Orchestra To Turn Copyright-Free Classical Scores Into Copyright-Free Music

destinyland writes "An online music site has raised over $13,000 to hire a full orchestra to record royalty-free classical music. ('"Although the actual symphonies are long out of copyright, there is separate protection for every individual performance by an orchestra," notes one technology site.') MusOpen has reached their fundraising goal for both the orchestra and a recording facility, and will now record the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky. And because their fundraising deadline doesn't end until Tuesday, they've promised to add additional recordings for every additional $1,000 raised."

Comments

First

[hcpxvi]

Beethoven symphony! (I for one do actually welcome our new free-music-producing overlords).

Re:First

[zero.kalvin]

Great effort. Commendable work!

Re:First

[RDW]

Great effort in a noble cause. However, they note in the original article that:

'Right now, if you were to buy a CD of Beethoven's 9th symphony, you would not be legally allowed to do anything but listen to it. You wouldn't be able to share it, upload it, or use it as a soundtrack to your indie film- yet Beethoven has been dead for 183 years and his music is no longer copyrighted. There is a lifetime of music out there, legally in the public domain, but it has yet to be recorded and released to the public.'

Here in the UK, the copyright term on recorded music is currently only 50 years. This means that most of the core classical repertoire is already available in this form, often as very high quality recordings (they knew what they were doing by the 50s!) of great performances. Now that the cash cows of the 60s are about to fall into the public domain, the record industry has lobbied for an extension, and draft EU legislation aims to push back the term to 70 years:

http://www.euractiv.com/en/innovation/music-copyright-divisive-despite-meps-backing/article-181703

There are still some great performances of that Beethoven symphony from the 1930s, of course, but the 60s recordings in near-modern sound will be off limits for another couple of decades.

Re:First

[XanC]

How in blazes does a *retroactive* copyright extension encourage the creation of the work? Has everybody in power forgotten the whole frapping point of copyright??

Re:First

[houstonbofh]

How in blazes does a *retroactive* copyright extension encourage the creation of the work? Has everybody in power forgotten the whole frapping point of copyright??

To appease your donors and get re-elected? Nope. They still remember.

Re:First

[commodore64_love]

>>>. This means that most of the core classical repertoire is already available in this form, often as very high quality recordings (they knew what they were doing by the 50s!) of great performances.

You answered my question. I thought there was already public domain performances, just as Ed Woods masterpieces (cough) are now public domain. As for the "point" of copyright, it is to give authors a temporary monopoly as incentive to create art that will eventually fall into the possession of all the People & enrich everybody.

It seems some in the US Congress and EU Parliament have forgotten that. Too busy getting bribed by megacorps I guess?

Re:First

[BrokenHalo]

Right now, if you were to buy a CD of Beethoven's 9th symphony, you would not be legally allowed to do anything but listen to it.

On the other hand, you could obtain a score for the same work, and have the pleasure of spending unlimited hours imagining a variety of different interpretations as you read it through, "hearing" it in your head. This isn't actually as difficult as it might seem (given a little training and plenty of practice), and is highly rewarding.

Re:First

[darthdavid]

Yep, who needs an MP3 player, just cart around a 3 ring binder full of sheet music. Fun for the whole family!

Re:First

[Surt]

I'd say it's pretty straightforward. If I know I stand a good chance of receiving the benefits of a retroactive copyright extension, I'll then be more likely to create and publish a work, because I'll have reason to believe my income from doing so will be greater.

Re:First

[Unequivocal]

Mod parent funny people

Re:First

[RDW]

'How in blazes does a *retroactive* copyright extension encourage the creation of the work? Has everybody in power forgotten the whole frapping point of copyright??'

It'll even discourage the creation of better versions of the original work. Right now, companies like Naxos are doing audio restoration jobs on out of copyright recordings that often shame the original label's CD release (if it's even available):

http://www.naxos.com/historical/engineer_thorn.htm

Re:First

[quizzicus]

You don't receive any income after you're dead, which is all that's been extended since 1976.

Re:First

[RDW]

'Yep, who needs an MP3 player, just cart around a 3 ring binder full of sheet music. Fun for the whole family!'

Don't be silly, you just download http://imslp.org/ to your iPad and sit on the train, nodding thoughtfully to yourself while humming the viola part. This also ensures that the seat next to you will be free, giving you more space to stretch out.

Re:First

[CRCulver]

Last time I checked, Slashdot was "news for nerds", not a site for the general public. I'm sick of the recent trend here to knock things that don't appeal to the general public, even if they might hold great interest for nerds.

Re:First

[darthdavid]

I'm hardly the greatest musician on the planet, but I've know how to read sheet music and am at least vaguely competent on 3 different instruments. To suggest that sheet music is a complete replacement for listening to music is a fucking farce. I don't think GP was actually saying that, but you can red the post that way which is why I made a joke.

But the internet is serious business so let's all get our panties in a knot...

Re:First

[Timothy Brownawell]

As for the "point" of copyright, it is to give authors a temporary monopoly as incentive to create art that will eventually fall into the possession of all the People & enrich everybody.

It seems some in the US Congress and EU Parliament have forgotten that.

I'm not sure that's true outside of the US. Here that is the purpose ("to promote the progress of science and the useful arts"), but I think originally it was supposed to help by replacing previous stronger but more ad-hoc monopoly rights.

That page also has an interesting (anonymous) quote from when the first copyrights started to expire in 1735: "I see no reason for granting a further term now, which will not hold as well for granting it again and again, as often as the old ones expire... it will in effect be establishing a perpetual monopoly, a thing deservedly odious in the eye of the law; it will be a great cramp to trade, a discouragement to learning, no benefit to authors, but a general tax on the public; and all this only to increase the private gain of booksellers.".

Re:First

[Kjella]

You don't receive any income after you're dead, which is all that's been extended since 1976.

I agree the life+forever extensions are too much, but most people want to leave something for their heirs and whether that's cash or stocks or property or royalties it's still money. And you can always sell the rights before your death if you don't want to wait. Is money you get later somehow not real?

Re:First

[Entropius]

I already do this, you insensitive clod! //choral singer

Re:First

[CRCulver]

I can think of a number of artists who don't listen to recordings of classical music at all, preferring instead to go directly to the score. Pierre Boulez, for example, satisfies his desire for some Beethoven or Stravinsky by picking up the score. Recordings are crutches.

Re:First

[RDW]

'Recordings are crutches.'

That's nothing. I no longer even bother playing Quake III, I prefer to scan the source code in a zen-like state. You lesser mortals may get your kicks from firing the BFG10k, but I just marvel at the elegant use of the 0x5f3759df constant.

Re:First

[commodore64_love]

..... a desire by the government to ensure only "approved" books could be printed, and not books or pamphlets that the Crown found objectionable. i.e. It was censorship of free expression of thought. Rightthought could be printed, but wrongthought was not allowed to be.

No wonder Thomas Paine left Britannia, because he was forbidden from printing his works. Ditto many Scottish authors who spoke eloquently in favor of natural rights, but were blocked from doing so after the English Parliament extended its reach into the north.

Re:First

[commodore64_love]

>>>Recordings are crutches.

Yeah. I enjoy playing my piano while driving to work every morning. There's just no substitute for playing "Blue Danube" yourself, even if it is a little dangerous and distracting. But no way would I ever deign to turn on PBS radio! Dirty recordings.

Re:First

[zippthorne]

I don't think the media industry can possibly be sufficiently significant donors to get this kind of thing. The US recording industry's total gross revenues in 2008 were smaller than Microsoft's net profit in that same year.

I think they're donating something other than campaign funds. I think they're donating association. Stroking the egos of politicos by hanging out with them once in a while.

Re:First

[TheoMurpse]

In Eldredge vs. Ashcroft, the US Supreme Court got around this by saying that the author, when creating his work, has in mind the knowledge that Congress may retroactively extend copyright. This is an added carrot to get a creator to create.

Now, everyone but the few on the SCOTUS who signed on realize this is a horseshit post hoc rationalization.

Has everybody in power forgotten the whole frapping point of copyright??

To be fair, that's only in the US. France, for example, recognizes "moral rights" in copyright, which definitely do not spring from a utilitarian copyright basis like US copyright law is supposed to.

Re:First

[the lost emperor]

Well, I would compose that great opera I was thinking of but, for only a 50 year copyright? Forget it. Now if it were 70 years, yeah, I'd totally write it. What a bunch of baloney.

Re:First

[marcello_dl]

If it's not for direct gain, maybe it is to assert control on Abstract things. Today music, tomorrow ideas and opinions. I think most power systems soon degenerate into a bunch of guys enjoying the control over the others instead of representing them, I see no reason for this to change with the current one, and I read about many things which seems to support my hypothesis.

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, they ran a similar argument in Eldred v Ashcroft just after the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Some economists opposing the effects of the extension worked out that due to the time related value of money, that the net present value of an extension from a term of life of the author + 50 years to life + 70 years represented a net increase of less than 1%. And further worked out that the NPV of the total term represented 98% of the NPV of an infinite term.

In addition from a creator's perspective, the chances of your work having any commercial value even 10-20 years down the track is hideously small. Most books will have gone out of print well before then, and in most cases the majority of sales will take place within a relatively short period after publishing. The chances of winning the copyright lottery and being entitled to royalties until your death is not a terribly good gamble for creators. On the other had, the publishing industries, including the record studios and movie studios, have much more of a chance to benefit, having spread out their investments over a much larger number of artists.

The reality is that the these term extensions confer only a relatively small benefit to a very concentrated number of stakeholders while having a relatively large impact on the commons. As such, I find them inappropriate and hard to justify.

Re:First

[darthdavid]

Instruments are a crutch too. Real artists look at the score and imagine the instruments in their head.

Re:First

[phaggood]

>I don't think the media industry can possibly be sufficiently significant donor
You sir have an out-sized idea of how little it actually takes to purchase a politician.

Re:First

[DarwinSurvivor]

50 years AFTER YOU DIE! If you wrote it in 2010 at age 30, then died in 2060 (age 80) the copyright would be valid until 2210. That's 100 years of copyright.

Re:First

[Capsaicin]

I'm not sure that's true outside of the US.

And yet the Statute of Anne, which you quote has a long title beginning with the words "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning ..." which presages the purposive clause in the US Constitution ("to promote the progress of science and useful arts ...").

I think originally it was supposed to help by replacing previous stronger but more ad-hoc monopoly rights.

Yes, that's kinda what I remember from IP lectures as well. The earlier Statute of Monopolies abolishing the motley collection of royal letters, perhaps not "stronger," but certainly more opaque and more expansive, in favour of a Parliamentary Act which granted 'letters patent' (ie. on the public record), for inventions, with the Statute of Anne continuing this process for printed matter. I believe there was an ideological element (as well as the obvious political Crown v Parliament one), which is borne out in the quote you cite. Namely an emerging idea that monopolies per se were undesirable and only those required by economic necessity should remain in place.

So the "purpose" of copyright (and patent) law can be seen as an economic one. That is to mitigate the free-rider market failure --where the cost to the author is writing and publishing, whereas the cost to the competitor is publishing only, leaving original creation an economically irrational activity. And that is a purpose it serves universally (if not exclusively).

Re:First

[BrokenHalo]

I'm not sure if you're joking; one time in the '70s, when I was a teenager, I sat with Yehudi Menuhin on a train, where the violinist spent most of the trip absorbed in a score. He told me he often did this, and got as much pleasure out of it as he did from actually hearing the music. I was never one of the best of his students, but learning to emulate this was one of the best things I ever did.

Re:First

[darthdavid]

I'm not saying reading music for fun is a bad thing, but it's different from hearing it played and neither is a replacement for the other. Like someone else said, it's like looking at the code for a game vs playing it. You can have fun doing either but it's not the same thing and neither is objectively better than the other. It's just a question of what kind of person you are and what kind of experience you're in the mood for. Another analogy is reading a script vs watching a play.

Re:First

[b4dc0d3r]

It's actually a more than complete replacement to listening to music in my opinion. Different conductors try to emphasize/hide certain things, get a certain style, or tempo. It's the whole reason music snobs prefer one performance over another. If you take the music yourself, your own way, you are more than the conductor. That annoying piccolo player can't rush through the trills, the trumpet player can't add schmaltzy vibrato to the heavy parts. It sounds like you want it to sound, limited only by what the composer indicated. Tempo markings and dynamics are all contextual and relative, after all, so you get to re-mix it.

The most important part is you are aware of all of the instruments. Psychoacoustical modeling (like lossy mp3) represents the fact that certain sounds get covered up by other sounds. It's impossible for someone to distinguish every instrument. Not just difficult, or like a superhuman with training could do it. I mean that unless you are born as a mutant with extra auditory parts, you cannot hear everything that's in the score. Critical Bands are basically the foundation of lossy encoding.

I routinely follow along with large works in order to fully comprehend it. Anything more than 8 or 10 parts, and the score is like an added dimension. I use the recording as a crutch, because I don't routinely study things with that many parts, so I'm not used to processing it all at once. But when I do I get a greater understanding. There are so many nuances you will never get out of a recording. It's especially nice for things I have memorized, because I know how the recording goes and I look at the score, and there's something I never would have heard. Then I try to find a recording where it's audible. It's like watching a movie for the 10th time and seeing something you missed, only you'll probably never hear it on your own.

Anyone who can look at music and hear it should be able to see this, I'm completely at a loss as to how you don't. I'm sure BrokenHalo was not saying that sheet music is a complete replacement, but it definitely wasn't a joke.

Re:First

[kmoser]

Let's hope the orchestra doesn't suck. Otherwise, I'll take MIDI files FTW.

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

The push for this has come from two directions.

1. The US who are trying to get everyone to follow their Copyright laws, and

2. The record companies who still want to make money off artists like 'The Beatles'.

That said, their is another issue, and that is of the artist getting paid. The recordings will fall into the public domain, but the writers of the songs still have copyrights on their works, so every time a copy of a 60's Lennon and McCartney song gets sold/given away etc 1 cent is owed to both Lennon's estate and Sir Paul. The record company gets nothing. In 2020 (50 years after Lennon's Death) his works become public domain in some countries (or have they extended that to 70 years for the US?). At this point only 1 cent will be owed to Sir Paul.

I think the reason the US is pushing this is because people can go from the US to London, buy a 60's recording legally (or is if it someone who has been dead for 50 years just copy it) without the record company making a cent and return to the US with it. They won't be able to tell what was copied in London and what was copied in the US. Makes a bit of a mess for the US trying to sue people for copyright infringement.

Re:First

[mwvdlee]

Real artists don't need scores; they compose the music in their own heads.

Re:First

[riverat1]

Boulez is probably capable of reading a score in real time and hearing it fully or in each part in his mind. Besides, when he's conducting a piece he has the best spot in the house to listen from.

Re:First

[ColdGrits]

I'm not saying reading music for fun is a bad thing, but it's different from hearing it played and neither is a replacement for the other. Like someone else said, it's like looking at the code for a game vs playing it.

Completely wrong.

It is, however, akin to reading a book rather than watching a film or TV adaptation thereof.
If you know how to read (words or music score) then your enjoyment is limited only by your pure imagination, and what you imagine will be far better than anything someone could record.

(FWIW, reading the soursecode of a game would be akin to reading the TeX source for the music score).

Re:First

[Jason Levine]

Especially when the original artist has passed away. Unless.... longer copyright terms will eventually bring artists back from the dead as zombies and they will create fabulous new works (while munching on tasty braaaaaaiiiiiins). Sweet Zombie Elvis!

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Royal collage final exams you are expected to play a piano reduction of an orchestral score you have never seen before.
This requires looking at the twenty or so part score, imagining the instruments, and simultaneously writing ahead the next bars of piano arrangement while playing the previous bars. And you have to do it convincingly.

Just imagining the instruments is for beginners.

Re:First

[ResidentSourcerer]

But will he stay bought?

Re:First

[Surt]

So I don't care about my heirs when I'm making economic decisions today?

Re:First

[darthdavid]

What about blues, or rock, or rap or any other musical genre based in large part on improvisation? Even in pieces that aren't largely improv'd the artist's personal touch is often just as important as the actual score.

When you listen to a piece you're hearing someone else's imagination at work and there's no reason other than pure ego-centrism to suggest that that can't be just as good as your own.

Re:First

[Roman Coder]

You are assuming that those in Power care about anybody else besides themselves.

To play Devil's Advocate for a minute, its probably a mindset of where those who created the content shouldn't have to give up their hard work to others who do not create content, and this mindset is agreeable to those who are in Power. "Let those lazy people create their own music instead of 'stealing' mine!" is the rallying charge. ( Again, Devil's Advocate here, please don't hit me. :) )

Unfortunately, it seems that people in Power tend to have a short-term narrow focus on things, vs. long-term wide focus (of what is good for the Country/Race), and our system of governance tends to reward that way of thinking.

Re:First

[Mr. Slippery]

but most people want to leave something for their heirs

Which does not imply that they have a right to have the government use force to prevent copying in order to enrich their heirs.

I'd like my long-dead grandparents' past employers to continue to pay me for the work they did, but that doesn't mean I have a right to collect.

The Constitution empower Congress to secure right to work to authors. Not to author's heirs, employers, assignees, et cetera. The idea that someone deserves to get paid because one of their ancestors did something useful does not bear close scrutiny. (Of course, looking closely at that idea means that we start to question the concept of inheritance in general, which is not something the ruling classes will abide for long.)

