Stop redirecting users to musescore.com

• Feb 22, 2025 - 10:31

"Free" trials which cost 60 dollars, nonsensical, disingenuous and predatory "sales", and ostensibly hostile UI design are poor form for any application. I am well aware (now) of the distinction between the .com and .org domains. But as a returning user, the design of the .org site's search bar undeniably exists to conflate the two. That three letters at the end of a common trademarked name are distinct does not exculpate the open source organization from complicity in the poor behavior of its commercial stablemate.

It is an insult to your users to transparently redirect us to what is effectively a scam site, embed integration of said scam site into your software, and then for prominent members of the community to feign ignorance as to the intent and ramifications of doing so. The "search for sheet music" form makes absolutely no distinction between the FOSS and commercial organizations, gives no notice upon redirection to the external commercial site , and blatantly mimics the layout, name, and design language of the site hosted on the .org domain. This is a dark pattern and user hostile. If you do not wish to support .com users do not deceive .org users into using the .com site. Simple.

I've dispensed with my typical candor at my utter dismay that I very nearly had 60 dollars conned out of me by a an open source project. For this I do not apologize.

Stop redirecting users to musescore.com

Comments

• Feb 22, 2025 - 12:43

The only posibility to use the musescore.com website is this:
ScreenShot 363 Stop redirecting users to musescore.com _ MuseScore – Mozilla Firefox.png
If you enter here a search string you will be redirected to musescore.com.

Otherwise, we are voluntary users, just like you, who have no influence on the design of the musescore.org website ...

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• Feb 22, 2025 - 15:27

As evident in my post I am now aware of this.

1) please indicate for me where it is clarified that the "search for sheet music" form directs users away from the musescore.org domain before they do so.

2) please indicate what benefit concealing this redirection confers upon the user.

I cannot remark upon any agreements musescore.org may or may not have with musescore.com. But concealing a UI element as if it were native to a website which in actual fact redirects to an external commercial entity is a classic dark pattern of UI design. See:

https://www.deceptive.design/types/disguised-ads#:~:text=Definition,may….

While this site states the classic reason to employ this pattern is for commercial gain, there's no evidence to assert this as being the case here. That does not change that musescore.org conceals the fact that it links to a website public opinion of which
seems to overwhelmingly be that it is a scam. An open source project developed for the benefit of its community should not be promoting a scam to the same community.

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• Feb 23, 2025 - 01:30

We agree. The website is deceptive. But no one here has any control over it.

We are all just users of the software. Some of us also use the musescore.com website, but none of us have any control THERE either.

The only reason people re-direct others to musescore.com is when they ask questions that can be resolved only by musescore.com. If we did not re-direct them in that fashion, we would be doing them a disservice, not providing the advice that is the only way for them to get the help they need.

Let me put it this way: Imagine a criminal organization controls (let's say) trash pickup in a city. (Which certainly isn't the case in any American city named "New York" that I'm aware of.) Your neighbor is having a problem with his trash pickup. Are you going to direct him to contact that criminal organization and maybe get his problem resolved? Or are you not going to do so, and thus give him no possibility to get his problem resolved?

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• Feb 22, 2025 - 15:14

Read my post again. I did not once ask for support of or changes of the musescore.com product or page, but of the musescore.org website.

Please indicate for me on the linked page where it is stated that the improper place to request or discuss changes of the musescore.org website is musescore.org

If we're employing analogies yours is inaccurate. The search function is more akin to me visiting a Yamaha motorcycle dealer, being blindfolded and thrown in the back of a van, and upon my compelled arrival at the guitar dealership, offered a complimentary guitar with a motorcycle drown on its top for one hundred thousand dollars.

I'm not asking for the behavior of the musescore.com people to be improved. I am asking, as stated twice in my post, for the musescore.org people not to deceptively embed an advertisement of a commercial entity widely panned online as a scam on musescore.org

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• Feb 22, 2025 - 15:45

Read what I am writing. You are writing at cross purposes with me. For the third time I do not care to change anything about the musescore.com free trial. I am asking the musescore.org website not the deceptively link users to musescore.com.

If not here, please provide an alternate location where I may suggest changes to the musescore.org website. I do not see anything in the musescore GitHub organization where contributions to the website may be made which is the reason I am posting here. Git/hub is not my primary source control tool so I could well be missing something.

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• Feb 22, 2025 - 16:26

So let's read what the search box says. "What kind of tacos do you like?" Wait. There are no tacos on musescore.org.
Or does it say "Search for Star Fish"? Hmmm, I don't think there are any Star fish on .org.
Wait. I cleaned my glasses and I now see that it says "Search for Sheet Music". But there isn't any sheet music on .org. If I type the name of a song, where O where will I be directed? Maybe, just maybe I'll end up somewhere that has the sheet music I am looking for. If I didn't mean to go to .com, I just hit the back button. Or if I'm not looking for sheet music why did I use the search box?

