Does anyone here use sibelius or have previously used sibelius for songwriting? Would you consider it a good program or are similar freeware programs just as good?

logic 8 has  notation editing if thats a help , haven't used sb tho

It's a good program, especially for songwriting. I used it at school and found it to be remarkably similar to a program I was a lot more familiar with and still today, use for songwriting... Guitar Pro.  Guitar Pro probably has less features than Sibelius but i found it a little bit easier, simpler and quicker to use than Sibelius. That said, i do recommend both of them. Whichever one turns out cheaper to buy would be the one i would go for

I've used Sibelius for a few years now, if you know about music notation and theory then I'd recommend it. If you don't then I wouldn't. I started out with guitar pro then moved onto Sibelius. I do prefer Sibelius.

I use it all the time .........for work............but its expensive.........Great tool for band scores and school type stuff..........Not a lot of use if you arent a music reader though!

For me its not as inherently creative as composing using a sequencer on the fly.
Of course, if you need to write using dots, or other music readers will be playing your piece then its a given!

But if you experiment a lot with organizing your sounds and the written page is not really required..... then maybe dont use it.

Fish