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong. getting the 60's songs in 20 years is a pipe dream. Copyright will never, ever expire on anything. Within 10 years copyright will be extended another 25 years, then within 10 years another 50 years.

Need advice (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

Here me out on this again, okay I know it sounds gross.. but hear me out first..im 15 btw.

so my teacher let me sit at her desk cause she's cool like that and i raised my hand first. im on my period (sry TMI i know) and i have a heavy flow. i could feel the blood coming out and i didnt get a chance to change my tampon that day. so i pretended to drop my pencil and i went under the desk and i slipped on a tampon from my purse. i believe in female rights and i support breast feeding in public, etc.. so i dont see a problem with this, as long as no one else sees anything. but as i was taking out the used tampon the guy that i kinda like (who im also friends with) came over to get a sheet of looseleaf and he saw everything. i mean i shaved and everything but he saw blood running down my leg and it smelled fishy. and he told EVERYONE and he wont talk to me and people are saying that im grimy, a whore, unclassy, white trash, etc. and i dont know what to do, advice?

Re:Need advice (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

is this another troll or did someone actually bite on the obvious copypasta? Next thing you know you'll be seeing serious responses to the poop eaters and gnaatards...

by the way in soviet russia only o

Re:Need advice (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll. I actually posted both. :)
 
--TSP

Re:Need advice (again)

[NeverWorker1]

I may not have noticed the previous poster, but I'm not sure why that makes me a troll. Unless of course by "troll" you mean "somebody who disagrees with me."

Open your wallets

[spikenerd]

Every quality song that is released to the public domain makes a future where it will be slightly more difficult for the RIAA to survive. Is there be a more noble cause anywhere on this planet?

Re:Open your wallets

[Barrinmw]

Not even saving abandoned puppies me thinks.

Re:Open your wallets

[betterunixthanunix]

On the planet, there certainly is. In the United States, probably not.

Re:Open your wallets

[pronobozo]

This is along my train of thought. I think people should stop complaining about copyright and start taking action and put their own works under creative commons. It's a free world, if someone wants to restrict their work, they should have the right. If you don't like their system, start creating things and put it under some type of free license. We can live in a world where both systems exists and guess what, it already does! If enough people support it, it'll drown out your hated restricted content. Heck, all my work is under a reasonable CC license and it has only ever benefited me. I've had more than 500,000 free downloads, and amazingly, it hasn't made my life worse or destroyed the planet :-)

Re:Open your wallets

[east coast]

If you're for releasing to the public domain then why do you care if the RIAA survives? Think about it.

Re:Open your wallets

[Bing Tsher E]

Yes. Beethoven's symphonies are 'songs.'

Thank you, popular culture.

Re:Open your wallets

[NotQuiteReal]

Not even saving abandoned puppies me thinks.

Thank goodness for Tupperware!

Re:Open your wallets

[sd4f]

I don't think the RIAA represents all that many classical producers. While this is a very interesting project, and quite a nice thing, i'm not entirely it's a brilliant thing. One thing for sure is that when it comes to orchestras, nothing beats being in the hall, you just don't get the dynamic contrast and feeling carried over as well as a live performance, also the audience will generally be quiet too, so everyone can enjoy it (if the music is good to begin with). But as far as the RIAA is concerned, i think they won't care too much, they might worry a bit if pop music was starting to adopt a public domain model, similar to open source, actually, i think that is what the riaa has been fearing out of the internet all along. I don't think we are seeing too many pop stars hit it big at the moment, and i think this is kind of attributable to the internet, because say with just about anyone i talk to, they tend to listen to music which the pop industry generally won't want to touch, be it electronic music, hard rock, or even folk music.

Re:Open your wallets

[DarkIye]

All right, 'club smashers'.

'Dancefloor killers'?

Re:Open your wallets

[Peach Rings]

'One hit wonders'

Re:Open your wallets

[digitig]

Because they'll still try to charge you for the PD music, because they think that all recordings must belong to somebody.

Re:Open your wallets

[fph il quozientatore]

Not sure that would work, they would just change their business plan.
The Italian RIAA (the local name is SIAE) has started charging a "missed revenue tax" on empty media. Wanna buy a CD-R, a DVD or even a hard disk in Italy? You have to pay your share. Even if you use it to burn the photos of your holidays.

Re:Open your wallets

[mehrotra.akash]

Not sure that would work, they would just change their business plan.

The Italian RIAA (the local name is SIAE) has started charging a "missed revenue tax" on empty media. Wanna buy a CD-R, a DVD or even a hard disk in Italy? You have to pay your share. Even if you use it to burn the photos of your holidays.

So, is it legal to fill up the media with 100% pirated stuff??

Re:Open your wallets

[houstonbofh]

If you're for releasing to the public domain then why do you care if the RIAA survives? Think about it.

I can not find the link, but a bar was fined almost out of business for allowing a musician to play his own music (written by him) without paying a performance royalty to ASCAP. So that is why I want them gone. I actually would not mind paying for music, as long as none of the money goes to those marauding bastards.

Re:Open your wallets

[ortholattice]

My prediction is that the lack of copyright will help CD sales rather than hurt them, because removing restrictions adds value. I, for one, will be happy to pay for a high-quality CD that, for the first time in my life, I actually own in every sense of the word, with which I am free to do whatever I please, whether it is to use excerpts in for a home video, use as part of the background music in a school play, or anything else with no cares or concerns about legal issues. In fact I'll probably buy their entire collection.

Re:Open your wallets

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I find that immensely sad that the motive to hurt the RIAA trumps the motive to simply enrich the culture. I know you were probably being ironic, but it hits a little too close to home. It just goes to show how little of a role art plays in the copyright wars.

Re:Open your wallets

[BrokenHalo]

I don't think the RIAA represents all that many classical producers.

You couldn't be more wrong. Try Sony, EMI, Decca, RCA, just for a start... full list here.

Re:Open your wallets

[icannotthinkofaname]

Is there be a more noble cause anywhere on this planet?

You mean, I make him better, Humperdinck suffers? Ha ha ha! That is a noble cause!

Re:Open your wallets

[gyepi]

They do NOT plan to release it to public domain! The opening line under the link is misleading; they later on specify that they plan to release the music under "a" Creative Commons licence. That's a huge difference.

Re:Open your wallets

[hairyfeet]

Exactly! Kind of how I have bought more games in the last six months than I had in 2 years thanks to finding out about Good Old Games. Instead of having to worry about draconian DRM bullshit breaking my PC all they have is "We do a loot of work to get these going. Please don't share them, okay?" so I don't. Hell their prices are so low anybody can buy them (none higher than $10) and most importantly unlike the "limited install" bullshit we're seeing more and more I can back up, burn, and reinstall anytime and as many times as I want.

The problem with big media is they have decided their shit don't stink and it's just hunky dory to treat their customers like scum. And sadly thanks to deregulation allowing media cartels to buy up all the radio stations they'll be able to keep getting away with it too. If you were to see a standard record company contract, which I have as I've been playing with some regionally popular bands, it is truly disgusting what they do to the artist. Basically they take ALL the rights and you get jack. I had friends that were stupid enough to sign, the dreams of big tours were too much for them, and they ended up having to break up and never play together again just to get out of the contract. By the time they got done with "Hollywood accounting" the 25k they got to buy decent gear was gonna cost more than half a million to pay back, and they couldn't even play their own songs without permission!

As a musician I can say the quicker the RIAA dies in a fire the better. The bands I play with always share at least part of our albums and all we ask for is credit for non commercial use or a little change if you want to use it in something for sale. You won't live in a Metallica mansion doing it that way, but at least you don't have to suck the corporate penis either. If someone wants to check out the rough drafts of my latest (kind of a blues/funk thing) they are here but be warned that they are live rough mixes with a little digi-corder. We are currently building our own little studio and hope to have it and the album done by spring. If you want to support art, go see a show, buy from your local artists. Don't support the raping of our culture by multinational corps.

Re:Open your wallets

[XorNand]

I'm sure there's more to the story than that. Did the musician assign the copyright of his songs to a recording company? If so, then I'm sure he was monetarily compensated for doing so when he signed that agreement and understood that they were no longer "his" songs. And did the ASCAP have some sort of agreement with the bar that the owners were to ensure that no unauthorized performances were conducted?

I'm not saying that these terms weren't laughably restrictive and counter to free culture. But the situation likely boils down a contract dispute--one that was entered into freely by all parties involved. If that's the case, there's enough blame to be spread around for agreeing to such terms. The ASCAP would not have had standing to sue if some random songwriter was performing in some random bar.

Re:Open your wallets

[XanC]

Where does it say that? On their site it says the are a "repository for copyright-free (public domain) music".

Re:Open your wallets

[Anonymous Coward]

The more ubiquitous it becomes the more likely that and end run with be exercised taking control of the public domain and using it on behalf of the public. Acts of enclosure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure threaten all commons. Even if it can't be privatised directly (god bless imaginary property) collection agencies can still be granted the right to collect revenues for all works including those in the public domain. Our two 'free as in' s sends the wrong political message. Where will it all end, it'll be anarchy (we can but hope, as long as we can workout who mends the drains).

Re:Open your wallets

[gizmonic]

I had never actually heard of this before, but man, what complete bullshit. And a single google search provides tons of examples, if not that specific case:

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2010/06/09/pay_to_play/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100518/2341299481.shtml
http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/phillips.html

At least Bruce seems to have some common sense (make sure you read the update):

http://gothamist.com/2010/02/04/the_boss_sues_midtown_pub.php

That pretty much represents the final straw on the camel's back for me. From this point forward, I will only ever pay for independent music. If your band is a member of any of those organizations, I will be performing civil disobedience against unwarranted extortion, and just pirate your shit if I want to have it. If you don't like it, leave those groups, and I'll buy it. And for the record, this is coming from someone who legally owns nearly 1000 CDs, and a good couple thousand iTunes songs (where the 99 cents was worth more than buying a full cd for one or two songs). But fuck it. I went to a lot of trouble (and expense, over the years) to do what I thought was the right thing. Apparently, I was wrong, since I was merely funding the absurdities of this kind of bullshit. My apologies to everyone else for helping promote this situation with my purchases. It won't happen again.

Re:Open your wallets

[jimicus]

I can well believe it. Search around small business forums, you'll find dozens of examples worldwide of small businesses being hassled by ASCAP or their local equivalent.

IANAL, so I'm not going to go into the legal rights or wrongs, but AFAICT the general form is that if the business owner says that they don't need to pay eg. because their music is all composed and performed by the live singer who comes in every Tuesday, they get shown a piece of legislation that suggests otherwise and given an ultimatum - pay up, stop the music or we'll see you in court for so many hundreds of thousands of ${CURRENCY} you'll have no choice but to declare yourself bankrupt.

Most small business owners are more interested in running their business than fighting a lengthy court battle - if you're in court for a day that's a day when you're not actually working on the thing that's supposed to provide your living - and so fold.

Re:Open your wallets

[Anonymous Coward]

It is questionable whether or not it is possible, in a legally binding way, to release something to the "Public Domain" in the US, let alone every other jurisdiction in the world.
Some nations (eg. Germany), do not allow a copyright owner to abandon, sell, transfer, etc. their "moral rights" to a work. And I believe that there are some jurisdictions which have no concept of the Public Domain at all.

So what are people do to instead? Creative Commons Zero.
CC0 is as close as you're going to get to a Public Domain release.

Re:Open your wallets

[Sal Zeta]

Nope, despite the actual lawmaker that enacted it openly admitted in pirating movies and songs. Other than that, they made illegal to redistribute or selling music at all (yep, even Creative Commons stuff ) or any multimedia product without applying their own seal first, which you can only obtain by joining them.

Exspecially in case of music, you have to join their (and only legally available in Italy) market, where the earnings follow a very interesting process: basically they get all the revenue, and share the earnings to the various musicians based on a "artist relevance scale", which basically means that the artist that get the most advertising get even the biggest (but still miserable) part of the entire musical sales in Italy.

Re:Open your wallets

[regularstranger]

Haha... you've never dealt with ASCAP. If you have a television in your bar, they send people out, and you get a notice in the mail that because the TV has the potential to play protected music, then you are in violation and must provide royalties. They threaten to take you to court. Few people will call their bluff, and if they do, that doesn't mean that that ASCAP goes away, or that it is actually a bluff. The musician in a bar thing is not surprising at all. I understand that in most cases when you hear a story like this that there must be something more to it, but when ASCAP is involved, it really is that bad. Think about it... pretty much every restaurant/store you visit is paying these fees, even if they don't play music over their speakers. If they aren't, they have been harassed by ASCAP, and ASCAP has money for lots of lawyers.

Re:Open your wallets

[Reziac]

I'm curious as to how many copies you've sold (I just looked at your site). Tho I'm sure the answer is "more than if no one had ever heard of me" :)

Personally I like the model of "radio quality MP3 free, high quality for a very small price, CD for a bit more, fancy added shit for a lot more". Makes it easy to check out new stuff and upgrade to the degree that you wish, and it certainly seems to work well where it's been implemented. (Didn't that NIN album of a couple years back get something like $6M worth of sales from such a model?)

Re:Open your wallets

[Reziac]

Aside from the "You betcha" agree... thanks for the Good Old Games link... dang, I just missed a promo I'da bought, too. Oh well, I'm sure it'll come around again. Can't beat cheap AND easy.

Re:Open your wallets

[westlake]

ASCAP began collecting royalties for public performance in 1914.

The bar and tavern owner has been peddling the same excuses for non-payment for 96 years.

Early on, founding member Victor Herbert brought a lawsuit against Shanley's Restaurant for refusing to pay royalties. The fight took two years and went to the Supreme Court. ASCAP prevailed. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the decision of the Court: "If music did not pay, it would be given up. Whether it pays or not, the purpose of employing it is profit and that is enough." The Era of The Player Piano (The Early 1900s)

Re:Open your wallets

[Joce640k]

I'm not sure what the "quality" will be like if you try to record all those symphonies for $13,000. That's an awful lot of music to rehearse and record. Just trying to get 100-odd people to give up that much time will be a major problem unless you're paying them a decent amount.

For $13,000 I'd try to get four or five of the popular ones done then use them to try and get more funding.

Re:Open your wallets

[pronobozo]

I sell about 900 tracks a month. It's not much but it's a nice little bonus check and I am sure it'll grow over time. The value of that money has a lot more meaning to me and I like putting it back into the system of artists, hackerspaces, friends.

I am not NIN. Unfortunatly for me I will never have millions in paid promotion and currently I soley rely on my music being put in youtube videos, podcasts, and tv shows. Search pronobozo on youtube and sort by views, those are the things that have helped me.

I am big on the theme "I like to do it because it's fun" and if it ever became to much like a business for me, i probably wouldn't do it. I share music and it lets me meet more people, more communities, and gets me out to more events.

btw, 6m would be nice.

Re:Open your wallets

[Anonymous Coward]

If your band is a member of any of those organizations, I will be performing civil disobedience against unwarranted extortion, and just pirate your shit if I want to have it. If you don't like it, leave those groups, and I'll buy it.

It should also be known that you'd still be doing them a service by piracy; as most musicians get a far larger cut from concert attendance than actual album sales, piracy would benefit the musician (due in no small part to the fact that this strange idea that certain patterns of bits and bytes are an extremely scarce resource is egregious and flawed), especially considering the fact that the idea that the average consumer would willingly pay for hundreds of songs at 99c each is absurd at best and inherently disingenuous at worst. To wit; there are few individuals who have such an enthusiasm in genre or a diversity in musical taste that they will pay for many, many songs.

Re:Open your wallets

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like some ASses need some CAPs put in them..

Re:Open your wallets

[mehrotra.akash]

so, the residents have 2 choices
1)Pay a piracy tax and dont pirate--then whats the point of the tax
2)Pay a piracy tax and pirate-- risk going bankrupt

wonder how such rules can exist

Re:Open your wallets

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I remember the story as I read it here in /.

The musician had not assigned the copyright to no one, he (he was a man) held it to himself. When he complained to the lawyer of RIAA, or ASCAP or whoever thieves, the lawyer answered: show me your song (or an arbitrary song) and I will find a copyright I have, for the first few notes.

Text in italic is mine.

Re:Open your wallets

[hairyfeet]

Make you an account there and sign up for the email. They will ONLY send you an email when there is a sale, and their sales kick ass! I just got King's Bounty:The Legend (Great game BTW) and Fantasy wars (also great) for $10 for the pair from the last sale! Oh and as a bonus just to try their system out when you make an account you can get 3 free games to start your collection. Naturally they are 3 older point and clicks, but it does give you a chance to try out their system and games. Hell they even all worked just hunky dory on windows 7 HP X64, which if you've tried running some of the older titles in x64 you know it is hit or miss. But everything I've picked up, From the Redneck Rampage collection, which if you haven't tried is pretty damned funny, to the Descent Freespace collection and Postal2 have all worked beautifully.

So sign up and give them a spin. Hell they have so many $5.99 impulse buys I'm sure you'll find something you'd like. And most importantly it is putting your money where your mouth is and actually supporting a DRM free way of doing business. NO DRM, NO Limits on installs, NO problem backing up your game installers NO limits to how many times you can download it, and most importantly you are supporting a company that treats you like a valued customer and NO like a criminal scumbag. Trust me, a guy that has a whole wall of titles on his virtual shelf at GOG, you will like doing business with them. Hell on their last sale I used their Adobe AIR downloader app and had 5Gb worth of games bought, downloaded, and installed, in less time than it took me to have my lunch. Now THAT is nice!

