Trove of music scores free on the Web affects the delicate Notes of Copyright

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.

Rumor says Google rolling out music service with the honeycomb (Appolicious)

Google (GOOG) has its own subscription service, is about to roll out in-app purchases and has a web-based store app for Android: now only need one service selling music and mirroring of Apple (AAPL) will be completed.

Rumor has it and is working on such a service, which will roll out with Android 3.0 honeycomb, the operating system version is specifically geared towards Tablet devices. At least, that is according to Mashable.

The guardian has caught the list like Motorola, mobility (MMI) CEO Sanjay JHA accidentally revealed Google plans for a music service as he was touting Xoom Tablet of his company. Here's the citation: JHA

"If you look at Google Mobile Services [via Android] today, there is a service of video, there is a music service — that is, there will be a music service."

Whoops. While this is not the first we've heard about Google's music service. Honeycomb has a music Google app included with it, and Google has also showed off an online music service without name back in May. There were other committed, too, but the indication is that Android is going to get their own version of iTunes.

Powerful Tablet Xoom Motorola is going to be among the first machines enabled honeycomb and JHA said Google Music (if this is what is called) "will be based on honeycomb," according to The Guardian.

Like the rest of the efforts of Google's online service, Google Music will likely be cloud-based, allowing users to stream or download songs from wherever they are, provided they have access to the Internet. Is the system itself that the online version of the Android market uses to navigate content and applications for Android devices users, whatever they are. Mashable says that the service would offer a Google Music sort of digital locker, which stores your purchases in the cloud to access every time.

But it seems that Google has a long way to go as far as a music service and not on a technological front. The record companies are reluctant to jump in with Google on the whole "digital locker" idea, according to the New York Post, and while Google is trying to get licensing issues clarified, could be a big obstacle going forward. It could stop the whole music service, but may well kill or slow the cloud-based component.

Yet, the assumption is that especially compressed and Android devices in general are going to have access to your music store in the near future--probably not too long after the honeycomb starts to become widely available, starting with Xoom launch later this month.

Plan quickly by reducing the number of key differences between iOS and Google Android seems to make pretty good, though. Provided that the company can convince the music industry to go with the flow, Google will be removing another important point of sale from the line-up of iOS and leveling the field further.

Co-founder of last.FM: "Apple f only ***** over online music subs for iPhone"

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