Donate so Musopen can pay musicians to record and release music to the public domain. Every dollar adds more copyright free music to you, indefinitely Read more
Donate so Musopen can pay musicians to record and release music to the public domain. Every dollar adds more copyright free music to you, indefinitely
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About this project
Musopen is a non-profit archive of copyright free music. This project will use your donations to purchase and release music to the public domain. 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 for a movie soundtrack - yet Beethoven has been dead for 183 years, and his sheet music is no longer copyrighted. There is a lifetime of music legally in the public domain, but it has yet to be recorded and released to the public.
This isn't just a crazy idea: we've done this before using donations from our website, but now we want to tackle something more ambitious.
We want your help to hire the Czech Philharmonic to record and release the rights to: the Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky symphonies; string quartets; sonatas; as much music as we can afford with the money raised.
What can I do?
Donate, and vote on what we should buy with the money. Then we will release that music in lossless quality with a public domain attribution.
Why 10k?
This is enough money to buy all 9 Beethoven symphonies and other significant sets of music such as his violin sonatas.
What about beyond 10k?
Every $1000 buys a Mozart violin sonata, or all of Chopin's mazurkas, ballades, or nocturnes... a little money buys a LOT of music.
Where does the music go afterwards?
Thanks to generous and free hosting from ibiblio, music will remain on our website indefinitely, and we will share it with other organizations: included in Wikipedia articles, added to archive.org, and integrated with OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) laptops.
FAQ
Have a question? If the info above doesn't help, you can ask the project creator directly.
Rewards
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Pledge $10 or more
5 backers
Get early access to the music online before its released publicly
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Pledge $25 or more
2 backers
Get a master copy of the CD before its released to the public
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Pledge $50 or more
9 backers
All the previous + the entire Musopen library on DVD (lossless quality) + a Musopen Pro account for 1 year (normally $45 a year, unlimited downloads, music before its released publicly and more)
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Pledge $100 or more
0 backers
All of the previous + a Musopen t-shirt
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Pledge $250 or more
1 backer
All of the previous + Receive a printed copy of the Musopen music theory textbook + be added to a list of benefactors on Musopen.com + DVD of the music recording and behind the scenes
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Pledge $450 or more
1 backer
All of the previous + a signed copy of a cd by the conductor + pick the piece of music this purchases (separate from the voting system)
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Pledge $1,000 or more
0 backers
All the previous + Be named as a permanent benefactor to a particular piece of music (Beethoven Symphony 5 thanks to a generous donation by:John Doe) + choice of iPod pre-loaded with all the music we record or Shure headphones (high quality music requires a good set of headphones).
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Pledge $7,000 or more
0 backers Limited (3 left of 3)
All the previous + pair of Haydn Vienna Acoustic speakers - among the best speakers to use for classical music http://grab.by/4mL2
Funding period
- (29 days)