Re:Open your wallets

[Anonymous Coward]

But they're not talking about *songs*.

Oh sorry, are you one of the MP3-generation who thinks every piece of music is a "song"?

This site seems completely ignorant of the fact that to record a symphony (with some early exceptions) you need a conductor and that the conductor's input is vital to the quality of the performance.

Unless they get a very good conductor this entire project is going to be a waste of time.

Re:Open your wallets

[turbidostato]

"So, is it legal to fill up the media with 100% pirated stuff??"

By what Sal Zeta states, the Italian model seems quite the same than the Spanish one, only worse, since the RIAA-likes came with it later. Then the answer is no, you can't.

In Spain, copying artistic media (music, books, films, etc.) for private use without direct revenue (basically everything that goes from a private person to another private person, even through p2p) is legal under the assumption that culture/art is a major right that can't lightly be taken away (this way, you can copy music but you can't copy computer programs since they are not considered art forms).

But because of this, cultural/artistical artifacts worth special measures to protect them, so in late seventies/early eighties (so I think to remember, at least) with the rise of blank casettes for everbody, government decided that it would be good to raise kindof a "tax" (I don't know how to properly translate the legal term "canon") on blank media to make for a compensation for the money these people were not earning (note this: "were not earning" is quite a different thing than "were losing") due to private copies.

So, the "tax" on blank media is a compensation for the right you have to copy music etc. no matter if you, in fact, exercise such a right. But of course that's not a blanket for you being allowed to anything illegal: what you could do, you can do (you have the right here to copy, no matter if the copy is taxed or not), what you couldn't do (i.e.: make a copy and sell it) you still can't do.

Your "So, is it legal to fill up the media with 100% pirated stuff??" statement has a second reading, though: in countries like Spain and, so it seems, Italy, there's almost no way you can have something like "pirated stuff" (with the notable exception of computer programs) since almost any kind of copies you can make yourself aren't going to be "pirate" at all (still, I see them counted as "pirate" in international statistics. No wonder Spain always appears top-ranking as a "pirate" country).

That notwithstanding and pushed by the RIAA example (no matter that USA legal system is absolutly different with this regard to these guys), European RIAA-likes are pushing expensive marketing campagins to raise into public opinion the idea that these kinds of copies are, in fact, somehow illegal. They expect that when their message is properly damped public opinion it'll be easy for them and their money to make a change in legislation. After all, if everybody thinks it's illegal what's the problem with making it effectively illegal?

Re:Open your wallets

[turbidostato]

"Some nations (eg. Germany), do not allow a copyright owner to abandon, sell, transfer, etc. their "moral rights" to a work."

Something going into the public domain doesn't mean the author abandons their moral rights. Moral rights are "natural" and basically cover just the concepts of authorship and untampering. "Hamlet" is still a work by Shakespeare and it's well into the public domain; and you can't take "Hamlet", change it so Hamlet marries Ophelia and still call it "Shakespeare's work" even if "Hamlet" is in the public domain.

Re:Open your wallets

[jabuzz]

That's all right then, because a bit of Slashdot publicity has pushed the funding to close to $26,000 as I type, which is twice what they where looking for.

Re:Open your wallets

[jabuzz]

Possibly, but the 800lbs (or 362kg for the rest of the world) Gorilla in the classical music production arena is Deutsches Grammophone, who sell pretty much their entire back catalogue in DRM free flac.

Re:Open your wallets

[Reziac]

Not bad!! Gives you a little disposable income anyway, and I like the thought of cycling it back through the community. Likely a lot of indie musicians would be very happy to do half that well. You might look into online radio if you haven't -- that's where I've found nearly all the new stuff I've come to like in the past few years.

Yeah, we'd all like to sell like NIN but truth is that sort of thing is an anomaly. However, if anyone wishes to donate similar funds, I won't turn them down either :)

Anyway, I'll give your stuff a listen later on... that's the nice thing about torrents, if I like it now I've got a permanent reminder, if I don't no loss and no hard feelings.

Re:Open your wallets

[Anonymous Coward]

That pretty much represents the final straw on the camel's back for me. From this point forward, I will only ever pay for independent music. If your band is a member of any of those organizations, I will be performing civil disobedience against unwarranted extortion, and just pirate your shit if I want to have it. If you don't like it, leave those groups, and I'll buy it.

That's not how civil disobedience works; that's just being a pirate. Civil disobedience isn't about defying the law in the comfort of your own home; it's about when you get caught and defy the authorities.

Re:Open your wallets

[Reziac]

Now that sounds like an outfit that has their shit together. And I'd guess the original publishers, where they still exist, are happy to get some residual sales rather than nothing whatever, and at no distribution cost.

So you have permanent access to everything you've bought, so if you lose your download no worries? That's a very good policy.

Methinks I need to go make me an account (...done), yep. I'm not really that much of a gamer (I play DOOM, DOOM, and more DOOM, with no end in sight now that there's a *good* automatic level maker) but there are always a few oldies a person never tried because $40 wasn't feasible when it was new, but $5 or so is what-the-hell money. I still have a DOS/Win98 box and nothing newer than XP, so antiquity is hardly a disadvantage :)

(They do have a gawdawful slow script on the long listing page, tho... but geeze, some of everything. I know a lot of people who'll like this. Thanks!!)

Re:Open your wallets

[jesset77]

Civil disobedience isn't about defying the law in the comfort of your own home

I think part of the basic issue is that this is a law that should have no jurisdiction in "the comfort of your own home".

Re:Open your wallets

[hairyfeet]

Yeah not only do you have unlimited downloads and installs but in their FAQ they actually ENCOURAGE you to back up your games! They also have an excellent support staff and forum, so if you do run into any problem, from trouble running to "help I'm stuck on a level" someone will be there to help you. Nice. And like you I'm not a big gamer (hell I've been running a $36 HD4650 for nearly 2 years now) but at $5.99 or even cheaper during a sale I can catch games that looked like they might be fun but weren't worth $40+ to me.

So tell your friends, it is easy cheap and hassle free. Oh and if you like DOOM try the Redneck Rampage collection. You have to save Hickston AR from the alien hillbillies by using cool weapons like a buzzsaw thrower and an "Alien titty gun" while drinking beer and eating pork rinds for health! And if you drink to much your character gets tipsy and staggers through the levels! It is pretty funny and the level designs are actually pretty good with lots of secrets. But if you like DOOM RR and "One Whole Unit Blood" that is also offered there (made by Monolith...excellent game!) will definitely be up your alley. Good weapons, nice levels, decent humor, just a fun way to kill an hour or two when you feel like blowing stuff up. Enjoy!

Re:Open your wallets

[westlake]

Civil disobedience isn't about defying the law in the comfort of your own home; it's about when you get caught and defy the authorities.

It's about being accepting the risk of interrogation, trial and conviction.

Civil disobedience only works in scarcities someone actually cares about things like proper procedure, equity and fairness, justice and mercy.

Re:Open your wallets

[shutdown -p now]

ASCAP is welcome to collect royalties over specific instances of copyright infringement - namely, when they have solid evidence that the establishment was publicly performing copyrighted music owned by one of ASCAP members.

However, the cases mentioned by GP and GPP are pure unadulterated bullshit on ASCAP's part: they claim the right to get paid for any music you may have, even if they don't own the rights to said music; and they claim the right to get paid even if there is some potential for music to be played (e.g. a TV). Those claims are beyond what any sane person would accept as reasonable.

Seeing as you seem to be in support of copyright, please don't do your cause a disservice by supporting an organization who is actively abusing author's rights, and generating significant discontent (which will, inevitably, be aimed at the concept of copyright as a whole) in the process.

Re:Open your wallets

[Jon-o]

I can't see how even $26,000 would be enough for a *single* symphony, if you actually want to pay the musicians. A 20 minute symphony would take at least a day of rehearsal and half a day of recording. You'd want to pay each musician a fair wage of at least several hundred dollars for each day (if you think this is too much, remember that they're self-employed, have to own a very expensive instrument, years if not decades of expensive training, and hours and hours of unpaid practicing are also included). Multiply that by the dozens of musicians required for even a modest symphony, and you're already nearing that amount, without actually paying anyone to record and edit it! I'm very curious how they've budgeted this...

And for the smaller-scale things, $1000 is truly a paltry sum, unless you sell it to the musicians as if you're recording their demo for free...

I guess they have something figured out, but I don't see what it could be!

Re:Open your wallets

[kocsonya]

"the motive to hurt the RIAA trumps the motive to simply enrich the culture"

Hurting the RIAA, MPAA et al *does* enrich the culture.

Re:Open your wallets

[Reziac]

Yep, I've seen Redneck Rampage... pretty funny tho I'm not a humour type of gamer :) I did notice a few titles I'd meant to look at way-back-when, that I might have to snag next time there's spare change for it (things are a bit snug right now). Did have a problem with the search engine, it just plain ignored me as did some of the header tabs on the site... not sure what gives there. Oh well, a problem for another day. Does look like they're very actively pursuing the stuff of yesteryear that was decent in its day.

Have already passed the info along to someone who maintains some older gaming group systems, this stuff oughta be right in their target range. :)

Your cheap vidcard makes mine feel inadequate :) I think the newest one around here is of the 128mb vintage, probably 6 or 7 years old by now and wasn't high-end then. The one in my main box is a 16mb Matrox dating from 1998. Shaders? Whuzzat?!

Re:Open your wallets

[ColdGrits]

I think part of the basic issue is that this is a law that should have no jurisdiction in "the comfort of your own home".

Does that apply to all laws, or just the ones you chose?
Do I get to chose which ones apply in the comfort of my own home?

Re:Open your wallets

[hairyfeet]

They still have a few bugs on their pages, as you found out, but I've found just searching by genre or price works best. If you don't care for the humor Blood is an excellent BUILD engine game with awesome levels and LOTS of secrets. It has a little humor in it but it is more the Clint Eastwood "man with no name" kind of humor. Funny you using a Matrox, I sold one of those 16Mb cards not too long ago to a guy whose video chip burnt in his win2K office box. It worked so well he just bought the card rather than have me order another one.

If your machine is a decent P4 vintage (something 2GHz or better) and you want to keep it for awhile and still have great graphics I have been selling my AGP customers this card and have been getting nothing but good reviews. The nice thing is even if you aren't a big gamer the 3xxx series cards can really give your machine a kick in the pants by adding hardware acceleration to just about every video format out there. I just give them Media Player Classic Home Cinema and just about every format of video is accelerated. of course the fact that it makes games purty is just a nice bonus ;-)

But I'm glad you liked the site and passed on the info. I'm a firm believer in putting your money where your mouth is and voting with your dollars, so I've been buying from GOG pretty much exclusively since someone here at /. turned me onto it a year ago. They seem to get more great games in weekly, their sales kick ass, and their service and support is top notch. If you have friends or family that still enjoy good games even if they don't have the cutting edge bling GOG is the place to be. Now if you'll excuse me I keep getting my ass handed to me by an Archmage in King's Bounty and I smell a rematch. Peace.

Re:Open your wallets

[Haedrian]

You wouldn't want an 'accident' to happen to your income would you? Accidents happen, people get sued for no reason. We're your friends, we want to protect you against such... accidents.

Re:Open your wallets

[jesset77]

Does that apply to all laws, or just the ones you chose?

Do I get to chose which ones apply in the comfort of my own home?

Really now. Aside from harming your visitors or big media's greed, and I guess controlled substances, how many legal jurisdictions are overlapping your house?

As for me, It's not possible to jay walk here. It's not possible to commit physical theft from here. I can't harm people outside my home without my influence leaving the house (shoot gun out window, for example). I cannot commit fraud, or conspiracy, or any of that fun business without employing a phone or computer and again my influence leaves the house.

But if I copy an optical disk with the blinds shuttered and the internet switched off, I have just performed a criminal act. If I sing happy birthday to my children and some paying guests in my home, and none of them complain of being harmed by it, I have just performed an illegal performance of a copyrighted work the length of a limmerick. Somehow I am harming artists and production companies completely outside of my home and they demand redress.

But as for your point, yeah my interest is now piqued as to what freedoms you crave in your home that you don't already enjoy. (?)

Re:Open your wallets

[east coast]

If what you and a few of the other posters are saying is true that means that no amount of public domain releases will stop what ASCAP does.

Re:Open your wallets

[vadim_t]

The RIAA has brought it to themselves. They have effectively placed themselves in the position of "the enemy" for many people.

It's got to the point that you can't ignore their existence even if you don't touch music in any shape or form (piracy included). They'll still oppose net neutrality, push draconian legislation, and in some countries collect a tax attached to storage media (they want internet connections too). For this reason, I want them dead and gone, yesterday.

And yes, this trumps the culture you're talking about, because it's my culture (related to technology and the internet) they're screwing with, and at this point of time I think if the entire music industry died in exchange for them stopping trying to screw with my hardware and internet connection, it would be a fair price to pay.

So I'll gladly contribute to this, and hope it makes them a bit poorer, even though I never had any interest in listening to classical music.

This is very cool

[wwphx]

I've been considering doing a podcast on board/card game design and music is an issue. I know there's lots of Creative Commons music out there, but who has time to go through it? With this, I can find selections of music that I already have and like, download their version, and Robert's your mother's brother.

I'm also impressed by Kickstarter. I didn't know about it until last week and I ?think it's also pretty cool.

Re:This is very cool

[MusedFable]

What's the podcast website? I'm heavy into boardgame design. If you don't feel like posting the website here for whatever reason you can reach me at gmail or boardgamegeek with the same name (I'm the only MusedFable as far as I know). Gamers seem to be very willing to put money up for projects; which is probably why Kickstarter can work so well for game makers.

Re:This is very cool

[wwphx]

My web site is Spare Brains Games, I'll be posting links whenever I get it going and will hopefully have it available on iTunes, RSS, and I'm going to try to seed it through torrents. It'll probably be called High Altitude Game Design (I live at 8600'). But I don't know when I'm going to start production, I've been noodling ideas around for a few months now and working more with Audacity. I've been doing card game design for over 6 years now and sell a game called Zombie Cafe through The Game Depot in Tempe, AZ, and I can sell it through my web site but I don't have PayPal links up at the moment.

Re:This is very cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Piss off then. You don't want to pay for music for your shitty project and can't be bothered to go through what many people have made for free? Lazy cunt.

this is great!

[FudRucker]

when they finish i hope to find another story here at /. linking to BitTorrent files to the music :)

Re:this is great!

[tverbeek]

Kick in a few bucks and they'll mail it to you themselves.

Re:this is great!

[LambdaWolf]

There's already a torrent on The Pirate Bay with all of their existing work, sonatas and concertos mostly. (Despite being on TPB, it's obviously legal assuming the provenance is true.) The webpage lists 0 seeders, but I'm downloading it right now and it's got 97% availability; only a few files are missing pieces, and those could be replaced by downloading them from the website. In fact, if enough people do so and seed them long enough, the torrent could become self-sustaining. A nice way to help the project*, although kicking in a few bucks as the parent suggested would obviously be even better.

* This is assuming that they would want people downloading the torrent, which is unofficial but quite consistent with the project's stated purpose. Perhaps they would prefer that people go to their website instead? I don't know. If in doubt, donate some money.

Broadway?

[pizzach]

Why aren't they doing what broadway did? They can replace the musicians with synthesizers and record MORE music to protect copyrights.

Re:Broadway?

[jedidiah]

> Why aren't they doing what broadway did? They can replace the musicians with synthesizers and record MORE music to protect copyrights. ...clearly not someone that listens to or appreciates classical music.

Re:Broadway?

[mitchells00]

Synthesizers are never as good as the real thing, they don't have the ability to add certain qualities to the music like emotion. Any true musician would understand the passion that flows through their instrument as they play; very much like having sex. Yes the synths can sound very convincing, but they're just not the same thing. They don't have the level of human error and randomness built in.

Re:Broadway?

[buchner.johannes]

Why aren't they doing what broadway did? They can replace the musicians with synthesizers and record MORE music to protect copyrights.

Because Turing-machines can't produce art.

Re:Broadway?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have the level of human error and randomness built in.

So toss in some RNG?

Re:Broadway?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't touched a synth in modern times to know what they can do.

Re:Broadway?

[CRCulver]

I've met a fair few classical music fans who prefer MIDI versions of various piano repertoire to human performances. Some of them are musicians themselves.

Re:Broadway?

[mitchells00]

I actually use them quite frequently. Attempts to replicate these qualities have been somewhat formidable, but unless you're using a very high quality digital instrument for each part, you're not going to get anywhere near what an orchestra can do. To get similar qualities from that type of music, one would need someone extremely experienced in the individual intricate qualities of each instrument and knowledgeable with regards to how to replicate such qualities... you'd end up paying more than just getting a few dozen skilled uni/college students to play for you.

Re:Broadway?

[drinkypoo]

If it's just piano and it's well-programmed then you can get quite good results. Piano synthesis seems well-explored compared to most other instruments.

Re:Broadway?

[Bing Tsher E]

For the kind of musicians who you can hire to play all of Beethoven's symphonies for a total (for all orchestra members) of $13,000 (or $20,000, or $50,000) I think I would take the synthesizers.

I used to have a complete boxed set of Beethoven symphonies put out by some cut-rate Japanese distributor. I think the whole set was about $7. There were several prominent oboe squawks in the first movement of the Third Symphony. And don't get me started on what cheap Japanese singers sound like singing the Ode To Joy in the Ninth Symphony in German, with Japanese accents.

