The site, the International Music Score Library Project, has travelled in the footsteps of Google Book Search and Project Gutenberg and grown to become one of the largest sources of scores anywhere. It claims to have 85,000 scores, or parts of works almost 35,000, with several thousand added every month. This is a worrisome pace for traditional music publishers, whose bread and butter comes from renting and sale of scores in expensive editions supported by more recent scholarship. More of a threat to business, the site has raised issues of copyright messy and drawn the ire of publishers established.
The site (imslp.org) is a repository of open source that uses the Wikipedia model and philosophy, "a visual analogue of a normal library," according to the words of its founder, Edward w. Guo, former Conservatory student. Scores of volunteers in scanning or import them from other sources, such as Beethoven House, Museum and Research Institute in Bonn, Germany. Others supervise copyright issues and perform maintenance operations. Quality control — how to capture pages lost — is also left to the public. "It's completely crowd sourced," said Mr. Guo.
The site has recently started adding the recordings. And through a partnership with a freelance musician in Indiana who runs a company publishing, offers a low-cost print-on-demand music, often at a fraction of the cost of standard editions. The prices of the major publishing houses range widely depending on the number of tools in the work or its length. A collection of parts for a Quartet of traditional bows, for example, can run from $ 30 to $ 50.
The score library project has transformed the classical music latest in mat wrestling for conventional information purveyors — newspapers, book publishers, record companies — and the new forces, such as Apple, sellers of e-books, music sharing sites and Mr. Guo, now a 24-year-old Harvard law student.
While a boon for young musicians-garret, struggling financially, the library has caught the attention of the music publishers.
"I don't know if I would call it a threat, but I think it's hurting sales," said And Matthew, a senior manager of promotion at g. Schirmer, New York. "Is that profit that helps us continue to highlight the work of composers more."
Universal Edition, a music publisher based in Europe, where copyright laws tend to be more stringent, threatened a cessation order-and-desist against the site for copyright violations in October 2007. Mr. Guo said he didn't have the time or money to remove all offending scores, so he took down the site completely and sent an emotional farewell. That said, galvanized followers appeal to Universal.
Then he took the initiative. Mr. Guo said Volunteers checked each score — 15,000 at the time — for copyright violations. He founded a company of project Petrucci, to take ownership of the site to remove personal responsibility. (Ottaviano Petrucci was a printer of the Italian Renaissance that has produced some of the first impressions of music with movable type). A disclaimer was made to appear before any score opens, saying that the project does not offer any guarantee that the work is in the public domain and asking users to obey copyright. The site operates from the server in Canada, where the copyright is generally more flexible.
"We cannot know the copyright laws of 200 countries around the world," said Mr. Guo. "It is up to the downloader".
In July 2008 the project was back online. Downloads have increased.
Still there are some complaints, mainly from Europe, said Mr. Guo. "We say that we are not bound by State law," he added, referring to the European Union. "Publishers usually go away". Mr. Guo said that no formal legal challenges were pending.
He shows publishers little sympathy.
"In many cases these publishers are basically always revenue out of composers who have died for a very long time," said Mr. Guo. "The Internet has become the dominant form of communication. Copyright needs to change with it. We want people to have access to this material to promote creativity. Personally I do not feel pity for these publishers. "
Those who "cling to their old business model," he added, will simply fade away.
But publishers point out that users of the site may lose the benefit of some modern editions may be entitled to copyright protection — and therefore not part of the public domain — due to significant changes to the music, such as corrections and editing marks based on years of scholarship on the intention of the composer.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 23, 2011
An article on Tuesday on a website created to make many classical music scores available for free to the public portion of the site name misstated. Is the International Music Score Library Project, not the Internet Music Score Library Project.
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