Musopen
The Musopen homepage as of March 2012 | |
| Owner | Musopen Inc. |
|---|---|
| Created by | Aaron Dunn |
| URL | www.musopen.org |
| Commercial | Freemium |
Musopen Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Tarzana, California, launched by Aaron Dunn in 2005. It aims to "set music free" by providing music to the public free of charge, without copyright restrictions.
Mission and charitable activities
Musopen provides an online library of public domain music recordings and sheet music. It also raises money to finance classical music recordings which are released into the public domain.
In 2008, Musopen released newly commissioned recordings of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas into the public domain.[2]
In 2010, the site organized a fundraiser via Kickstarter to commission recordings of a larger repertoire,[3] raising a total of $68,359, more than six times their initial target of $11,000.[4] In July 2012, Musopen announced that the editing of the recordings was finished,[5] after which the audio files were uploaded to its website and Archive.org. The final list of music was announced in August 2012.[6]
In September 2013, a new Kickstarter fundraiser was launched by Musopen to record the complete works of Frédéric Chopin. The fundraiser was successful, exceeding the funding goal of $75,000 by over $15,000.[7]
Online music library
Musopen operates under a freemium model, in that some content is available free of charge, but premium downloads require a subscription. Sheet music is available for download to all for free, and recordings can be played using an HTML5 or Flash player. Non-paying users can download music recordings but are restricted to 20 downloads per day; members paying $55 per year receive unlimited downloads of losslessly encoded music; and "benefactors" paying $240 per year may in addition request recordings (as of January 2014).[8]
See also
References
- ^ "Musopen.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
- ^ "Musopen puts classical recordings, scores in public domain". Ars Technica. 22 May 2008.
- ^ "Orchestra To Turn Copyright Free Classical Scores Into Copyright Free Music". Slashdot. 12 September 2010.
- ^ Dunn, Aaron. "Musopen: Record and release free music without copyrights". Kickstarter.
- ^ Dunn, Aaron (13 July 2012). "Done!". Kickstarter.
- ^ Dunn, Aaron (15 August 2012). "Done and Done". Kickstarter.
- ^ "Set Chopin Free". Aaron Dunn/Kickstarter. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
- ^ Musopen Inc. "Sign Up". Retrieved 1 Jan 2014. (archived)
External links
- Musopen Homepage
- Musopen Kickstarter-funded recordings on Archive.org: In MP3 format and as multi-track high quality WAV files (not suitable for end users)