No, this will be another cut-out bin grade recording. Nothing to see here. Move on, now.

Re:Broadway?

[Bing Tsher E]

You are probably talking about MIDI performances that are actually live recordings of pianists playing the works on high quality MIDI keyboards that feature aftertouch and all the enhanced features and effects that MIDI can record. I doubt if it's MIDI files that Dopey Joe coded in using a mouse and a Piano-roll MIDI editor.

Re:Broadway?

[rantomaniac]

very much like having sex

I don't understand, what is this "sex" you speak of?

Re:Broadway?

[Bing Tsher E]

An orchestra is a whole group of skilled musicians who listen to each other as they perform, and to a degree 'riff' off of each other. The kind of AI that would be required for a digital instrument (actually a whole rack of computers each controlling a digital instrument with AI, sensing of the other computers' output, etc.) just isn't there. And there's no sense in it. Blah-blah background muzak is very easily accomplished with human-free methods. Just like you can program a big bunch of stepper motors to pull levers and arms to 'paint art.'

Re:Broadway?

[mitchells00]

First I would like to set the record straight that I am in no way a spiritual person, nor do I believe in any extra forces or any junk like that. However, I do recognise the incredibly overcoming sensation of sensory overload which only occurs at times of ecstatic passion. A state of mind where nothing else exists except the source of the sense stimulation that overpowers your brain and controls every aspect of you even just for a moment; true passion. Almost everybody can feel this sensation when they "make love", but those who are lucky to feel it when they make music, paint, mould clay or speak charismatically, any form of what one would call "art", can only be called true musicians, artists, sculptors and public speakers respectively. This feeling can also be experienced by people who share that passion, even if they aren't involved in the process themselves, and this is what I am talking about. Just because you can skillfully play an instrument, doesn't mean you're a good musician. If you want good examples of this, watch+compare http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKKd0PZd8sk and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL2kuX4o0UM compare the emotion you feel when listening to the two. Yes, the first is more skilled, but you can clearly hear that he is passionate about how he plays it, he stresses the tense sentences, he fluffs the light soft sentences; his body is propelled almost uncontrollably from side to side... there is more to playing an instrument than just getting it right.

Re:Broadway?

[CRCulver]

No, I'm talking about the sort of MIDI output you get from e.g. Sibelius or Lilypond. I think the issue is that a great deal of modern piano repertoire is so grand and complex that merely human players are not capable of playing it as the composer wrote it. Sure, a human performance may hold interest in that you can watch a musician struggle with the piece (and fail), and Ferneyhough has made a career of writing music where the human performer is forced to choose what parts he'll leave out in order to concentrate on the remainder, and so every performer fails differently. But when it comes to hearing a New Complexity or Ligeti piano work performed the way it was written, there's no substitute for MIDI generated from the score.

Re:Broadway?

[mitchells00]

As I pointed out in my other post somewhere down below, make a piano synth do this without at least a digital keyboard and a truly skilled and passionate musician, and there is likely a LOT of money in it for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKKd0PZd8sk

Re:Broadway?

[Dogtanian]

Yes the synths can sound very convincing, but they're just not the same thing. They don't have the level of human error and randomness built in.

IIRC during the early 1970s one of the prog rock bands (I think it was Yes) had an early analogue synth that was extremely tempramental and unreliable. One evening in the middle of a concert it picked up a radio transmission of an announcer reading out the football results.

Now, you were saying...? :-)

Re:Broadway?

[Charliemopps]

You my friend, have not played a modern synth.

Re:Broadway?

[mitchells00]

Again, musicians with little or no passion, mostly just a competition to see who can do it better. Excellent way to compare orchestras with synths.

Re:Broadway?

[haystor]

Yea, I was thinking it could cost $13,000 just to get the orchestra together for a night.

The only thing I can figure is that this is an additional income for an orchestra which is already touring through the composers.

That, and it doesn't need to be the greatest recording ever to see a lot of use. Background music in indie games and movies would be possible. Layered in with ambient noise, sound effects and character dialog, the lesser quality of this work might not stand out.

Re:Broadway?

[harmonise]

I don't think you've heard what a skilled orchestrator can do with a synthesizer or sampler such as Hollywood Strings or Vienna Symphonic Library.

I recommend you listen to some of the demo songs from each one. I recommend Allegro Agitato.

Re:Broadway?

[MoonBuggy]

There's also the possibility that the orchestra believes in the cause and is offering their services at a cut rate - if anything, it would be more likely that the better (and presumably, therefore, relatively well paid in general) musicians would be willing and able to do such a thing.

In any case, their website has examples of music they've previously had recorded, so you can judge the quality for yourself.

Re:Broadway?

[jonbryce]

I just have. The first one I listened
http://www.musopen.com/music.php?type=piece&id=107
is pretty awful. There may be one or two notes in tune, but I didn't spot them.

Re:Broadway?

[Entropius]

Whatever Japanese orchestra and choir you heard, it's certainly not true for all of them.

There is a recording of the Mahler 2nd symphony, this huge massive thing for choir, enormous orchestra, and organ, by the Tokyo Philharmonic and some Tokyo choir. They are fucking *badass*.

Re:Broadway?

[Eil]

Synthesizers are never as good as the real thing, they don't have the ability to add certain qualities to the music like emotion.

"Emotion" is simply making minor adjustments to the playing of the instrument in certain ways at certain points. If it's possible to create an advanced acoustical model of a piano which is indistinguishable from a physical piano (and it is), then it is wholly possible to "program" emotion into a synthesized rendition of a piece.

Granted, the programming has to done by a human. And you could argue that by the time you've reached that point, it's a whole lot simpler to just record someone playing the instrument. But it's still adding human emotion into a synthesized piece.

They don't have the level of human error and randomness built in.

Many sequencers (the things that trigger notes which are sent to the synthesizer) have settings for randomness and other forms of human error. The accuracy can be set from "spot-on" to "oh my word, who let a white boy in here?"

Re:Broadway?

[Twinbee]

Synthesizers are never as good as the real thing

You're right, they're far better, because they theoretically can produce any possible sound from the real world as well as any sounds you can't imagine. Computers just aren't fast enough to synthesize complex acoustic interactions properly in realtime yet.

Not to mention, it's the harmonies and rhythm that counts a lot more in my opinion.

Re:Broadway?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with MIDI is the 128 levels of velocity. This is no where near enough to cover the full expressive dynamic range of classical music. The combination of incidental dynamics such as p, mf, f, etc., along with accents and phrase markings can easily surpass MIDI's 7-bit limitation.

For example, the first movement of Beethoven's Appasionata piano sonata features pp, p, f, and ff, leaving 32 MIDI velocity levels per dynamic marking. This may seem okay, but when accenting and phrasing is added, this limited range kills the subtle performance dynamics.

In addition, dynamics fluctuate depending upon where the note is positioned within a measure, and where the measure is positioned within a phrase. On top of this, slurring also assumes a subtle lowering-rising-lowering of dynamics. Lengthy slurred phrases need far more subtlety than 32 levels of velocity.

Looking at later composers, the problem becomes more pronounced (partly because piano dynamic range increased alongside building method improvements.) For example, ppp all the way to fff can be found through the works of Chopin and Liszt. Now you have to divided MIDI into six -- or even eight sections if the composer used mp and mf -- leaving even less room for phrasing.

MIDI piano performances are always flat, no matter how well programmed.

Re:Broadway?

[fbjon]

There are two catches though: 1) in that case the music is written to be especially complex, i.e. in some ways suited to machine performance, which is fine in of itself; and 2) piano and some related instruments are particularly easy to create virtual instruments of.

Re:Broadway?

[ais523]

If their circuitry is vulnerable to RF interference (not completely implausible for an analogue synthesiser, but still a bit unlikely), why on earth wasn't it shielded from radio signals? It's a simple case of putting the thing into a metal box...

Re:Broadway?

[fbjon]

I use those and like them, but you're missing a crucial point: those sound best when the music is produced for them specifically, within their limitations. Try something a little more 'out there', and you'll have a hard time coaxing the virtual synths to cope.

Re:Broadway?

[Legion303]

"Because Turing-machines can't produce art."

I would argue that by definition, they can.

Re:Broadway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone might still have to play the keyboard to record the MIDI.

Re:Broadway?

[Sirusjr]

I agree, this is sad and not likely to be very beneficial. If I heard this poor of a recording in anything as a soundtrack I would laugh at the creator for using such poor recordings. I would rather not listen to anything than this drivel.

Re:Broadway?

[Jubedgy]

I listened to parts of it. It's about the level you'd expect from a small liberal arts college like Skidmore, about comparable to how we played in the USNA Midshipman Orchestra (which is to say, a big spectrum of ability since we took what we could get as musical ability there was definitely not a focus in terms of recruitment).

On the other hand, if you had a recording of students from, say, Curtis or Longy then you'd be hard pressed to tell that from the recording of an average professional orchestra. I'm pretty sure if musopen wanted to, given the nature of the project, institutions like those could be talked into helping for a reasonable donation.

Re:Broadway?

[ResidentSourcerer]

One of my preferred recordings of one of the Brandenburg concertos is done entirely on synthesizer. I like it because the different instruments are far more distinctive, so it's much easier to follow different strands.

Re:Broadway?

[Dogtanian]

If their circuitry is vulnerable to RF interference (not completely implausible for an analogue synthesiser, but still a bit unlikely), why on earth wasn't it shielded from radio signals? It's a simple case of putting the thing into a metal box...

Well, from what I understand, early synths like that were already big, bulky and unwieldy. Putting them in a massive metal box would have made things worse, I assume.

Plus, AFAIK most of them were modular, "programmed" by connecting modules with wires and (again AFAIK) some could even have modules added and removed, possibly making case shielding while allowing access more complex.

Don't forget that analogue synths were inherently based on the... analogue qualities of electronic signals and thus I'm guessing it probably took quite a few years for them to design out such foibles while keeping the synth flexible.

Remember also that synths only emerged from being lab-based curiosities in the late 1960s- those *were* early days!

Great!

[FritzTheCat1030]

This is great news, but that's 26 complete symphonies, probably something along the lines of 17 hours of music (at an average of 40 minutes each...that's probably a little low actually). Add in rehearsal times and I have serious doubts about the feasibility of doing this for $13,000. I wish them luck, but I'd rather have less music at a higher quality than more with an amateur-level ensemble.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is entirely possible that the bulk of funding is going to the actual hiring of equipment/rehearsal space etc.. and many most or all of the musicians involved are donating their time/effort to the project.

Re:Great!

[tverbeek]

If you read the project description, you'll see that they are in fact hiring an orchestra to do this. Nothing wrong with that IMO.

If anyone is unhappy with the quality of the performers they hire.... recruit your own. That's what the public domain is all about.

Re:Great!

[Kjella]

That's what I was thinking too, in the comments it was asked but the answers are fuzzy:

1. What orchestra(s) are you planning on using
2. Who is conducting?
3. Who is mixing the recording?

1. orchestra depends on total raised. I'm hoping for a mixture of conservatories + professional orchestra to lower cost and increase total music, but it depends on what we can negotiate and the total raised. Some orchestras we are considering include London Symphony, Czech Philharmonic and several others that regularly record movie soundtracks.
2. I have several contacts who would conduct for free, I'd also like to try contacting some well known conductors to see if they would be interested. My backup would be a for hire's conductor that orchestras use to record with
3. Several orchestras we've spoken to include those kinds of services as they regularly record for movie soundtracks

I read that as "might possibly be considering it for one of them if we exceed our budget, I doubt you'll get the London Symphony to record it for $500/symphony...

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta feeling there's a musician's union or two that may say otherwise.

Re:Great!

[TheRaven64]

Given that these are famous symphonies, it's entirely possible that no rehearsal time is required, as the orchestra has probably performed them before. They are probably offering a seriously reduced rate as well - given the distribution that public domain recordings are likely to receive, the amount of publicity they'd receive is likely to be worth a lot to them.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that these are famous symphonies, it's entirely possible that no rehearsal time is required, as the orchestra has probably performed them before. They are probably offering a seriously reduced rate as well - given the distribution that public domain recordings are likely to receive, the amount of publicity they'd receive is likely to be worth a lot to them.

As I asked in another post, do we even know what orchestra they're planning on hiring? Does musopen even know yet? As for the claim that they may not even need to rehearse, I take it you've never played in an orchestra before. We're talking about 26 full pieces here. Unless these are full-time musicians from a fairly well-known orchestra, they're not going to know these pieces through and through. Regardless of how well known these works are, any sensible orchestra will do at least one or two read-throughs beforehand, as there are a lot of intricate parts that need to be perfected (both on the performer's and conductor's sides). I'm curious to see how this all works out.

Re:Great!

[mayberry42]

Agreed, but not everybody is "maximize my profit" driven - I'm sure many people will gladly do it for free given their love of music and the ability to contribute to the cause. Granted, I'll admit that I'm ignorant regarding the costs involved, somehow i wouldn't think it's completely out of the question either (I'm going by the presumption that they did their homework). Of course, if you're really that concerned, i'm sure they'll appreciate your extra donation ;-)

Re:Great!

[AmericanInKiev]

Of course you're right EXCEPT,
that every musician worth his salt has cut his teeth on the classics; they quite likely have mixed these classics into their various seasons for many years. I certainly wish them well.

Re:Great!

[jonbryce]

You can't just put the scores in front of them and expect a perfect performance first time. Even the best and most experienced musicians need rehersal time, and anyway, every conductor has their own opinion about how the music should be interpreted. No two recordings are ever the same.

Re:Great!

[fizzup]

At 7:00 this morning, they were at $13K. Now, it's 11:00 and they are nearly at $23K, velocity is over $2,000 per hour right now, and there are over 50 hours remaining. Now that this is on slashdot, it's only a matter of time before it gets on digg, reddit, and becomes a twitternado.

If they raise $100K, that's starting to get into the range of reasonable contracts to have great orchestras record 26 symphonies with named-above-the-orchestra conductors. Even if Naxos has a kitten over this and starts to strong-arm, $100K will turn some heads.

Should you choose to part with three CDs worth of your hard earned money - $50 - that will get you a dvd of everything musopen has ever recorded in this way. Lossless. And if you have some doubts about the quality of their recordings, download a few before you give money. It's public domain, yeah?

Re:Great!

[shutdown -p now]

Add in rehearsal times and I have serious doubts about the feasibility of doing this for $13,000.

They've already collected $30k, and it's still going. It went up by $150 during the few minutes it took me to make a donation, and, given it's still got 50 hours to go before it closes, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up with a figure around $60-80k. Of course, it's more likely if you do your part - and it's also that rare case of actually being able to meaningfully vote with your wallet.

It's worth noting that it does not have to be a pure donation - depending on how much you give, you may also request (or forgo, it's up to you) some nifty stuff. And, hey, for a measly $3500 you can single-handedly pick one of the pieces they're going to record.

Re:Great!

[rivaldufus]

I agree. Though these might not be entirely all professional, $13,000 doesn't go very far. If they were paid union scale, that would probably fetch you a few symphonies, with no rehearsal time. Of course, quite a few people on slashdot would assume that the musicians will work for pennies (the love of music and all that.)

However, as to the length of the symphonies, I'd be willing to be the majority of symphonies are under 30 minutes. I don't think any symphony reached 40+ minutes in length until the Eroica.

Re:Great!

[FritzTheCat1030]

However, as to the length of the symphonies, I'd be willing to be the majority of symphonies are under 30 minutes. I don't think any symphony reached 40+ minutes in length until the Eroica.

Out of the 26 symphonies mentioned, only Beethoven 1&2 were written before Eroica.
All four of the Brahms symphonies are 45-60 minutes.
Tchaikovsky 4-6 are all 45 minutes or longer, not sure about 1-3 but I'd be willing to bet they're well over 30 minutes.
Some of the Sibelius symphonies are pretty obscure, but the 2 well known ones are both pushing an hour (and given Sibelius' style I'd be surprised if any of the others are less than 45)
The only ones that are considerably less than 40 minutes are some of the Beethoven...1 and 2 for sure, 7 is shortish...3,6, and 9 are all big, long works...have to admit I'm not that familiar with 4 or 8.

Re:Great!

[TheDormouse]

1. Even warhorse orchestral music requires some rehearsal to get the musicians on the same page regarding interpretation.
2. Other than the conductor, no individual musician in these recordings is going to receive one bit of publicity, certainly not publicity that would be worthwhile to do this gig for anything other than the pay scale a professional musician would expect to receive for any other recording gig.

Re:Great!

[rivaldufus]

eethoven 4 and 8 are definitely under 40 minutes... IIRC, he was aiming for a classical style symphony in 8. Beethoven 5 is usually well under 40 minutes... mainly because of the breakneck tempo in the first movement. Those late Sibelius symphonies are unearthly long. I think Sibelius was getting paid by the minute by his publishers. I can't imagine they're performed much these days... I have recordings of them, but I don't often seem them on concert programs - usually only 1 or 2.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Done poorly, this will be held up as an example of the frivolity of producing unencumbered material for little to no money. Quite correctly, I think. It's a great idea, but it really deserves a few hundred thousand dollars, at least, to hire a real professional orchestra and quality sound engineering.

Re:Great!

