An interview with Steinberg’s Daniel Spreadbury

We last visited with Steinberg’s product marketing manager Daniel Spreadbury on the podcast upon the release of Dorico 4 in January 2022, and more recently last summer in Berlin at the MOLA conference in a panel discussion with his colleagues and competitors in the music notation software industry. Although Dorico didn’t have much of a presence at the 2024 NAMM Show, we welcome the opportunity to visit with Daniel here in a similar manner that we did with many of those colleagues and competitors at NAMM. We start not by focusing on the latest Dorico features, although we do discuss those. Instead, we speak with Daniel about how the Dorico community influences product development, to what extent Steinberg prioritizes customer requests and specific features, and how they balance those with some of the more long-term vision that they may have for the product. He gives us a sense of Dorico’s role within these companies, from a strategic, philosophical, and technical perspective. We explore how much of what they’re doing is done with the other products and services in mind, how those decisions are made, and how Dorico users benefit. We also talk about industry changes and how those philosophies end up shaping what customers see on their screens and even what kind of music they create. If you didn’t hear our NAMM wrap-up episode, and interviews with NAMM CEO John Mlynczak, Avid’s Sam Butler, MakeMusic’s Jason Wick, and Muse Group’s Jack Sutton, check those out in the Scoring Notes podcast feed. More from Scoring Notes: Dorico 5 review: Moving the music forward Dorico 5.1: Filling the gaps Dorico 5.1.10 update is available Dorico 5.1.21 update is available NAMM 2024: An interview with Muse Group’s Jack Sutton NAMM 2024: An interview with MakeMusic’s Jason Wick NAMM 2024: An interview with Avid’s Sam Butler NAMM 2024: Wrap-up and interview with CEO John Mlynczak NAMM 2024: John Mlynczak on his first show as president and CEO NAMM 2024: Muse Group’s Jack Sutton on Hal Leonard, MuseScore development and more NAMM 2024: MakeMusic’s Jason Wick on MakeMusic Cloud, Finale, and more NAMM 2024: Avid’s Sam Butler on upcoming Sibelius features, Android app, and more NAMM 2024: Exhibition mission