makes a good story with the right examples to pitch to them when they wouldn't have had the success otherwise.

The suggestions are nice, but could people please actually add them to the list? It's a document on Google Drive, and the link is right there in the original post ("please add it").

In reply to by skunt

The core developer team can cover several languages (French, German, English, Dutch) but for other languages we'll need people to translate the press kit/press release and also contact media in their own language. That was my thinking when I added the volunteer tab.

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