[NeverWorker1]

If they raise $100K, that's starting to get into the range of reasonable contracts to have great orchestras record one or two symphonies with named-above-the-orchestra conductors. Bear in mind that even a small chamber orchestra (sufficient for Beethoven, but not going to cut it for later romantic era works) is going to have at least 35 musicians. Each of them will have to be paid for both rehearsal time (alone and as a group) and actual recording sessions. On top of that, a recording session isn't just a play-it-once-and-we're done affair. A forty-minute symphony will take at the very least six hours in the studio, and frequently if will take more than that (Glenn Gould was notorious for recording less than ten minutes of final product per day, but that's an extreme case). Without getting into technical personal, we're talking many hundreds of man-hours per symphony. Add to that studio costs, instrument transportation, engineers, and all the other costs of recording, we're talking over $50K just paying union rates. Bear in mind that this is just for one symphony and for basic performers at union scales. Big names will carry correspondingly higher costs.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a professional symphony violist.

To hire a professional orchestra would be almost impossible because we are a bunch of union-ized zealots that don't do anything, especially recording, without being compensated at union rates. At least in the U.S. You could never raise enough money to record more than a few movements.

(Maybe if you went to Eastern Europe you could find some starving orchestra that would play for peanuts and sound acceptable)

Secondly, you would never have near the same quality that has already been recorded dozens of times by the world's greatest orchestra: Berlin, New York, Cleveland, Boston, etc.

The recordings are out there - just google around a little bit. Check out Groove Shark. You'll have no problem finding great recordings of great orchestras playing the standard orchestral literature.

Next time

[Compaqt]

One part of me says: this is great, should have happened a long time ago.

Record once, and be done with it, instead of paying over and over again.

But the other part is: After you're done recording symphonies, and no one needs (or needs to pay) orchestra players again, and they have to go into some other livelihood, where are you going to get orchestra players the next time you need them?

Re:Next time

[SomeKDEUser]

Every recording is unique, and there is nothing like a live performance. So really there is no fear to be had about the livelihood of the players. Now the industry responsible for the distribution of the recordings... Well, they're evil anyway.

Re:Next time

[Dekker3D]

Live music. Just like every anti-RIAA Slashdotter has been telling the pro-RIAA Slashdotter for years now. The idea is that your music should be so awesome that people will pay to see it played live anyway, even if it's also available as an MP3. Of course, different orchestra...e? also have a different sound and a different interpretation of the way they should play each song.

Re:Next time

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC tried to release a lot of classical music for free a few years ago but commercial competitors complained to The BBC Trust (sort of an oversight organisation) and prevented them from releasing.

Re:Next time

[jonwil]

There will always be newer (and still in copyright) pieces of music for orchestras to play.
Ask any good film director how important a good orchestra is to his films.
Also, just because there is now a copyright-free version of (say) Beethoven's 9th doesn't mean that no orchestra will ever play it again. They havent invented a digital sound recording process that is good enough to replace the glory that is hearing good classical music performed live.

It DOES mean that companies like Naxos who make money selling CDs of classical music will loose sales (not that that's a bad thing IMO)

Re:Next time

[TheRaven64]

Very few orchestras make money from recordings, and even fewer make them from recordings of public domain music. The definitive recording of Beethoven's symphonies, for example, is usually regarded as being Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded in 1968 and 1972. Compare the sales of this to any other recording of Beethoven's symphonies, and you'll see a massive difference.

Orchestras make money in two ways: concerts, and commissioned recordings (like the ones in TFA). For example, last night I went to the Prom in the Park, where the BBC National Orchestra of Wales were performing. If you read Slashdot, you've probably heard them before - they recorded the them tune to Doctor Who (which they played last night just after the Stravinsky). They also played a Karl Jenkins piece, which is still very much in copyright (it's only a few years old).

It's not like people will stop writing music and they'll still want orchestras to record it. It's not like live performances will be completely replaced by recordings, either. The Prom in the Park was broadcast on the radio (and streamed online), and our contingency plan in case of rain was to listen to it in my house and have the picnic indoors. The weather was nice though, so we decided to pay the entrance fee and go and listen to it in person.

Re:Next time

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice, but electronic music cannot be played live.

Re:Next time

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice, but electronic music cannot be played live.

If you can't play it live, then you're doing it wrong. Or you just can't play to start with.

I remember seeing Kraftwerk in the early '90s, and their live show was outstanding. And performed live. And using all electronic instruments.

Re:Next time

[digitig]

Live music.

And film scores (for a while longer, at least).

Re:Next time

[haystor]

It's quite the opposite effect. Get that music out there were everyone can hear it and drum up the market for a live performance. Particularly for orchestras which survive through ticket sales and donations.

You don't go to the concert to hear Beethoven for the first time. You decide which night of the season to go because they're playing what you really want to hear live.

Re:Next time

[Anonymous Coward]

This is my favorite concert of all time, it is electronic music. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_(album)

Re:Next time

[sirrunsalot]

I'm very interested to see what happens when the copyright expires on the wave of classical recordings made around the 1970's (although I may be dead before that happens) . How many times do you think the legislation will change to extend the copyrights? I suspect the BBC will be in good company as far as caving into industry pressure goes.

Re:Next time

[BrokenHalo]

It DOES mean that companies like Naxos who make money selling CDs of classical music will loose sales (not that that's a bad thing IMO)

Naxos buys up lots of quality recordings that would never otherwise see the light of day, and releases them to the consumer at budget prices (typically less than 1/3 of the price of a "big-label" CD) which are comparable to the real cost of production and distribution, with a minimal margin. If you want to "go after" any label, leave Naxos alone - they're doing good work.

Re:Next time

[Entropius]

Orchestras are not going to put live performances out of business. You can go get a public domain recording of the German Requiem off of Wikipedia (and it's not a bad recording), but professional orchestras still play it all the time.

Re:Next time

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no pro-RIAA slashdotters unless you count paid shills. There are people against piracy, but that's something different.

Re:Next time

[Jupiter Jones]

Agreed. Naxos is a good example of how a record label should be run. Ain't nothing wrong with Naxos.

JJ

Re:Next time

[Cylix]

Clearly the industry was destroyed once with the release of the record.

It happened again with the cd player.

This is pretty much the death knell for performers everywhere.

Re:Next time

[rivaldufus]

Don't forget donations... many orchestras don't break even on concerts - although pops concerts can be somewhat profitable... less rehearsal time (typically easier music.) But donations and grants are important. Even the big name orchestras usually have hefty endowments.

Re:Next time

[ais523]

It is indeed "orchestrae" it seems. The word does indeed come via a latin root orchestra, from the Ancient Greek word which transliterates into the English alphabet as orcheestra (/me glares at Slashdot's Unicode filter) according to several etymological dictionaries I checked, so using a Latin plural is at least vaguely appropriate (unlike in the case of words that come directly from Greek). The genitive of orchestra is orchestrae , making it a first declension feminine word; for such words, the plural is equal to the genitive, also orchestrae. Of course, pluralising loanwords in their original language (usually Latin) seems to be something that, although common on online fora (and yes, I just looked that plural up as well just to make sure...), is hardly used in general conversation. Arguably, English long ago moved on from using the original plural, and so the true correct plural is to follow English rules, to end up with "orchestras".

Re:Next time

[SomeKDEUser]

You can't put going to a concert, classical or modern in a CD! The music might be there, but this is only a small part of it.

The audience participates, the sights, the vibrations. All of the things making it worth going. Performers so dead they are like playing a CD are no performers at all.

Re:Next time

[owlnation]

"The definitive recording of Beethoven's symphonies, for example, is usually regarded as being Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded in 1968 and 1972. Compare the sales of this to any other recording of Beethoven's symphonies, and you'll see a massive difference."

I do have to take issue with that, depending on what you mean by definitive. Von Karajan's recordings probably sell the best, are perhaps the most famous -- especially because of the hype of recording the 9th on CD.

However, they are far, far, far from definitive musically. They are pompous, overstated and lack all subtlety. Much like the man himself. Furtwängler's recordings with the BPO are probably the most highly regarded among musicians. Obviously there's some degree of personal taste involved, but von Karajan is not highly-regarded as a general rule.

His recordings of the symphonies are ear-bleedingly godawful in my opinion, and best used as coasters.

Re:Next time

[jabuzz]

In addition I think you will find that the main business of Naxos is audiobooks. They take a book out of copyright, and then pay an actor to do a reading of it before releasing it on CD. The classical music is a side line.

I have a substantial collection of Naxos audiobooks on CD.

Re:Next time

[azmodean 1]

^^^ THIS! ^^^

I'm not an audiophile by any means, I use "decent" (sub-$100) headphones for all my listening, and I don't pay all that much attention to the decoding and amplification paths of my equipment (no gold-plated cables here), but a night at the local symphony (or for that matter the local pops) is money well spent in my opinion.

Re:Next time

[azmodean 1]

It DOES mean that companies like Naxos who make money selling CDs of classical music will loose sales (not that that's a bad thing IMO)

Naxos buys up lots of quality recordings that would never otherwise see the light of day

...because they are locked up by copyright in the first place, right? When the only means of acquiring the music was by physical medium, buying the rights to it and selling at a marginal markup was laudable. Now that the publication cost is almost nil, is perpetuating copyright of these works, even at a fair price, really such a good deal?

Regardless, it sounds like they're just working within the system we have, I haven't heard their name on any of the particularly egregious articles I've run across, so live and let live.

Not so fast

[paiute]

Dear Sir or Madame,

I represent the estate of Mr. Ludwig van Beethoven.

We see that you have downloaded a copy of Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 by Ludwig van Beethoven from www.musopen.com. Enclosed is a bill for $500, payable immediately.

We are aware that the site you have downloaded our client's work from represents it to be "copyright-free"; however, the musicians who recorded this work did so only after listening to a copyrighted recording of our client's work. Thus, this new work is a derivative work of Mr. Beethoven's and is covered under our copyright.

regards,

H. G. Reckshun, Esq.
Dewey, Cheatham, Howe, and Reckshun

A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[WidescreenFreak]

You obviously don't know or don't care that most people who listen to classical music have a much more perceptive ear than people who listen to other types of music. A synthesizer is still a synthesizer no matter how you try to market it. There's no way that it can accurately produce the various tonal qualities of a full orchestra. The type of mallet that's used to strike a cymbal, the stroke speed of a violin bow as it passes over the strings, the subtle change in tone dynamics by adding a vibrato to a sustained note on a cello ... synthesizers can't accurately reproduce those, yet each of those can be very important to the quality of a piece.

Yes, synthesizer technology is impressive, but it's still a cold, digital reproduction of an instrument no matter how good the technology gets or how hard you attempt to defend it.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[Anonymous Coward]

Most classical music is played through elevator speakers world-wide. I don't think that ambience caters to the most intricate details of musical phrasing. A good synth really is good enough.

A live concert is something different and can be a profound experience. But a recording of a orchestra is not necessarily better than a recording of a good synth. Sometimes it's quite the opposite.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[mitchells00]

The entire point of this project is to provide this service to people who actually enjoy it, so your comment is redundant.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[Tacvek]

You seem to be making an argument against just synthesizers. Fair enough. However, it is entirely possible to construct robots to play each instrument.

That would result in the sound of each instrument being correct. However the basic attempts to do so will create a perfect performance. Besides inaccurate reproduction of sounds the music being too perfect (the tempo has no jitter, and every note starts exactly on the beat.)

But synthesizer artists have studied how to make the playback less rigid, and perfect, making that aspect of synthesized music more realistic. Much of that could be combined with robotic musicians. The result would be fairly decent music. It would still lack some of the aspects that humans give by playing off each other, but it would also lack many of the distracting errors found on recordings by low quality orchestras. The result would be music that is inexpensive per recording (since only one person needs to be paid), and of good, but not great quality.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[harmonise]

The entire point of this project is to provide this service to people who actually enjoy it, so your comment is redundant.

Or to provide royalty free music to people who wish to use it in a production. Therefore, it's not redundant.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[BrokenHalo]

Most classical music is played through elevator speakers world-wide.

No, a very small cross-section of the repertoire is thus played.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[Anonymous Coward]

If it can be digitally recorded it can be digitally synthesized. But the sound generation is not really the important part of the equation anyway.
The musician is. And secondly the interface to the sound generating device creates characteristics that are hard to program.

What I am saying is, if you build a computerized physical model of a violin, and a special violin shaped high resolution controller, and let a good violinist play it, you'd be able to fool _everyone_ in an abx test. Thing is, why bother? The only reason to synthesize instruments is to simplify them in order to make the sounds more accessible, there by cutting away a lot of the nuance.

I guess my point is that this debate is beside the point...if that makes sense.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[Reziac]

While most of the time I'd agree with you, I've heard it go both ways -- synth music filled with passion and the slight irregularities that express that passion, and real-performer that could have been a robot for all the life that was in it.

And some that swing both ways, depending: ordinarily, Vanessa Mae is technically perfect, but about as interesting as a metronome. But that album produced by Mike Batt is different -- you can tell that he challenged her and in one cut, even pissed her off -- her playing is ANGRY, and for that one cut, inspired. It's the only time I've heard her play with passion, or in any way distinguishable from a robot.

Also, orchestral music on CD bothers me (to the point that I can't listen to it), because the ambient sound and depth ("the sense that the music is surrounded by velvet") is lost. Some are very distinctive when heard in full, such as the ambience of the Chicago Symphony at home in Orchestra Hall.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[Anonymous Coward]

"What I am saying is, if you build a computerized physical model of a violin, and a special violin shaped high resolution controller, and let a good violinist play it, you'd be able to fool _everyone_ in an abx test."

Only if you are comparing a recorded violin to a synthesised one.
If it was a live violin versus a recording or synthesised, then the difference is immediately obvious, even to the most cloth eared of listeners.

Re:A synthesizer is still a synthesizer

[frog_strat]

If you think synthesizers are still a long way off from sounding like the real thing, I invite you to check out the Vienna Symphony Sample library: Audio sample

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra free 10 symphonies

[hessian]

MusOpen has a great idea and I am glad to see them pursuing it. Since I've started buying classical music, I've found I'm getting more enjoyment per work than I ever did with popular music.

Before MusOpen, there was the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's giveaway of 10 symphonies:

http://kco.radio4.nl/index.php?lang=en

http://www.concertgebouworkest.nl/page.ocl?pageid=109&lang=en

My favorites are the Schubert, Saint-Saens, Bruckner and Beethoven.

it's about the performances

[Anonymous Coward]

While I certainly applaud what they're doing, I just wanted to point out that classical music is generally about the quality of the performances themselves. So what orchestra are they hiring? How much practice/exposure to some of these pieces will they have? Will they be sight-reading some of them? It will be nice to have recordings out there that are free of any copyright issues, but it won't mean much if the performances are mediocre or have glaring mistakes (wrong notes, missed entrances, etc). I'm curious if anyone has asked any city/community or college orchestras if they'd be interested in releasing some of their recordings into the public domain.

That's a bit of an arrogant assumption

[WidescreenFreak]

Did you ever think that maybe the people involved are highly skilled professionals who are doing this for their love of the music and all time and resources are being volunteered? If that's the case, $13,000 can go a long way. To just assume that the people are cheap amateurs is ridiculously short-sighted.

Re:That's a bit of an arrogant assumption

[Rheostatik]

Highly skilled professionals have families to feed and bills to pay. The amount of rehearsal time alone for 17 complete symphonies just isn't practically possible to do for basically no money. You may get the odd one or two, but odds are the vast majority won't be seasoned professionals. And then, there's the conductor...

Re:That's a bit of an arrogant assumption

[drdrgivemethenews]

And to assume that even a collection of highly skilled professionals will somehow instantly become a wonderful orchestra is equally arrogant. It takes time, much rehearsal, a great conductor and great section coaches to produce an ensemble capable of truly brilliant music.

Shop around. There are tons of CDs out of performances at the level we're likely to get here, usually for a couple bucks each. I applaud the effort, but let's be realistic about our expectations.

Re:That's a bit of an arrogant assumption

[Lord_Byron]

They're up to almost U$60K now.

You're right about there being lots of amazingly good recordings out there, usually for a couple bucks each. No doubt I could have bought all this music for much less than I'm donating. I'm not doing this so that I can have these recordings. I'm doing it so *everyone* can have them.

Re:Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra free 10 symphonie

[XanC]

Those are MP3-only (not lossless), and they don't appear to be anything close to public domain. I don't see any mention of a license. Registration is required, and I believe redistribution is verboten.

Classical is one big copyright trick

[Artifakt]

Most symphony orchestras get taxpayer support. When they record, it's often subsidised by the federal government, or state and local ones. In many cases, the people who manage and broker deals for these orchestras artificially split the funding, so that all the necessary preliminaries to album sales are supposedly based on private investment/contributions. They treat it like all the practice sessions for a live performance are taxpayer subsidised, but the practice sessions for the album are paid for by private sources, so that the law is technically being observed. It's part of that whole "socialise the costs and privatise the profits" school of economics. It makes no sense as a matter of fact instead of law - does anyone really want to claim that they practiced the same piece for live performance and recording, but only put the part of that practice that was funded by one method or the other into their performances. "Yeah, I deliberately held back on that Oboe cadenza, so it didn't sound like all the practice I had contributed to my leet symphonizing skillz!".
          What the federal government funds is normally held in the public trust, not subject to copyright. I know several symphony soloists and conductors who are generally uncomfortable with this legal ruse, and have heard accounts of many more. Most orchestras don't have the stature to sell a lot of recordings, and taxpayer funding generally takes any profit from CD sales into account, so it seldom benefits the performers much, if at all. It's more likely they see the same overall pay, with a shift in just when they get each check because some of it is coming as royalties after sales figures are processed. It makes bookkeeping for symphonies much more complex, and some managing directors see it as a big gamble, where they might get lucky and see really impressive sales, but doing classical music at the major orchestra level isn't gambling to most people, it's a steady job with a safe floor for income. Just like some people in rock/pop/rap/whatever become studio musicians because they want a steady paycheck instead of a high risk venture, people who shoot for a job in the second row violins for the New York Philharmonic want a reliable career instead of a 1 in 10,000 chance of a mansion with leopard skin covered volleyball courts.

