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Here's some alternatives:
archive.org
Bensound
cctrax
musopen
bumpfoot
incompetech
audionautix
audeeyah

There also exists public domain recording by musopen.org, which will probably pale in comparison, but nonetheless it's great that these efforts exist.

Don't spread the MAFIAA's FUD for them. File sharing is already legal. "File sharing" and "copyright infringement" are not the same thing.

Indeed. And there is a lot of music available which is either in the Public Domain, or under one of the Creative Commons licenses. For instance, excellent recent recordings of classical music were released as 320kbps MP3 and as lossless tracks, and these are explicitly in the Public Domain. Lots more (typically electronic & rock & metal & house, etc.) can be found at the Netlabels collections. MusOpen typically has classical music, and also has some PD or CC sheet music.

Share away, with these files. Upload, download, give away, stream, sell, whatever. And quite legally. Just about the only thing you can't do with Public Domain stuff is claim that you own the copyright, or that you act on behalf of the copyright owner. Either copyright has expired, or it was never copyrighted to begin with.

As well as the Musopen String Quartet link: http://musopen.org/music/by/performer/Musopen-String-Quartet

The Beethoven's fifth you linked to is performed by a small town college orchestra, not the Musopen Symphony Orchestra (really the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, but I don't know if Musopen are allowed to say that in advertising!). Anyone can contribute to Musopen - you'll even find midi keyboard renditions there. It's better than nothing, is Musopen's philosophy.

snip

You still have the option to pay money to hear Bernstein's interpretations. In fact, you probably will always have to pay money to hear Bernstein's interpretations, the way copyrights are being extended... but now you also have the option of hearing some solid renditions of Brahms symphonies by a professional Czech orchestra, for free. For ever.

I think the project is valuable, I like the idea of having good recordings of these works available for free. For those who can't afford to spend the money or who want to reuse the works in some creative way, this is a real boon. It opens up the music to a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise have access to it.

On the other hand, I don't think the project is going to have any real impact (at least not yet) on the community of listeners who have a love of the music and the resources to indulge their passion. I buy lots of music and will continue to buy lots of music. Not because I enjoy spending the money, but because it's more important to me to have a recording (or even multiple recordings) that I really like. The cost relative to my enjoyment is really pretty minimal. If the free recording is worth having, I'll add it to my library. But I'm happy to pay for a recording if I like that one better.

And I'm not real hopeful that these recordings are quite there yet. I found the Musopen Symphony Orchestra recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3. My initial take was that the playing was good, but the sound quality was less than ideal. For example, there's an intermittant but very distracting hissing noise at the beginning. I'm not an audio technician and I couldn't tell you what causes it, but I know that it makes the recording less desirable for me.

Still, I'm glad the project exists. Making this music available to the widest possible audience is a good thing. That's something to applaud.

There's still a lot to be added, so go ahead and donate. Sure, they've got Stravinsky's Firebird, but not The Rite of Spring. The Rite of Spring was so radical and jarring to the ears of the "more cultured representatives of society" at its 1913 premiere in Paris that the audience began yelling so loudly no one could hear the music. Eventually the scene devolved into chairs being thrown and fires set. So go ahead, throw your chairs at this new site in disgust because it doesn't agree with your notion of how the music should sound. The music that stripped away the cultured veneer of those Parisans is worth hearing, and a public domain music site that so-ruffled the feathers of the "free-as-in-beer" and "information wants to be free" slashdot crowd is worth visiting.

you forgot to mention the part about Stravinsky moving the US, selling out and creating a horribly mutilated version of the Rite of Spring...

the Rite of Spring is probably one of the pieces where a bad conductor/orchestra can cause the most damage to the music ending up with a barely bearable mess that is just "loud", so I don't really think it is the most suited piece for a project of this sort.

Enjoy!

I should have backed this.

And here.

Full list with links to torrents is here

And here.

Full list with links to torrents is here

Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

Reading the criticisms levied against the site is like listening to those two elderly women who just like to complain: "Boy, the music at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know; and there isn't nearly enough of it!"

I think quantity needed to be more important than quality for this project. Sure, they need to have a minimum standard of quality, but the idea was to free as much music as possible. Some kid somewhere in the world would never have heard this music because he's not going to pay $1.29 for some music he's never heard (that they're not playing on the radio) and the sheet music isn't exactly jumping off the page to ensnare his imagination. However, something that's well-written and decently-performed on this site may get his attention and maybe someday he'll perform a better version and give back to us all. But that won't ever happen if he never hears it. That first exposure is key.

The first time I heard Scheherazade it was in a movie (The Man With One Red Shoe). I didn't know what it was, but it got my attention. I was about seven. Years later I came across it again as a track that was tacked onto a $3 budget classical CD, and it got my attention again. I suggested it to the orchestra director in my high school and hundreds of people got to hear it. It's all about the exposure.

