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Project To Turn Classical Scores Into Copyright-Free Music Completed

Posted by samzenpus on from the music-of-the-masses dept.

yourlord writes "Just under two years ago Musopen launched a Kickstarter campaign covered here on Slashdot. Today that project is complete with the release of a large amount of classical recordings into the public domain. This brings an extensive collection of high quality classical music into the public domain. The project music is hosted on the Musopen site, and on archive.org."

7 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. It was me! by garglebutt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I invested in this. Great idea to set music free. Enjoy the downloads.

    --
    Do anything, anywhere, anytime.
    1. Re:It was me! by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think the main reason he's doing it is because Microsoft became really boring.

      Operating Systems? Meh. Office? Meh.

      What, in the world of pure software, is going to make a real difference in peoples lives (not just a marginal difference)? Or a real difference to his bank balance?

      if I was even 1 / 10,000th as rich as Bill Gates (a respectable $6,000,000 dollars) I wouldn't be wasting my time trying to gild my corporate cage a bit more ; I'd be working on problems that interest me.

    2. Re:It was me! by chill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      On the Internet, everyone may not know you're a dog but by the tone of your comments they can be damn certain you're a douchebag.

      Don't put words in my mouth. The reason I payed the $50 was to get access to the whole lot as lossless. I'm converting them from AAC to Ogg-FLAC with proper tags and will bundle them as a torrent. Pirate Bay is one of many places I hope to see them.

      That *IS* the point of them being public domain, after all. And the entire point of this project was to share quality music.

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  2. Nicely done! by symbolset · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Fantastic. Now let's do it again until more classical works are liberated. And visit their "donate" button.

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    Help stamp out iliturcy.
    1. Re:Nicely done! by Swistak · · Score: 5, Interesting

      wav is not only losless format. Files are distrubuted also in m4f and flac ( http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7536456/2012_Musopen_Kickstarter_Project_%5BFLAC%5D ) Quality of recordings done by kickstarter campaign is excellent. And there was poll amongst backers what to do with money. I as one of backers (overwheliming majority) decided we want to have more music with good quality, then one or two tracks with perfect quality. If you want perfect recording from best orchestra in the world, go and buy it on dvd.

  3. Re:There's Sheet Music, and Sheet Music by dbc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    hmmm.... I found a page for sheet music listed by composer, and the search function will hit on composer names.

    As to editions, my daughter plays violin, so yeah, I understand the edition issue -- editing is huge with string instruments because the editor usually puts in bowings and sometimes suggested fingerings. But in the case of one Pablo de Sarasate piece that I looked up, it looked like the sheet music was a scan of an out-of-copyright edition from a prominent 19th Century German publisher. So the edition question probably hangs on what they managed to find where the copyright hasn't been kept up. Anyway, that's my one data point, so this being slashdot and all, one data point seems more than sufficient to jump to a conclusion. Excessive, even.

    Aside about editions: my daughter is currently studying the Bach sonatas and partitas for violin -- the edition our teacher recommended has both edited music in modern (OK, 80 or so year old) engraving and a facsimile of the original manuscript. It is interesting to look at the differences -- the original was very spare in terms of even the most basic articulations. I wonder if the Musopen project will be scanning facsimiles? For serious students being able to compare editions not only to each other but to the original manuscript is useful and sometimes important.

  4. Thanks from Musopen by aarondunn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    To everyone posting here, thank you all for the donations and thoughts. It was a long and challenging project but I am very proud of the end result. I'm considering a second project, if anyone is interested in hearing about it in the next couple of weeks, please make sure to follow us on Twitter/FB/our blog etc: https://twitter.com/ajdunn83 or /musopen or our blog at blog.musopen.org Thanks again, Aaron Dunn Musopen.org