Re:Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra free 10 symphonie

[Anonymous Coward]

You are essentially selling your personal information for a downloadable copy of a performance. That may be free in the sense that you don't have to part with any money, but it is not free as in you get something for nothing.

Raising money Fast

[Anonymous Coward]

I just saw the money raised jump a hundred dollars in under a minute...

I have zero problem with what they're doing

[Anonymous Coward]

and I bet that Deutsche Grammaphone (sic?), Columbia, and the other major labels don't either. If anything, this will increase the population of classical music listeners which will help the record companies.

However, it remains to be seen whether the results will be interesting to serious listeners.

People on a budget might want to check out Naxos, a small label which records excellent orchestras performing their in-season repertoire (not rush jobs) and sells the output for well under $10 per CD. The orchestras are usually not those considered "first tier" by the general public, and the conductors and soloists are not celebrities, but the quality is generally very high.

Re:I have zero problem with what they're doing

[Ebbesen]

But does Naxos release their records under a non-copyrighted, royalty-free, creative commons license?

I believe one of the major purposes of Musopen project is to release music you may use as you see fit. Without risking friendly mails from lawyers. Naxos might ot sue their customers either - but I believe it's a possibility?

Yawn . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me know when these pick-up players match, for example, Tchaikovsky performed by Chicago under Abbado. Until then it is worth it to purchase a great performance.

For everyone here, content is supposed to be free for the taking, yet no one wants to pay for the "creating" of it. Interesting.

Re:Yawn . . .

[houstonbofh]

For everyone here, content is supposed to be free for the taking, yet no one wants to pay for the "creating" of it. Interesting.

Actually, 363 people want to pay for creating it. At least when I checked... More now I am sure.

Re:Yawn . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

For everyone here, content is supposed to be free for the taking, yet no one wants to pay for the "creating" of it. Interesting.

The content, on Museopen.com is not free, it is (akin to) registration-ware, because if you try to download a song on their Website they will insist that you supply them with an email address.

No thanks! Even with "free" and legal music, the Pirate Bay still wins in terms of ease of use.

Re:Yawn . . .

[Kvasio]

have you ever heard of disposable email addresses?

Re:Yawn . . .

[DrSkwid]

Buying a recording for the personal pleasure of listening to it is *NOT* the same as having copyright free recordings available *FOR ANY USE*.

fool

Re:Yawn . . .

[adunn]

not disposable credit cards! and 553 people now

Re:Yawn . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

have you ever heard of disposable email addresses?

Sure, but putting up barriers and making things difficult doesn't help their cause. As I've stated, why bother registering for a disposable email address and then registering for "free" music when I can just use the Pirate Bay, or Apple iTunes (99 cents isn't a lot of money to overcome inconvenience).

Most people will go for the path of least resistance.

On a side note, and another example of the groups lack of thoughtful insight:

There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain. Work only enters the public domain upon expiration of the copyright term.

It's one of the last comments, but I also had a similar notion, and that is, why don't these people put the music into a Creative Commons license, like the "Public Domain" license CC0.

It's sort of like Slashdot is pressuring me to register, send them an email address, turn on cookies and turn on Javascript, and more indirectly (mainly through the Idle section) install and turn on Flash, because I'm supposed to wait HOURS!! until I get to reply to a person like you otherwise. Of course they KNOW that I'm not a Troll poster because they keep track of me through other things besides cookies (like IP address and browser ID and settings etc). I know this because I've experimented with things. It's all a big Bullshit game with these companies, and something that I REFUSE to play along with. So I don't register with ANY "free" service, NOT Facebook and not even with Slashdot. People tell me I'm an idiot and a Luddite, including the arrogant "freeware", and "non-profit" [see note] programmers at Firefox):

You have JavaScript disabled or are using a browser without JavaScript. This Plugin Check page does not work without the awesome power of JavaScript. Please enable this Content Preference and reload the page.

Or disable all your plugins and keep JavaScript disabled... you'd be in good company, that's how RMS rolls...

From: Richard Stallman
To: "Edd Barrett"
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:37:06 -0500
Message-ID:
Cc: misc-AT-openbsd.org
Archive-link: Article, Thread

For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I
also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I
send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me.
It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.

- This reference is straight from the Mozilla Web site.

Note: Did you know that executives at "non-profit" companies and charities on average make more money than executives at for-profit companies? [Ref: Mark J. Penn, from the book micro trends].

Also note, "Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment. It's been 2 hours, 14 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment". I might try again later to post a reply, or maybe do something more useful with my time. Sometimes I get the impression that Management at these companies and Websites think that people are fools.

Re:Yawn . . .

[pxc]

1.) They're planning to hire the London Symphony Orchestra. Would you call them a "pick-up player"?
2.) Many people from Slashdot have donated, more than doubling the amount of money raised since of the time of this article's posting.

... but for those /.ers who want to support the project in a way besides direct donation, there is the PepsiRefresh program, where they can vote for the project to receive $25,000 in funding.

If any /. editors see this, please, please add the PepsiRefresh link to the article summary!

Re:Yawn . . .

[westlake]

Actually, 363 people want to pay for creating it. At least when I checked... More now I am sure.

Let's put this in perspective:

Avery Fisher Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic, has 2,738 seats.

The DRM free iTunes 30 concert season subscription to the Philharmonic is $150. $5 a concert for a first-tier orchestra, venue, and production team.

Re:Yawn . . .

[b4dc0d3r]

Not sure what your point was here, but the perspective you presented is warped. The orchestra, venue, and production team works for between $30-$250 per concert. This represents ticket sales for the live performance.

The DRM free iTunes subscription is selling a product with almost zero marginal cost. They already record every performance, in case it turns out to have critics glowing, then they can turn it into the CD of the month. Selling the download does nothing to create the work - if people didn't buy tickets to see it live the recording wouldn't happen.

Re:Yawn . . .

[batkiwi]

They're using amazon payments. If you don't trust amazon with your credit card then why have a credit card?

Re:Yawn . . .

[thijsh]

Actually, 363 people want to pay for creating it. At least when I checked... More now I am sure.

At the time of this writing 744, or more than twice the amount, so you can be sure it's more now. :-)
It only takes 'a few' people willing to back a great initiative like this, and I for one have put my money where my mouth is.

I hope there will be more people donating, but more importantly more projects like this to benefit the public by releasing media under a CC license.
It's money much better spent than buying a CD, DVD or even going to a concert since you and everyone else can keep enjoying it *forever*. Keyword 'forever' means infinite more value for your money. ;-)

Re:Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra free 10 symphonie

[RDW]

The BBC tried this in the UK with a set of free-as-in-beer Beethoven symphonies. The music industry whined about it and the typically gutless response of the BBC Trust was to promise never to do it again:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23652107-end-this-downloads-ban.do
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/070207-NL-downloads.html

Pointless.

[MaWeiTao]

I'm curious where they plan on finding the orchestra to play this music with such a small budget. People still need to be paid for their time and effort. Then there's finding a proper studio with high quality recording equipment. That isn't cheap and plopping down a microphone on stage isn't going to cut it. And who will decide how the music will be played? What interpretation will they follow? Things get complicated quite quickly.

Then there's the matter of the ultimate format these compositions would be provided in. What are they going to use, AAC or some other crap-quality lossy format? That alone would defeat the purpose of this whole exercise. If they devised a process for disseminating this music, on CD or better yet, SACD or DVD audio, perhaps there might be something here. But it's unlikely that will ever happen.

The reasons I indicated above is why it costs money to buy a classical music recording. Simply because a score is copyright-free doesn't mean that this music suddenly becomes free to play, record and distribute. And it's already trivial to go online and find any of these compositions anyway.

Re:Pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that they will be playing the core canon of classical music that all the musicians will have been learning and playing since they first picked up their instruments, thus rehearsal time will be minimised. Plopping a hired $1000 mic (or three) down on the stage (on stands) may be all that is required, unless anybody else can comment on up-to-date classical recording techniques.

Without reading TFA I would confidently predict that the recordings will be made available in (at least) high quality Ogg Vorbis, lossless CD-quality Flac and some 24/32-bit/96/192Khz format for those who can appreciate such differences. As for 'a process for disseminating' the music, many of us have been using bittorrent for the last decade. Your scenario is not 'unlikely', it is guaranteed.

Re:Pointless.

[symbolset]

One might presume that artist credits on the public domain orchestral reference work will go a long way in an artists' career. Also, some of them might do it just because they love the music and want people to hear it. The upside is that they need do it only once, and they get the benefits forever as the work is archived for free and forever as a public service by well-endowed organizations. Their work will be in the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive. It will serve as background music for countless video works both amateur and professional. The only risk is that the practice becomes popular - emulated by every middle school, high school and university - and so their work is lost amongst the mass of freely available classical music. Actually, no, being part of spurring that movement is a selling point too.

Re:Pointless.

[k2r]

> What are they going to use, AAC or some other crap-quality lossy format?

You had me until here, from here on I considered the beginning of your content being an indifferent rant, too.

Re:Pointless.

[TheDormouse]

1. You presume incorrectly: "Artists credits on the public domain orchestral reference work" is a big joke. Most recordings list no more than the conductor and name of the orchestra, and if they do list a complete personnel list almost no one cares. If they hire a major professional orchestra(s) to record these, merely being a member of that orchestra will be a better line on the resume. And if they hire a pick-up ensemble, it's going to be a big "who cares?" line on 80 people's resumes.
2. A recording project done by a bunch of amateurs (definition: people who just love the music and want people to hear it) is not going to have much viability. Sure, listening to a big-city community orchestra (or maybe even a crappy small-town group) live may sound pretty good in the moment, but once you listen to the recording a few times you'll notice how much better you'd enjoy a more polished recording of professionals who will require they be paid a reasonable wage for their time.

Re:Pointless.

[Patch86]

Then there's the matter of the ultimate format these compositions would be provided in. What are they going to use, AAC or some other crap-quality lossy format? That alone would defeat the purpose of this whole exercise. If they devised a process for disseminating this music, on CD or better yet, SACD or DVD audio, perhaps there might be something here. But it's unlikely that will ever happen.

If you donate enough, they'll post you a lossless DVD. In the post. So yeah, they've got that sorted.

There are plenty of free high-quality file formats too. I'm sure, as audiophiles, they're capable of picking one as an option. They can distribute it for free by torrent- which shouldn't be tricky considering the community backing of this project.

At time of writing, $42,239 donated incidentally.

Re:Pointless.

[rjstanford]

Without reading TFA I would confidently predict that the recordings will be made available in (at least) high quality Ogg Vorbis, lossless CD-quality Flac and some 24/32-bit/96/192Khz format for those who can appreciate such differences

With you on the Flac, but without reading TFA either (why spoil things), I will confidently predict that they won't release anything in Ogg Vorbis, because the very few people who care will be just as happy with Flac and can transcode themselves to their heart's content. I'd put money on MP3 or unprotected AAC being available, though.

Good music anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of performing crappy music, why don't they pay them to record some good music? Just a thought...

OK, but...

[BrokenHalo]

There's more to a performance of an orchestral work than the employment of "a renowned orchestra". What conductor will they use? Nowadays, most of the major orchestras choose their conductors (as opposed to the opposite-way-around practice of yesteryear), but I wonder if their employment contracts will allow the conductors to do this sort of "pro-bono" work.

I'm not saying this couldn't or shouldn't happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if this issue that will comes up.

Re:Let the computer play it

[SteveFoerster]

Spoken like someone who doesn't know jack shit about classical music. Even for music from the Baroque period, which is perhaps the closest to what you describe, the pathos of human musicians is critical.

This won't be in the public domain

[phiz187]

Under U.S. law, these commissioned works won't be in the public domain. There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain. Work only enters the public domain upon expiration of the copyright term. (The one way to create a work into the public domain, is that governmental works are not subject to copyright.)

What the project can do is create a contractual license that says that all-comers are granted a perpetual, non-exclusive license. Even then, presumably the resulting works would be works of joint authorship, with copyright residing in all of the authors. And under the reversion provisions of US copyright law, those orchestra members, or their families, could have the licenses terminated after about 30 years.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain. Work only enters the public domain upon expiration of the copyright term.

Wikipedia disagrees.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[Anonymous Coward]

If the license is perpetual, then wouldn't terminating it (after 30 years or whenever) be in violation of the license?

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[HistoryNerd]

This claim appears to be wrong.

The link about joint authorship notes joint authorship is assumed when a work is prepared by two or more individuals absent an agreement to the contrary.

If such an agreement is made when the music is recorded so Musopen has clear exclusive rights prior to releasing the work in the public domain, this issue should not exist.

Your second link is about licenses potentially terminating after 35 years, but realistically its hard to see the rights to the Star Wars music for instance reverting to the individual orchestra after 35 years, so there is undoubtedly going to be a legislative change to the laws if this really is an issue.

Just not being sold and not restricting use of the music doesn't actually change these basic legal ownership details regarding music.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[trifish]

There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain.

I call bullshit. This is the first time EVER (seriously) I've read anything like that and I think I know quite a lot about IP and licensing.

Do you know of any US law that forbids the author from WAIVING his/her copyrights? What happens after he/she waives the rights? The work should be instantly in the public domain! Refute my arguments, please.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[Anonymous Coward]

Why thank you oh Slashdot contributor for your boundless wisdom. You must go forth and consult with the Creative Commons project on their CC0 waiver, because clearly they are chasing an utterly impossible goal.

Or, 'ya know, you're massively overstating the problem.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[TheoMurpse]

I call bullshit. This is the first time EVER (seriously) I've read anything like that and I think I know quite a lot about IP and licensing.

Do you know of any US law that forbids the author from WAIVING his/her copyrights? What happens after he/she waives the rights? The work should be instantly in the public domain! Refute my arguments, please.

I remember attending a Larry Lessig talk. He said that US copyright law makes it very difficult to place a work into the public domain intentionally. IIRC, he said there has to be some sort of physical conveyance to do so.

This is why there is a Creative Commons Public Domain license: to mimic what happens when a work enters the public domain, but without the work actually entering the public domain.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[TheoMurpse]

they are chasing an utterly impossible goal.

Actually, if you had read the URL you had linked to, you'd find that you're making an erroneous assumption.

How does it work?

A person using CC0 . . . waives all of his or her copyright and neighboring and related rights in a work, to the fullest extent permitted by law. If the waiver isn’t effective for any reason, then CC0 acts as a license from the affirmer granting the public an unconditional, irrevocable, non exclusive, royalty free license to use the work for any purpose.

What kinds of rights am I waiving when I use CC0?

. . . In [some] jurisdictions, you may not be able to waive all of your copyright . . . rights. . . . When waiver isn’t possible, those rights are licensed under CC0 to the extent allowed by law, although again, sometimes those rights cannot be licensed in advance or at all.

So the CC0 essentially acts as a license that accomplishes the same goals as the public domain.

Indeed, the founder of the Creative Commons, Larry Lessig, has said that placing something into the public domain in the US is very difficult, and so the CC has created a license that accomplishes the same goals.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[LambdaWolf]

There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain.

I call bullshit. This is the first time EVER (seriously) I've read anything like that and I think I know quite a lot about IP and licensing.

Do you know of any US law that forbids the author from WAIVING his/her copyrights? What happens after he/she waives the rights? The work should be instantly in the public domain! Refute my arguments, please.

There's no law saying you can't waive your own copyright, but it's an open question of interpretation whether you can or not. Read about it here. (Summary: If Alice says she waives her copyright on something and Bob uses it, the law may or may not protect Bob if Alice turns around and sues him anyway. To use an extreme analogy, it's impossible to give legally valid permission for someone else to murder you. Another part of the problem, apparently, is that the "public domain" isn't a legally recognized entity; it's just the term we use to describe absence of copyright. The law places copyright on your work automatically and it might be impossible, as with the murder example, for your declaration to stop the law from doing so.)

Hence, so-called "public domain–equivalent licensing" is used as a workaround. You can see this in the Wikipedia template that users use to place their own photos and such into the public domain: "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant any entity the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." Creative Commons also has two lengthier documents meant to achieve essentially the same thing, although their Attribution license is nearly equivalent in practice.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[xigxag]

but realistically its hard to see the rights to the Star Wars music for instance reverting to the individual orchestra after 35 years

Because the statute in question explicitly exempts works for hire. Which is why the GP's point is immaterial -- this orchestra is performing a work for hire, and the copyright holding company's charter explicitly releases the work into the public domain, which according to Stanford is ok. Of course they could be wrong but I trust Stanford more than I trust phiz187.

Re:This won't be in the public domain

[magus_melchior]

Translation: There is no such thing as "public domain by default" in US copyright law* or Berne Convention signatory countries, because copyright law exists primarily to enrich the financiers of creative works (despite the text of the Constitution).

The best case scenario is if MusOpen got the performers to agree to license the recording under Creative Commons (or similar permissive licensing), but everyone will have to be on board, because a performer or their family can invalidate the license for everyone.