If you want to be a snob about the quality, go pay for a performance and share it with the rest of us so we won't have to live our lives not knowing what good music sounds like. Frankly, I prefer the Scheherazade recording on that budget CD to any I've found on iTunes. The first performance of a piece is often the one you like best, because it's the one you fell in love with. I have a very old recording of Stokowski and the NY Philharmonic performing Stravinsky's Firebird suite that is full of hiss and crackle, but I prefer it over a clean-sounding recording of Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic performing the same piece. Bernstein's performance, which is well-done, just doesn't sound urgent enough to me because I heard Stokowski's first. Perhaps what you're really concerned about is the possibility that the masses may come to prefer a version other than what you like.

There's still a lot to be added, so go ahead and donate. Sure, they've got Stravinsky's Firebird, but not The Rite of Spring. The Rite of Spring was so radical and jarring to the ears of the "more cultured representatives of society" at its 1913 premiere in Paris that the audience began yelling so loudly no one could hear the music. Eventually the scene devolved into chairs being thrown and fires set. So go ahead, throw your chairs at this new site in disgust because it doesn't agree with your notion of how the music should sound. The music that stripped away the cultured veneer of those Parisans is worth hearing, and a public domain music site that so-ruffled the feathers of the "free-as-in-beer" and "information wants to be free" slashdot crowd is worth visiting.

Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

Reading the criticisms levied against the site is like listening to those two elderly women who just like to complain: "Boy, the music at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know; and there isn't nearly enough of it!"

I think quantity needed to be more important than quality for this project. Sure, they need to have a minimum standard of quality, but the idea was to free as much music as possible. Some kid somewhere in the world would never have heard this music because he's not going to pay $1.29 for some music he's never heard (that they're not playing on the radio) and the sheet music isn't exactly jumping off the page to ensnare his imagination. However, something that's well-written and decently-performed on this site may get his attention and maybe someday he'll perform a better version and give back to us all. But that won't ever happen if he never hears it. That first exposure is key.

The first time I heard Scheherazade it was in a movie (The Man With One Red Shoe). I didn't know what it was, but it got my attention. I was about seven. Years later I came across it again as a track that was tacked onto a $3 budget classical CD, and it got my attention again. I suggested it to the orchestra director in my high school and hundreds of people got to hear it. It's all about the exposure.

If you want to be a snob about the quality, go pay for a performance and share it with the rest of us so we won't have to live our lives not knowing what good music sounds like. Frankly, I prefer the Scheherazade recording on that budget CD to any I've found on iTunes. The first performance of a piece is often the one you like best, because it's the one you fell in love with. I have a very old recording of Stokowski and the NY Philharmonic performing Stravinsky's Firebird suite that is full of hiss and crackle, but I prefer it over a clean-sounding recording of Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic performing the same piece. Bernstein's performance, which is well-done, just doesn't sound urgent enough to me because I heard Stokowski's first. Perhaps what you're really concerned about is the possibility that the masses may come to prefer a version other than what you like.

There's still a lot to be added, so go ahead and donate. Sure, they've got Stravinsky's Firebird, but not The Rite of Spring. The Rite of Spring was so radical and jarring to the ears of the "more cultured representatives of society" at its 1913 premiere in Paris that the audience began yelling so loudly no one could hear the music. Eventually the scene devolved into chairs being thrown and fires set. So go ahead, throw your chairs at this new site in disgust because it doesn't agree with your notion of how the music should sound. The music that stripped away the cultured veneer of those Parisans is worth hearing, and a public domain music site that so-ruffled the feathers of the "free-as-in-beer" and "information wants to be free" slashdot crowd is worth visiting.

Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

Reading the criticisms levied against the site is like listening to those two elderly women who just like to complain: "Boy, the music at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know; and there isn't nearly enough of it!"

I think quantity needed to be more important than quality for this project. Sure, they need to have a minimum standard of quality, but the idea was to free as much music as possible. Some kid somewhere in the world would never have heard this music because he's not going to pay $1.29 for some music he's never heard (that they're not playing on the radio) and the sheet music isn't exactly jumping off the page to ensnare his imagination. However, something that's well-written and decently-performed on this site may get his attention and maybe someday he'll perform a better version and give back to us all. But that won't ever happen if he never hears it. That first exposure is key.

The first time I heard Scheherazade it was in a movie (The Man With One Red Shoe). I didn't know what it was, but it got my attention. I was about seven. Years later I came across it again as a track that was tacked onto a $3 budget classical CD, and it got my attention again. I suggested it to the orchestra director in my high school and hundreds of people got to hear it. It's all about the exposure.