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• Feb 22, 2025 - 16:49

The problem is not that the .org domain does or does not host sheet music. The problem is that the .com domain overtly engages in UI design practices widely held industry professionals to be deceptive. The problem is further that the website hosted at the .org domain redirects to the deceptive .com domain without prior notice or clear indication to new users. The problem is that the musecore application deeply integrates with this deceptive .com domain throughout.

Nowhere did I state I was not expecting to find sheet music upon searching for sheet music. Nowhere did I request the .org domain host sheet music. Nowhere did I state anything about star fish. Your remarks are sarcastic and orthogonal to my post.

As a matter of principle, I feel it is bad for FOSS projects to redirect their users to commercial organizations which so prominently and intentionally advance malevolent business practices. I am requesting this FOSS project cease doing so.

That not a single dissension to my post so far has even attempted to deny the existence of these practices is telling.

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• Feb 22, 2025 - 17:37

The problem is that no one here at .org has any control over anything. You are complaining in the wrong place.
Did you read the rather extensive terms of use for .com? It is a long and winding road. Not unlike most other terms of use. One could say most of them are deceptive in some way.

I am sorry you missed the point of my post.

What brought you to MuseScore? The app or the sheet music? Personally, I have no use for .com. I have a few scores there that I posted because I was on a forum there. I am no longer involved with them and just haven't gotten around to removing them.

Your complaints are noted. But as has already been pointed out (at least twice) no one here can do anything about it. This an area for users of the app. That's it. Please direct you comments to someplace were they might do some good.

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• Feb 22, 2025 - 20:26

1) It was in fact not once before this message indicated to me that the .org site is not maintained by the .org people. I was first directed to https://musescore.org/en/node/277874, which presently makes no mention of this fact. It says much about billing concerns for the .com domain being directed to the appropriate email, where to request a refund, and where to submit bug reports for the .com website. In fact, the only mention of a place to discuss support on musescore.org on a page titled "where to discuss support for musescore.org or musescore.com" is this forum.

I was then told "Free trials and payments don't exist here on musescore.org, only over on musescore.com" which, again, I never made any requests regarding free trials and payments. Considering my then uncontested belief that the .org site would be maintained by the .org people, a complaint on the .org site constrained solely to the behavior of UI elements on the .org site would be wholly reasonable.

Don't allege my misunderstanding of your post. I misunderstood nothing. Consider that instead of discussing starfish you had the opportunity to inform me what the support page I read prior to writing my post did not - that the .org site is not maintained by the .org people.

2) On further inspection, the musescore app itself embeds much functionality with the user hostile .com website (account integrations, sharing, etc) just the same, so my criticisms stand for the application as well as the the .org website. This doesn't substantively change my original post, nor where it should have been posted, save for that references to ".org" be replaced with "app".

Aside from that, a PR should probably be filed on github as well which I am disinclined to do.

Good day.

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• Feb 23, 2025 - 01:14

OK. So you stated your case in your first post. And continue to restate it. We get it. You always have to have the last word. We are the .org people. We have to refer people to the .com site when they ask about problems that arise from that site. No one here can answer billing questions.

You didn't answer my last question. So here is an opportunity to ignore another. Within two hours of creating a MuseScore account, Your very first post is a string of accusations (some legitimate), and a final demand to stop sending people to the .com site. Why did you post here? The .org site is for help using the app. Period. The node you referred to states as much. I'm just trying to string together the events that lead to your first post.

Anyway, you have known for hours that your problem is with the .com site. If you believe that they are using unfair tactics, posting here won't help. You can demand things all you want, but doing so here won't mean anything.

It almost seems like the only reason you are here is because someone you know has a problem with .com and you are here to complain about it.

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• Jul 10, 2025 - 07:29

As far as we know, no one here on .org is paid for our contributions. We are users, just like you. We just have been using the software and these forums for a little longer than you have so we understand how things work. To have any chance of getting something resolved, take this issue to the musescore.com website. No one here can do anything to help you.

If you just want to complain (as seems likely, given your responses thus far), then be so kind as to do it elsewhere.

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• Feb 22, 2025 - 19:21

I understand your annoyance but it appears that the musescore.org website is maintained by MuseGroup, the commercial arm of MuseScore and also the group running musescore.com, so there is probably nothing that the forum contributors here on .org can do to about the issue.

As indicated by other members, your complaint really does need to go to .com.