* The primary exception to this rule is government works, which are by default public domain. So a possible solution to this problem is to have the US government commission the work-- but I highly doubt the fiscal hawks will ever sign on to it. Never mind that the investment will be in the millions, compared to portions of the budget worth billions that fiscal hawks regularly ignore.

Re:Let the computer play it

[sirrunsalot]

Not too familiar with classical music, are we? It's okay. I'd probably post as AC too if that's all I had to contribute to the discussion.

And they are hard to make sound good

[Sycraft-fu]

I play around with sampled music all the time because it is a lot of fun, and I CAN'T afford to hire out an orchestra just to goof around. If you want to check it out go to soundsonline.com, they are the samples I like. Very realistic. You can do some amazingly realistic performances with them too... But it is a real pain. To do so you have to spend a lot of time programming (MIDI programming, not computer programming). It requires a lot of adjusting what sample is used, the various data (modulation, expression, etc) sent to the sampler and so on. So you probably can make something that sounds convincingly real, if you spend a lot of time.

However with a musician, you just tell them what you want and they give it to you. You can say "Make it sadder," or "I need this part to be light, this part to be heavy." You can be vague and use emotional terms, and they can handle that and give you what you want.

So unless you are really skilled with your sequencer and have tons of time on your hands, you aren't going to get a highly realistic sound. I sure can't. I can get it pretty realistic, which is all I want for fooling around, but I could have something sound much better and much more like I want just by giving it to an orchestra along with some instructions. As it stands I can spend an hour choosing string samples and mixing them to try and get the sound I want, where a real strings section would take 5 minutes and get it right on.

Re:And they are hard to make sound good

[Mike610544]

As it stands I can spend an hour choosing string samples and mixing them to try and get the sound I want, where a real strings section would take 5 minutes and get it right on.

It's not just the time/effort. The members of a good orchestra have devoted their lives to mastering their instruments. They know the context of the piece being played. They will imbue their performance with some level of emotion. Computers can't do that.

MIDI orchestrations can be made to sound incredibly realistic. Some of the LA Scoring Strings demos are amazing, but it's an incredibly realistic simulation of soulless robots playing stringed instruments.

Re:And they are hard to make sound good

[Tablizer]

One can also devote their life to mastering electronic instruments and emulators, I would point out. Now I agree that one may not be able to specialize in a given instrument and it's potential expressions. Obviously the more time, skill, and effort you can throw at a performance, real or electronic, the better it can potentially become. It's a matter of weighing the trade-offs. Do you want to pay extra for mega-experts?

Music is still soundwaves

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

No matter how much you extol the virtues of a human instrumentalist, music is soundwaves, and soundwaves can be reproduced. I see no reason why a sufficiently complete algorithm and a quality sound system couldn't, in theory, manage to reproduce the effect of a human instrumentalist, to such an extent that the most discerning audiophiles could not tell the difference. Granted, we are not there yet, but to say "synthesizer technology [is] still a cold, digital reproduction of an instrument no matter how good the technology gets" is clearly unfounded.

Re:Music is still soundwaves

[fbjon]

"We are not there yet" when it comes to AI as well.

The difficulty is in producing the algorithm, not in its possible existence. In fact, the best algorithm we know of is a distributed system with a complex neural network in each node that can asynchronously produce a part of the sound, but keeps timing right using a simple message passing protocol.

Not to be too sarcastic, but it's called 'hiring an orchestra'. At the moment that gives you the most bang for the buck, and I don't expect the situation to progress any more quickly than AI or general purpose robots. That's not to say such progress wouldn't be exiting to this geek's mind, but I don't quite see the point of explicitly doing things the hard way when there's a ton of highly skilled musicians out there.

Anyway, the words "no matter how" are clearly too strong, but I'd say you can tack on "for the foreseeable future" at the end.

Re:Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra free 10 symphonie

[Kjella]

Hey, I remember those and I got them. Unfortunately they were not licensed under any form of CC or public domain, they were simply limited free-as-in-beer downloads so once they shut down the source, no one could legally distribute them. The promise here is that these works will be released into the public domain, assuming the paperwork is done correctly that can't be undone.

flamebait is right, not so velvet, though

[Anonymous Coward]

flamebait is right, not so velvet, though. Where do you read that hurting the RIAA trumps enriching the culture? It's not there in the OP at all. I suppose "make hay while the sun shines", mind.

No, what is eminently possible (nay, plausible) in a non-RIAA-controlled-mindset like yours, are several options

1) this hurt the RIAA is a BONUS to the release of the culture (which was already enriched by the works some decades ago) where RIAA are trying to kill it off by extending copyrights beyond any hope of the original recording remaining extant

2) the RIAA themselves are hurting the ability of enriching the culture therefore their destruction IS HELPING enrich the culture

But NOWHERE does the OP say that hurting the RIAA trumps enrichment of the culture.

NO.

WHERE.

Re:flamebait is right, not so velvet, though

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I must have hit a nerve AC, since your point could have been made in one line without the bile, and without the attention-seeking ad-hominem headline. Look, if it really is, to you, making hay while the sun shines, then I have no beef with you. I'm not saying you can't love art and hate the RIAA. That would be just stupid ;-).

What I did notice about the OP was that his endorsement of this program began with putting the screws to the RIAA. The enrichment of culture didn't rate a mention.

Now, as I said, this may have been said in irony in this particular circumstance, but there is some truth behind it. For example, how many people here say RIAA music is crap? Is it because that person has heard a representative sample of the multitude of genres and styles played by RIAA-signed musicians? Anything less than that is just petty politics.

Re:Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra free 10 symphonie

[RDW]

'Unfortunately they were not licensed under any form of CC or public domain, they were simply limited free-as-in-beer downloads so once they shut down the source, no one could legally distribute them.'

It's arguably even sadder that such a limited experiment like this provoked such howls of indignation about 'unfair competition'. Never mind that 1.4 million downloads, probably many of them by people who wouldn't normally listen to this stuff, might in the long term bring in new customers to the music industry (after all, who can be satisfied with just_one_ interpretation of Beethoven?). Imagine if they'd done something really radical like waiving copyright and encouraging torrents! Maybe they were afraid that, rather than being consumed by properly trained middle-aged men listening to the Third Programme on their bakelite wirelesses, Ludwig Van might end up in the hands of Alex and his droogs and encourage them to commit ultraviolence. Or something.

And still more bad assumptions...

[WidescreenFreak]

And yet more assumptions are being made. If thees people are actual professionals, they don't need a lot of time rehearsing as they probably have already played these symphonies many times over. You're also making an assumption that this is going to be a 9-to-5 job, when it might actually be an evening/weekend recording session. The musicians involved might be unemployed or they might housewives/househusbands while the other member of the family brings in the money thus allowing these people to volunteer to do this. There are many people of college age who are ridiculously talented and might be able to give their time during a semester break. These are just some examples.

So, once again unless you actually know these people and can ask every one of them about their financial situation as well as get the specifics of these recording sessions, you're making wild assumptions that could very well have no basis in fact whatsoever.

Re:And still more bad assumptions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't feed the troll anymore, Rheostatik is just promoting the "party line" about "money money money"...

Seems that all of society has been reduced to financial transactions at this point (or at least people like Rheostatik would try to convince you of such).

Vote for Musopen on the Pepsi site!

[sirrunsalot]

He mentions on his profile page that you should also vote for the idea in the Pepsi Refresh Project. Or if not his idea, there are at least a lot of other good causes that stand to get a significant amount of money.

Re:Vote for Musopen on the Pepsi site!

[shutdown -p now]

Please do, but note that this is for U.S. residents only (at least that's what it told me when I tried to log in with my Facebook account).

So are these people

[Anonymous Coward]

So are these people. Yet it seems like their way of doing it is verboten by yourself.

Whether your legally enacted business puts a competitor out of work is irrelevant to whether your business is allowed.

PS. Who died and made you emperor?

Not just for music

[sirrunsalot]

I just saw on the kickstarter site that with 24 hours to go, $10,513 has been donated to the creation of 400 icons for mobile apps. Uh... icons? Seriously? Seriously? I guess it's more like a purchase for this specific one, but it sure puts $20,000 for the creation of public domain works for all of posterity into perspective.

Re:Release as CC

[TaoPhoenix]

In this fragment of the article:

"Donate, and vote on what we should buy with the money. Then we will release that music in lossless quality with a creative commons license. "

'What they are' is different from 'what they say they will do'.

If they are a symphony

[Sycraft-fu]

Then they may well have time for hire. Sure maybe a top symphony is booked solid, but many aren't. Some are attached to universities and most, or all, of the members are faculty. Others are supported through tickets and donations, but are not performing all the time.

If they are hell bent on getting a famous symphony, then they may be SOL. Those groups may have things booked solid and only be for hire at high rates. However others may not be nearly so hard. Goes double if your timing is flexible. You find a time when they aren't doing anything, and hey the extra cash is nice.

Just because it isn't a big name orchestra doesn't mean it isn't good. Acting like there is only a couple symphonies that can make good music is acting like there is only a couple game studios that can make good games.

Same as everyone else

[Roger W Moore]

I agree the life+forever extensions are too much, but most people want to leave something for their heirs and whether that's cash or stocks or property or royalties it's still money.

So why can't they leave cash or stocks or property which they earned from their job writing/composing/performing etc. just like everyone else? I don't see the families of teachers, policemen or nurses etc. continuing to get income for their family after they die because of their job (excluding retirement or life insurance which authors/composers etc could also purchase). You could argue that a work takes X years to make the money which would support a fixed term copyright of X years but dependence on the life of the creator is not justifiable.

Re:Same as everyone else

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the problem is that there is often no single person who is the 'creator' of a recorded work.
If an actor dies, the films they are in don't become public domain.
In music, there are often a number of people in the band who could claim to be a co-creator of the work. There could also be a musical arranger, producer, and engineer who could make the same claim.

Re:Same as everyone else

[corbettw]

I for one would much rather see a fixed term of 50 years, which is transferable to the creator's estate if they die within that term. It ensures that artists have something to leave to their children, but doesn't lock down ideas for an unreasonable amount of time.

Re:Same as everyone else

[Surt]

And creates only a small additional incentive for the heirs to murder the creator!

Re:Same as everyone else

[Surt]

Dependence on the life of the creator removes the murder incentive. Instead of wanting you to die, your heirs want you to live as long as possible to reap the maximum reward from your creations.

It was made in one line. Why not yours?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was made in one line. Why not yours? So, obviously, I hit a nerve there.

What I did notice about your post was that you made up the "factoid" of how hurting the RIAA was what the OP wanted and figured to trump enriching the culture.

That was not his argument, though. This is therefore a STRAWMAN argument.

But it seems like that went over your head.

Probably because you're busy being flamebait.

"Now, as I said, this may have been said in irony in this particular circumstance"

YOU said it.

Not the OP.

Hence "strawman" when you attribute that thought to the OP and then proceed to castigate him/her on it.

THERE is the truth.

Right in front. Not behind.

"For example, how many people here say RIAA music is crap?"

Nobody.

Since RIAA do not make music.

RIAA pushed stuff is tripe and that's been said.

But again you make hay while the sun shines and then build a strawman out of it.

"Is it because that person has heard a representative sample of the multitude of genres and styles played by RIAA-signed musicians?"

Yes.

"Anything less than that is just petty politics."

And merely asserting that this is not the case is merely petty politics.

Physician, heal thyself.

Re:It was made in one line. Why not yours?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Look, your trolling didn't fetch an impassioned response the first time, what makes you think it'll happen this time? Trolling requires some measure of subtlety, otherwise the hook just looks like a hook. I especially love this one:

"Anything less than that is just petty politics."

And merely asserting that this is not the case is merely petty politics.

Overplayed your hand a bit there, huh?

Double the funding by voting

[jensend]

The donations are now nearly up to $25000- that could be doubled if people vote for Musopen in Pepsi's "Refresh Project."

Re:Let the computer play it

[Reziac]

I don't think that's what the AC meant. I took the comment to mean that classical composition turns these mathematical relationships into the passion we hear as music, and that classical includes far more study of those relationships, and of how they work, than does any popular music.

Some of the more-layered electronica approaches it, tho I think is built more by 'playing it by ear' than from being aware of how the mathematical relationships influence its impact on the listener (types of chords, etc.) My grok is that many of the great composers of yesteryear were VERY aware of these mathematics, and of how that affected the composition.

Contributions

[Anonymous Coward]

As a lover of classical music, I'm in for $50. Let's see how much music we can all make together.

Soviet-era copyright-free recordings?

[Derling Whirvish]

I thought there was an extensive library of high-quality copyright-free classical music recorded by Soviet, Eastern-bloc, and Chinese orchestras prior to 1989. None of those countries were Berne Convention signatories at the time and no copyright was ever claimed nor desired since they were "the people's" orchestras performing for the people. If I remember correctly, Muzak used to use Czech orchestral performances as they were copyright-free in the 70s and 80s. Why not use those recordings?

Re:Soviet-era copyright-free recordings?

[adunn]

If you can help locate some, i will have our lawyers look into it Aaron -Musopen

Re:Soviet-era copyright-free recordings?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds great. Please make sure to upload them as .flac files with EAC log and album art and have complete works (as in all movements, not as in 'the album') together in an archive. I've signed up at MusOpen today and voted for them at that pepsi site, but I was rather disappointed to be downloading 128kbps mp3s (absolute minimum is of course 192k VBR) and for a work you need to download all the movements separately, create your own folder, and create a readme.txt with the performer name and whatnot as well.

If bandwidth is an issue, I'm sure lots of people on /. will want to help out. Also look into Bittorrent, people interested in classical music will help seed to spread the music to as many as possible.

Re:Soviet-era copyright-free recordings?

[Anonymous Coward]

And where are those? ;-)

Re:Soviet-era copyright-free recordings?

[Pecisk]

Well, that's simply not true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_copyright

It is very popular myth, but unfortunately not true.

Re:Soviet-era copyright-free recordings?

[Derling Whirvish]

Did you even read your own citation? The Soviet copyrights did not cover performances of classical music which did not themselves carry a copyright. This includes all of the classical music under discussion here.

$3500 to leave a legacy? Definitely a bargain.

[CaptainNerdCave]

While I can't actually afford to part with so much money for something like this, it does appear to be a good way to do something awesome and be remembered for it. As has been mentioned before, this outfit just doesn't have as much exposure and appeal as many of us fans of (true) long-haired music think. Instead of giving money to your college ($3500 probably isn't enough to buy a small plaque), paying for the performance and recording of Rachmaninov's second piano concerto would be truly excellent.

I will be sending them money for a cause that I want to see succeed. Who else is with me?

You are picking a bad instrument

[Sycraft-fu]

For one, you may be stacking things with deliberately hard to play tunes. There are many of those for piano, more than most instruments. So sure, you take something near impossible to play maybe a computer does it better. Doesn't mean anything for most normal tunes.

However the bigger issue is that the piano is less expressive than many other instruments. Due to the way it produces sound, the player has little control over the timbre and quality of the sound. They can control the volume based on key strikes, and can control the sustain with the pedal, but not a whole lot else.

Now compare that to a brasswind (since that's what I used to play). By making changes in your mouth, you can alter the tone significantly. A simple example, which many instruments do that piano can't is vibrato, a genital wavering of the pitch. While such a thing can be sampled, of course, it is hard to have it flow correctly and fit with the music as a real musician can. Then there are all the different tones. I could make my tone more brassy, sweet, mellow, etc just for the asking (and often knew which to use just based on the music). Again, it was changing the prices way I held my mouth, lips, tongue and so on as to shape the sound going in to the instrument. Along those lines were the kinds of note attacks. There are "t" notes, where you interrupt the air flow by using your tongue on the teeth. This is a note with a lot of attack to it. There are "d" notes where you move the tongue back to the bridge, "g" notes where you use the back of the tongue on the back of your mouth, "p" notes where you use your lips instead of tongue, "h" notes were you just use your breath.

There's more, but it gives you an idea of the variation in sound a brasswind can create. Good players do this automatically, and will easily change when asked. Takes a lot to get all the samples for that, and more to make them work.

If you want a demo, show me an orchestral MIDI you like. I'll feed it through a top quality sampler and you can hear the result. It'll sound good, but nobody will think it is real. More work on the MIDI (changing samples, adding expression, etc) would, of course, improve things but that would indeed be a lot of work. Tor really make it sound natural, you'd need someone highly skilled, who'd probably want to be paid. At some point, it'd probably be easier to just hire an orchestra.

The works will be released CC-0

[symbolset]

Creative Commons Zero license:

Using CC0, you can waive all copyrights and related or neighboring rights that you have over your work, such as your moral rights (to the extent waivable), your publicity or privacy rights, rights you have protecting against unfair competition, and database rights and rights protecting the extraction, dissemination and reuse of data.

It's as close as you can get to public domain. This seems to be popular with the donors.

Re:Release as CC

[XanC]

Good point. I posed this question in the comments, and after some brief discussion, the project leader agreed to CC0, which is public domain.

Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?

Re:Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?

[RDW]

'Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?'

This actually raises an interesting point. Obviously the out of copyright material on modern reissues has been digitally remastered for CD from analogue sources. Sometimes (especially for older recordings) extensive audio restoration is also required, a process that can involve a great deal of skill and musical judgment (i.e., you don't just hook up your turntable to Audacity and hit 'record'). Is this sufficient to create a new copyright for the digital version? Perhaps not, but the legal situation is apparently not entirely clear:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9lTosTfacJYJ:www.tknet.co.uk/soundrec.htm
http://www.freeculture.org.uk/copyright/faq#Doyougetanewcopyrightfordigitalremastering.3F

So in a couple of years when the Beatles' recordings will start to come out of copyright if EU law remains the same, would it be OK to rip the recent remasters and put them up on your website, or would you have to go back to the vinyl and do a 'needledrop' transfer..?