If you want to be a snob about the quality, go pay for a performance and share it with the rest of us so we won't have to live our lives not knowing what good music sounds like. Frankly, I prefer the Scheherazade recording on that budget CD to any I've found on iTunes. The first performance of a piece is often the one you like best, because it's the one you fell in love with. I have a very old recording of Stokowski and the NY Philharmonic performing Stravinsky's Firebird suite that is full of hiss and crackle, but I prefer it over a clean-sounding recording of Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic performing the same piece. Bernstein's performance, which is well-done, just doesn't sound urgent enough to me because I heard Stokowski's first. Perhaps what you're really concerned about is the possibility that the masses may come to prefer a version other than what you like.

There's still a lot to be added, so go ahead and donate. Sure, they've got Stravinsky's Firebird, but not The Rite of Spring. The Rite of Spring was so radical and jarring to the ears of the "more cultured representatives of society" at its 1913 premiere in Paris that the audience began yelling so loudly no one could hear the music. Eventually the scene devolved into chairs being thrown and fires set. So go ahead, throw your chairs at this new site in disgust because it doesn't agree with your notion of how the music should sound. The music that stripped away the cultured veneer of those Parisans is worth hearing, and a public domain music site that so-ruffled the feathers of the "free-as-in-beer" and "information wants to be free" slashdot crowd is worth visiting.

You think the weakness is the quality of the sheetmusic? Did you actually listen to any of the performances? For example, see if you can listen to the first movement of Beethoven's fifth here, without cringing. People are out of tune, off beat, and at times sound like they are overwhelmed by the difficulty of the piece (listen at 1:19, the horns don't have a consistent tone, sound squeaky at times, with the strings in the background poorly articulating their notes, some of the instruments are out of tune, and the wrong parts are emphasized).

And those are just technical details. Even if they reach perfection in the execution of the notes, they are completely missing the interpretation. I would gladly pay money to hear Bernstein's interpretation of the second movement of the 5th symphony. No one else even comes close to the softness and love of his interpretation.

A number of people seem to be confusing the overall musopen library with the recently completed project.

Musopen has been around for some time collecting non-copyrighted performances of various classic works from whatever source was available. For example, you'll note from the musopen page that the Pictures at an Exhibition was performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra.

The Kickstarter project musopen undertook was to professionally record a few of the classics. On the Musopen site, you'll see "Musopen Symphony Orchestra" listed as the performer -- those pieces are listed here: http://musopen.org/music/by/performer/Musopen-Symphony-Orchestra

As far as I can tell, this is what Kickstarter was about. The rest is just hosted there by MusOpen and comes from all kinds of sources, including college orchestras, army bands and this guy you might know from Slashdot (well, his braver cousin, anyways).

As far as I can tell, this is what Kickstarter was about. The rest is just hosted there by MusOpen and comes from all kinds of sources, including college orchestras, army bands and this guy you might know from Slashdot (well, his braver cousin, anyways).

the ones they recorded are performed by "Musopen Symphony Orchestra"

everything else on their site is a crapshoot from other sources.

If you browse the music by composer, the list starts with Dvorak, Antonin... then Albaniz, Isaac and all the composers whose last names start with A... then Bach and the Bs... Chaliapin and the Cs... It looks familiar but not quite what we're accustomed to... like something is slightly off. Whoever created the list must have been using a Dvorak keyboard!

And visit their "donate" button.

FTFY (rationale: I read some comments indicating some have difficulties in finding their way on the site).

Aside from that, it's weird that the music listings aren't by composer. Do these folks not know how many "String Quartets in C major" have been written?

Here's some assistance for the vision/browsing impaired - pick your criterion.

It's weird that the article doesn't link to the Homepage of the project or at least to the main music browsing page which features, besides others, a list of composers to select from.

It's weird that the article doesn't link to the Homepage of the project or at least to the main music browsing page which features, besides others, a list of composers to select from.

In addition to what EvanED listed, the same people doing these recordings are doing scores as well.

Get 'em right here.

Oh yeah, there's music there too. Have I said enough to get Slashdot shut down for linking, and armed men in black uniforms sent to my house to terrorize me? No? Well, how about a few more links:

• Project Gutenberg
• MusOpen
• Library of Congress
• A used bookstore
• An audio file format with no DRM
• The Pirate Bay
• The Pirate Bay via an IP address
• A porn site
• An Arabic news site
• A hacker magazine
• Wikipedia article on 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Now this sounds awesome! Got any suggestions about where to find good CC music? I support musopen.org for classical stuff, and of course I know Jonathon Coulton, but other than that I don't know where to begin looking.

Also check out Musopen, a large collection of public-domain classical music recordings and sheet music. They take donations and use those donations to hire professional artists to make new recordings of the pieces and then put them into the public domain.