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• Jul 10, 2025 - 11:36

7 Important Things MuseScore.com Users Often Don’t Know (But Should)
(And Even ChatGPT Knows This Well):

1) “Free trial” automatically turns into a paid subscription.
If you don’t cancel manually before the end of the trial period, you will be charged automatically – often without a clear reminder.

2) A subscription does not mean you can download or print scores.
Even if you pay for a PRO or PRO+ plan, you still need to buy individual scores separately to gain download and print rights.

3) Your credit card is charged upfront and refunds are very limited.
Once charged, you usually won’t get a refund, even if you don’t use the service – unless you act within 14 days and meet specific conditions.

4) “PRO Credits” are virtual currency with no actual value.
They cannot be redeemed, refunded, transferred, or inherited, and MuseScore can delete them at any time, even without notice.

5) Scores you “bought” may disappear.
If MuseScore loses licensing rights to a score, users who previously purchased or accessed it can lose access without compensation.

6) Uploading a PDF gives MuseScore a permanent license to your notation.
If you upload a PDF for conversion, MuseScore gains a perpetual, sublicensable, royalty-free license to use and distribute the converted file.

7) Very limited customer support.
There is no phone support. All issues must go through email, web forms, or social media – which frustrates many users, especially when billing is involved.

P.S. I'm not taking a side here, just informing ...

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• Jul 10, 2025 - 14:50

So it's true that you can not download ALL scores without additional fee, no matter of how "strong" subscription you have i.e. there is a class of scores that you can not? And this is what people often do not understand and complain about (when it's late).

BTW ChatGPT listed all this points, not me! So ChatGPT knows very well what are people commenting and complaining about MuseScore.com!

For now, we can probably rely on the honest intentions of ChatGPT, but I have no doubt that in the world we live in, sooner or later ChatGPT provider will take money from interested parties to make ChatGPT say what the sponsors want. So enjoy this innocent period of AI, while it lasts!

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• Jul 10, 2025 - 15:33

>So it's true that you can not download ALL scores without additional fee,

Thats true, but thats NOT what YOU said. Your post misses the most important word "ALL", therefore it reads as if you cannot download/print scores at all. Thats a huge difference:

"A subscription does not mean you can download or print scores."

Thats NOT true. You CAN download or print scores. Thousands, e.g. more than a million!

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• Jul 10, 2025 - 13:48

>2) A subscription does not mean you can download or print scores.

That is a lie. Either with willful intent or out of complete ignorance.

I have downloaded and printed tons of sheet music from Musescore. I have been a PRO member for years.

But: there are also scores that are not included in the PRO package. Typically sheet music that you can buy for a lot of money in the open market, especially the “HAL Leonard” range. All notes are marked accordingly. It is actually ridiculous to assume that with the small annual fee of €45 or similar, you acquire the right to download all these scores instead of paying for them properly. These are sheet music with a total value of several thousand euros.

All sheet music that has been explicitly released by the authors can be downloaded and printed or further processed. That's many thousands of sets of sheet music, in fact over a million sets of sheet music.

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• Jul 10, 2025 - 17:56

I suppose, the complaint about the point 2 is fair. The point 2 is half-true (and half-false).

What I did here is that I gave MuseScore.com's Terms of usage to ChatGPT and ask it about any possible problems (great task for AI to spare you of reading a lot of text). So perhaps such a prompt suggested it to be in a paranoiac mode (i.e. better safe than sorry mode) and that produced the point 2 as something that you have to examine before you buy subscription?

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• Jul 10, 2025 - 18:06

Sorry, I don't trust AI with something as important as terms of service. Or anything, yet. Could I read the terms of service and mis-understand something? You bet. So how do I know AI isn't mis-understanding something?
I read news stories all the time that say they were created by AI and proof-read by a human. They are still full of typos and poor grammar.

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• Jul 11, 2025 - 11:16

I work in IT and I gradually gained trust in AI. But not for writting code (as everyone preaches), that is the job I want to have a full control over it, but for fast prototyping architecture of solutions and exploring possibilities of myriad of different frameworks and code libraries (can this work using this for this and this for this and then asking detailed questions to see how good it will work).
What knocked me out of my shoes is that you can have lovely conversations about philosophical "great questions" of metaphysics, theology, ethics and values etc. You can also exchange deep emotions after listening music of well known composers. Sometims, it only more or less reflects your thoughts, but sometimes it really looks like you inspired it to say very deep things and almost always you can learn something new, for instance some related term to further explore it. What I appreciate especially is that many times it showed a deep concern for universal etical questions, preference of love over hate, and in general it talk like a wise person.

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