Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections |
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Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact |
Full name | Sibelius Music Notation Format |
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Description |
The Sibelius music notation format store a visual representation of a musical score. They do not contain any audio data. They are created by proprietary software of the same name. The Sibelius application was created by the company Sibelius Software in the early 1990s, which was acquired and has been part of Avid Technology, Inc. since 2006. The software has been available on Microsoft Windows, macOS X, Acorn RISC OS, and cloud-based. There are compatibility issues between the Acorn RISC OS and Windows/macOS editions. Sibelius files can differ depending on the version and operating system. For example, the file format for the RISC OS versions (Sibelius 6 and 7) are not the same format as those on the other platforms. Traditionally, Files created from those versions will likely have an .si7 file extension instead of the typical .sib file extension. Sibelius should be able to open files from previous versions but scores may not look precisely the same. The Sibelius 8.3 reference manual (link via Internet Archive) specifically outlines compatibility and differences between the versions over time. Software versions have changed several times over the lifetime of the software, including the introduction of perpetual licensing and cloud-based software. The Sibelius software has changed versioning patterns over the course of its existence, as can be seen in the Release history. Sibelius used Semantic Versioning (SemVer) for all releases up to "Sibelius 8.4" and then in January 2018 Avid Technology, Inc. switched the software to a Calendar Versioning (CalVer) system. |
Production phase | Used during the creation process and as a middle state for sharing music among collaborators and colleagues that also use this software. |
LC experience or existing holdings | The Library of Congress has a small amount of Sibelius files in its collections. |
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LC preference | See the Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement for format preferences for musical scores and musical notation. |
Disclosure | Disclosure is very limited/poor. Comments welcome. |
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Documentation |
No documentation of the Sibelius format exists. This assumption is asserted by several users in the Sibelius Forum. A Sibelius employee on the forum states that the Sibelius file format is proprietary and that the end user license agreement expressly forbids users doing any reverse-engineering of the format. |
Adoption |
According to PRONOM, the Sibelius software and format is used by composers, arrangers, performers, music publishers, teachers and students, particularly for writing classical, jazz, band, vocal, film and television music. Avid Technology, Inc. hosts an active Sibelius listserv. There is also an active Sibelius Forum not associated with the company. In 2017, the British Library considered Sibelius to be the world's best-selling music notation software, and deduced that the Sibelius format is one of the most popular formats for digital sheet music. The British Library preservation report lists several websites that use this file format, including Score Exchange, Acadia Early Music Archive (link via Internet Archive), ChoralWiki, and Great Scores. Score Exchange, in their FAQ, reports that most files uploaded are in the Sibelius format. |
Licensing and patents |
This is a proprietary format owned by Avid Technologies, Inc., formerly owned by Sibelius Software. The Sibelius software's end user license agreement prohibits the reverse-engineering or conversion of the file format. The British Library summarizes this as "Sibelius is a heavily proprietary format. Other similar scorewriter or sheet music products are not legally allowed to ingest or manipulate .sib files. Users are completely dependent on having a version of the Sibelius software available to render the files." |
Transparency | Requires Sibelius software to read and write. |
Self-documentation |
The British Library notes: "Many fields can be entered for scores within the Score Info functionality within Sibelius software (title, subtitle, composer, arranger, artist, copyright, partname, instrument changes, lyricist, copyist, publisher, dedication, opus number, composer dates, year of composition, etc.) but … this is part of the proprietary nature of the program and can only be extracted if migrated to another format (and then may not complete all fields)." The British Library also cites this listserv post on Sibelius failing to extract metadata properly when exporting to PDF. |
External dependencies | Sibelius files can only be accessed by Sibelius software. The files cannot be played, viewed or printed without it. |
Technical protection considerations | Sibelius files are encrypted using an unspecified algorithm. Reverse-engineering the file would violate the Sibelius end user license agreement. |
Sound | |
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Normal rendering | This format does not render sound. |
Fidelity (high audio resolution) | Complex scores will be exported from (link via Internet Archive) Sibelius as SIB files for each individual musician's part. |
Functionality beyond normal rendering | Does not render sound. |
Text | |
Normal rendering | Although not strictly a format for text, formats for notated music share distinctions in functionality that are common with text. |
Integrity of document structure | Represents the semantic structure of a score: key; measures (bars); notes with pitch and duration; musical parts for different instruments; lyrics/words, etc. |
Integrity of layout and display | Represents layout semantics that are important to the display of scores, such as: whether directions should go above or below a staff; spacing for staves; and scaling of features relative to a single measure that can be adjusted to fit a particular pagesize. |
Support for mathematics, formulae, etc. | Musical scores do not include mathematical or chemical formulae. Hence this functionality factor is not relevant for music notation formats. |
Functionality beyond normal rendering | As per the Sibelius 8.3 Reference (link via Internet Archive), Sibelius software is able to convert the SIB format into MIDI Sequence Data. Sibelius can also export video (Section: 1.13 Exporting video files) and export images (Section: 1.14 Exporting graphics). This is in addition to textual formats like PDF or manuscript. Sibelius also allows for the creation of customized teaching materials based on the content. |
General |
Sibelius software import options include Finale (.MUS, .ETF), Allegro, PrintMusic, MusicXML, SCORE, standard MIDI files (type 0 and 1), PhotoScore files, and ASCII tablature files. The British Library concluded the most significant issues for preservation are software dependence, market status, lack of documentation, lack of validation tools, and inability to migrate or change the format of files. Validation and migration are limited to use in the software only. The software's end user license agreement prohibits use outside of Sibelius. |
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History |
The British Library's report summarizes the history of the software: "The Sibelius software was originally developed for the Acorn Archimedes computer in 1986 by British brothers Ben and Jonathan Finn whilst they were still at school. The software wasn’t released to the public until April 1993. It was first released for Windows in September 1998 and for the Apple Mackintosh a few months later. In August 2006, Sibelius Software was acquired by Avid Technology, a US-based software and hardware manufacturer. Sibelius used to have a web browser extension called Scorch, which was deprecated and replaced with Sibelius Cloud Publishing. |
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