Re:Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?

[b4dc0d3r]

I'm not as familiar with British copyright law, having more familiarity with the American version, but from what I understand:

Part of the re-recording is whatever creative skill went into the remastering. I've read a lot about the process on various remastering projects, and there are decisions that have to be made - it's not an automated set-and-forget process. The re-mastering is thus a copyrightable work due to the creative element. It's the same as taking a public domain book or score and adding your own editing. Footnotes, minor corrections, updating spelling to a more modern or cultural usage (such as using Britich vs. American English spellings). These are all creative additions and are protected. Or taking public domain music and re-recording it. The version you produce is new and copyrighted, the public domain does not change status.

That's how Penguin Classics stays in business - public domain work with an introduction and a footnote or two. Now you can't put it on a copier, or scan it, or OCR, or whatever copyright violation you want. But you can go back to the original public domain and do your own editing. Or add zombies or put the characters in outer space if you want.

So you would have to go back to the vinyl. If you had access to the original tracks, you could do a better job cleaning and re-mixing, but good luck getting your hands on those. That's where posession is 9 tenths of the law - the tracks could be public domain but the owners would never lend them out since they can keep the copyright alive by remastering them. A dirty trick, but if you had a piles of piles of money you could maybe buy the tracks.

Re:Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?

[RDW]

'So you would have to go back to the vinyl. If you had access to the original tracks, you could do a better job cleaning and re-mixing, but good luck getting your hands on those. That's where posession is 9 tenths of the law - the tracks could be public domain but the owners would never lend them out since they can keep the copyright alive by remastering them. A dirty trick, but if you had a piles of piles of money you could maybe buy the tracks.'

Oddly enough, the guys doing restoration work from shellac or vinyl sources have often improved on the results of the original labels who presumably have access to the master discs (where they still exist) - e.g. various independent reissues of Schnabel's Beethoven Sonatas transferred from the 78s are more highly regarded than than the official EMI CD set. But perhaps this just comes down to the amount of care taken by (and the talent of) the restoration engineer - see for example my link to the Mark Obert-Thorn page on the Naxos site, above. I'm wondering if the recent Beatles re-masters were partly motivated by the 50 year rule. Perhaps EMI's lawyers have advised they have some chance of defending the copyright of the new 'definitive' versions, though the situation doesn't seem to be clear cut either in the UK or the US. It would certainly be an interesting test case!

This business model is not unique

[jesset77]

For example, how many people here say that the Mafia is a criminal organization? Is it because that person has interviewed a representative sample of the multitude of small business owners and community leaders who the Mafia provides support for? Anything less than that is just petty politics.

Yeah, it's exactly like that. The RIAA and the Mafia are each best known for the outrageous projects that they spearhead that make them the most profit. Be it drug trafficking in Queens, or Justin Beiber on tour. These are the cash cows and the reason these organizations are in business, for better or for worse. So this is how they must be measured.

Trying to dilute their primary reason for being by bringing up numbers of small musicians or business owners who are productive, but pinned under their thumbs is completely disingenuous. Perhaps some of the little guys who have worked out a deal that makes them greater profit than relying completely on their merits will have nice things to say about their overlords, but a majority of musicians (or business owners) would profit more from their work if they were not forced to choose between signing their souls to the marketing/protection oligopoly vs. the competitive wrath of said marketing/protection oligopoly.

Re:This business model is not unique

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The RIAA and the Mafia are each best known for the outrageous projects that they spearhead that make them the most profit. Be it drug trafficking in Queens, or Justin Beiber on tour. These are the cash cows and the reason these organizations are in business, for better or for worse. So this is how they must be measured.

So, for you, the hatred for the RIAA does indeed trump any concerns for our culture. Like I said, I find that profoundly sad.

Trying to dilute their primary reason for being by bringing up numbers of small musicians or business owners who are productive, but pinned under their thumbs is completely disingenuous.

Moreso than some vague, largely unfounded accusations, based on a tenuous analogy? Sorry, but my bullshit detector was spinning out of control!

Re:This business model is not unique

[jesset77]

So, for you, the hatred for the RIAA does indeed trump any concerns for our culture. Like I said, I find that profoundly sad.

I find it absolutely heartbreaking. :3

Re:This business model is not unique

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I'm not seeing any dichotomy here at all, let alone a false one. What are you getting at?

Makes sense...

[KingAlanI]

Competing to see who can provide the best versions of a public domain work/concept makes sense.

Not sure how it works with classical [since I'm not interested, at least not yet, I don't see myself getting involved], but in the still-under-copyright popular music I tend to listen to, there can also be value in having multiple versions because of the variations in performance (as opposed to just seeking the one highest-quality performance) [Similarly, multiple performances by the same artist may also be interesting.]

Interpretation...

[farmkid]

It's a nice -- but musically off the tracks -- idea. The problem is that music, and this is especially true of classical music where a single work can be recorded by scores of artists, is not just a matter of mechanically reproducing sound from notation; it's a matter of interpretation.

If this project succeeds in hiring excellent musicians, and if the resulting recordings bring rave reviews, that means that _one_ recording of, say, Beethoven's Ninth is open sourced, but it has no effect on the legitimate desire for other alternate performances. Yes, it does make one recording available to those who don't want to pay, though it does little to free the intellectual content of the work itself, because that intellectual content is derived from the original composer _and_ each interpreter.

Worse, if they produce something that is artistically uninteresting, even while a 'faithful' representation of the score, they've accomplished little.

Re:Interpretation...

[sirrunsalot]

I have similar doubts, but when it comes down to it I'm more than willing to pitch in a few bucks and see what comes out of it. Some performances derive value from their virtuosity, some from their idiosyncrasies, and I think this could have a great deal of value in its own way even if it doesn't stand out of the crowd. On top of that, I think it's a great funding model. It's a lot more inspiring to contribute to the creation of something than it is to buy a CD of a performer who's been dead for thirty years.

Re:Interpretation...

[pxc]

Any interpretation of a particular written piece of music will have a lot in common. Namely, the notes, but presumably a lot more. And having access to even one interpretation of a piece certainly seems better than having access to only one.

This project is also great public example of the greater free culture movement. Supporting it, and publicizing it, raises awareness of the concept and, I think, encourages other performers to consider contributing their own recordings to Openmus and other projects.

Re:Interpretation...

[shutdown -p now]

If this project succeeds in hiring excellent musicians, and if the resulting recordings bring rave reviews, that means that _one_ recording of, say, Beethoven's Ninth is open sourced, but it has no effect on the legitimate desire for other alternate performances.

For those who want alternate performances, they would probably go seem live, anyway. In which case paying every time is perfectly sensible.

For the rest of us... I think that having all those pieces on Wikipedia alone justifies this project.

No Baroque?

[Tablizer]

Recency bigots!

Re:No Baroque?

[adunn]

Who says no baroque! Donors can vote

Re:No Baroque?

[moonbender]

+1 Bizarrely unique combination of sentences

It's noble, but...

[Lew Perin]

Underlying almost all the talk on /. about this project there seems to be the assumption that one reasonably competent performance of a classical piece is equivalent to any other adequate performance. Sorry, but most lovers of classical music would violently disagree with that idea. I for one love some performances of a given piece and detest others.

Note that I'm talking about performances, not the sonic fidelity of recordings, which is a much easier thing to get right. In fact, one way of looking at this is that there is no one right way to perform a classical piece.

So when I think of this project, I can't help thinking there's not a high probability that their recording of, say, a Beethoven symphony will turn out to be one that I want to live with. Sorry if that sounds snobbish - that's really the way it is with classical music.

In fact there's a whole newsgroup devoted to rating various performances and recordings of classical works and proving that other posters are idiots. Sound like Slashdot? See nntp://rec.music.classical.recordings.

Re:It's noble, but...

[adunn]

Yes but Im not asking you to compare champagnes, I'm asking to produce something we can all drink for free :)

Accusations of plagiarism

[tepples]

It's a free world, if someone wants to restrict their work, they should have the right. If you don't like their system, start creating things and put it under some type of free license.

Creating works and putting them under a license for free cultural works stops working once the incumbent publishers of non-free works cry plagiarism. George Harrison got sued for this and lost.

If this were a typical commercial work...

[symbolset]

If this were a typical commercial work, then you might be right. I think we can all agree this is not a typical commercial work. I'll go ahead and ask to project manager to ensure that all the artists who want credit get it in the canonical implementation. Obviously the license doesn't ensure that successive copies will continue to attribute, but many will as it's the Right Thing To Do.

Amateurs

[symbolset]

BTW, the premise is that the project manager will hire professional orchestras to perform the works, not amateurs. I know it's difficult to imagine an American professional orchestra agreeing to perform a single work for a measly $11,000 - or even renting a hall for that, let alone all of them, but not everybody lives in the US.

They're up to $31K. In some parts of the world that's Real Money.

Let me relay a story. I know a guy who was part of the Russian space program. He's a thermal engineer I met working in a fortune 500 company, one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. He related to me a story about how salaries were not forthcoming for many years, yet they were expected to do their jobs. They took up a collection of what they could scrounge, and sold what they could to buy a chainsaw and some axes. These aerospace engineers then went into the countryside and sold their services as homebuilders building log cabins to the elites for cash. They built good cabins with the saw and the axes, sound homes a man can be proud of. Fine Russian country houses. They then brought back the cash and used it to feed themselves, to buy instruments and equipment, and so continued the Russian space program on their own production, because that was their job. They raised chickens and did other things too, but some of the Russian space program was funded by their space engineers building log cabins in the woods.

When the guy says he can find an orchestra in Eastern Europe to perform all of the classical works of Beethoven, Bach and Brahms for $11k, I believe him. I figure most of these artists play private venues of patrons of the arts in order to fund their public venues anyway. We need not desparage their art because they're poor. Poor people can make good art as well as rich people can make poor art. In addition to granting the entire world unrestricted use of these presentations of timeless classics to have and keep and play forever however they will, the money will probably save some troubled orchestra from closing, at least for a year or three. So it's well spent thrice over.

It's an interesting idea, but...

[NeverWorker1]

I really can't see much use for this. I mean, it would be nice to have some of the great treasures of western culture available to all without being restricted by copyrights, but there's so much more to performing a symphony, especially a great one, than just playing a C-sharp when the sheet music says so. Interpretive choices and abilities are what really make the music great, and I just can't see a budget pick-up orchestra led by a rent-a-conductor doing a good job. If they were capable of such, they'd be charging a lot more. On top of that, even if there is one open-license performance, and even if somehow turns out to be a good performance, so what? That won't alleviate the need to buy others. This is one of the great things about classical music--each interpreter adds his personal stamp to the work, and performances can differ wildly (compare Glenn Gould's 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations to see what I mean). The major benefit this will provide will be for people who need to use a Beethoven symphony in some other work, for example a documentary or the like, but that's about it. I know there are those (perhaps many) here who will argue that something is better than nothing. I disagree. Who wants to listen to a boring, lifeless rendition of a great masterpiece (something sadly common enough with professional orchestras)? Even for education, I can't see this having a great use. Boring children with mediocre performances can only have one outcome: that they won't care. In short, I would suggest that those behind this project are doing it more out of a political motivation (one that I happen to share) than out of a true understanding of or appreciation for classical music. This error (and there really is nothing else one can call it) of conflating a performance of a symphony with the symphony itself or even assuming all interpretations are equal is just so fundamental that this whole exercise strikes me as a waste of money.

Re:It's an interesting idea, but...

[Vintermann]

Interpretive choices and abilities are what really make the music great, and I just can't see a budget pick-up orchestra led by a rent-a-conductor doing a good job.

The project initiator did a listening test. Most people couldn't tell any difference. I could, I noticed that the first recording had better sound quality and a nice woodwind character that I like. The second had slighly poorer audio quality, but if you listened carefully you could hear the conductors random sharp intakes of breath and grunting. I figured that had to be the less-known orchestra, for what serious professionals would have done that?

I was wrong. The last recording was by a very famous conductor conducting the LSO.

I should have known, really. Celebrities are the only ones that get away with such BS. In my defense, the majority agreed with me that the first recording was better. (Prague philharmonic. I've heard them live before, and they are fantastic. Especially the woodwind. They're still a low-cost/little known orchestra)

Classical musicians are struggling to distinguish themselves from hordes of competitors. That goes for conductors, instrumentalists and singers. 19 times out of 20 what they do to set themselves apart makes the result worse, and the record-buying public are lousy at finding that one who deviates in a neutral or positive way.

Why not both?

[LambdaWolf]

First off, I agree that music played (competently) on real instruments is going to be better than synthesized music, in all but a few very exceptional cases.

However—and stop me if I'm being naive—isn't it much cheaper and faster to arrange a MIDI "performance" of a given piece than to record a live one, and wouldn't it be good to exploit that to make public-domain music available where a live recording is infeasible? A comprehensive public-domain library of classical music, even in the form of inferior synthetic renderings, would be of great value. If it's possible for one guy with a computer and some sheet music to contribute to such a thing (and that's a legitimate "if"; I'm not a musician and I'm just guessing about how hard it would be), don't we want that while we're waiting for really good public-domain recordings?

Musopen streaming radio

[LambdaWolf]

I recommend checking out the website of Musopen, the parent project, where they host all their existing public-domain performances. (As TFS says, they're currently working on recording symphonies; they already have many smaller-scale pieces like concertos and sonatas.) In particular, I'm really liking their streaming radio. You want an Internet radio station (1) to have access to a large selection of good music and (2) not to have excessive ads, a subscription fee, or some ridiculous DRM or custom client software. Every Internet radio station I've tried fails on at least one of these criteria: the amateur ones on #1 and commercial on #2 (and often #1 also). But all big library of uncopyrighted music seems to allow Musopen to achieve both. As long as you like classical music, it's basically perfect.

4'33"

[ctrl-alt-canc]

If John Cage's copyright were expired now, they could have started their music collection with a much, much smaller budget...

You care if/when you save for your heirs

[Anonymous Coward]

You care if/when you save for your heirs. Just like every other financial decision.

Car mechanics don't get royalties on getting you a working car. Even though you need it for your employment.

So why should there be copyright for 50 years even?

After 5 years 99% of the works have made 90% or more of the profit they will take under copyright.

If someone is willing to wait FIVE YEARS for your stuff, they weren't really a customer.

So five years (ten I could be convinced of) but software is different where 2 years after end of life the copyright dies, and all copyrighted works must have a transformative format available, so source code, plaintext crypts for eBooks/DVDs/etc.

Software is different since the code can remain utile and worthy of protection as long as the customers are able to realise the benefit. As soon as they can't copyright should end so that the customer can find another source for support. But for Big Iron code, where the code could be used and supported for 20, 40, 50 years or more, removing copyright part way through is unfair.

Re:You care if/when you save for your heirs

[Surt]

Yep, exactly true. This is precisely why no one ever buys Moby Dick anymore ... there just aren't any customers for it after 5 years.

That was a very impassioned response

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a very impassioned response.

The OP didn't say that hurting the RIAA trumped enriching the culture. Hurting RIAA doesn't stop the culture being enriched so is a strawman.

Hence you are flamebait, but not velveteen.

Re:That was a very impassioned response

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

That was a very impassioned response.

Whatever you say. ;-)

I personally don't mind trolls. They generally don't affect me greatly one way or another. They're more or less an opportunity to try out insults and general derogatory witticisms without feeling sorry for the recipient. After all, the character a troll creates is designed to be hated and reviled. I've trolled myself on occasion; I find a simple joy in watching others tear my posts to shreds.

I guess that's why they say, "Don't feed the trolls", but I don't see why we can't have a little bit of trolling here and there to spice up discussions. Hell, it's sometimes nice to have your viewpoint challenged in novel ways, even if the person on the other end doesn't believe in what they say. With all the genuinely stupid opinions out there, I'd even say the ruse is a little bit comforting.

So, if you want to keep it up, be my guest, but since I'm not biting in any meaningful way, I'm wondering what's keeping you coming back?

Oh, please

[professorguy]

They will imbue their performance with some level of emotion. Computers can't do that.

Not true. If there is some characteristic of the music that you can hear, then it is a modification of the pressure wave that reaches your ear. If it's a matter of changing the waveform, then computers absolutely CAN do it.

I admit that it would take a lot of research to discover what we perceive as "emotion" in the music, but if it's there then it can be emulated. However, let's admit right out of the gate that if you played Piece A to an audiophile and told him it was humans, then Piece A again and told him it was machines, guess which one he'll hear the "emotion" in!

Would kill for a 75 minute 9th

[professorguy]

No modern orchestra is going to let the 9th stretch into a second hour. Too bad, because I'd love to hear the 9th at a 75 minute clip. Most versions I've heard sound as if the conductor has to go to the bathroom.

And don't even get me started on the 5th's 1st movement. I'm sure somewhere it is played majestically (say 10 minutes instead of the modern 8). Every recording I've heard since 1980 sounds like the musicians are on a roller coaster and just want off....

in Soviet Russia...

[amoeba1911]

I have no clue what they do in Soviet Russia, but in Fascist America the copyright lasts forever minus a day.