Orchestra To Turn Copyright-Free Classical Scores Into Copyright-Free Music

destinyland writes "An online music site has raised over $13,000 to hire a full orchestra to record royalty-free classical music. ('"Although the actual symphonies are long out of copyright, there is separate protection for every individual performance by an orchestra," notes one technology site.') MusOpen has reached their fundraising goal for both the orchestra and a recording facility, and will now record the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky. And because their fundraising deadline doesn't end until Tuesday, they've promised to add additional recordings for every additional $1,000 raised."

Open your wallets

[spikenerd]

Every quality song that is released to the public domain makes a future where it will be slightly more difficult for the RIAA to survive. Is there be a more noble cause anywhere on this planet?

This is very cool

[wwphx]

I've been considering doing a podcast on board/card game design and music is an issue. I know there's lots of Creative Commons music out there, but who has time to go through it? With this, I can find selections of music that I already have and like, download their version, and Robert's your mother's brother.

I'm also impressed by Kickstarter. I didn't know about it until last week and I ?think it's also pretty cool.

Broadway?

[pizzach]

Why aren't they doing what broadway did [slashdot.org]? They can replace the musicians with synthesizers and record MORE music to protect copyrights.

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it's about the performances

[Anonymous Coward]

While I certainly applaud what they're doing, I just wanted to point out that classical music is generally about the quality of the performances themselves. So what orchestra are they hiring? How much practice/exposure to some of these pieces will they have? Will they be sight-reading some of them? It will be nice to have recordings out there that are free of any copyright issues, but it won't mean much if the performances are mediocre or have glaring mistakes (wrong notes, missed entrances, etc). I'm curious if anyone has asked any city/community or college orchestras if they'd be interested in releasing some of their recordings into the public domain.

Re:Open your wallets

[NotQuiteReal]

Not even saving abandoned puppies me thinks.

Thank goodness for Tupperware!

Re:Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra free 10 symphonie

[RDW]

The BBC tried this in the UK with a set of free-as-in-beer Beethoven symphonies. The music industry whined about it and the typically gutless response of the BBC Trust was to promise never to do it again:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23652107-end-this-downloads-ban.do [thisislondon.co.uk]
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/070207-NL-downloads.html [scena.org]

This won't be in the public domain

[phiz187]

Under U.S. law, these commissioned works won't be in the public domain. There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain. Work only enters the public domain upon expiration of the copyright term. (The one way to create a work into the public domain, is that governmental works are not subject to copyright.)

What the project can do is create a contractual license that says that all-comers are granted a perpetual, non-exclusive license. Even then, presumably the resulting works would be works of joint authorship [university...fornia.edu], with copyright residing in all of the authors. And under the reversion provisions [wired.com] of US copyright law, those orchestra members, or their families, could have the licenses terminated after about 30 years.

Re:First

[commodore64_love]

>>>. This means that most of the core classical repertoire is already available in this form, often as very high quality recordings (they knew what they were doing by the 50s!) of great performances.

You answered my question. I thought there was already public domain performances, just as Ed Woods masterpieces (cough) are now public domain. As for the "point" of copyright, it is to give authors a temporary monopoly as incentive to create art that will eventually fall into the possession of all the People & enrich everybody.

It seems some in the US Congress and EU Parliament have forgotten that. Too busy getting bribed by megacorps I guess?

Re:Pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that they will be playing the core canon of classical music that all the musicians will have been learning and playing since they first picked up their instruments, thus rehearsal time will be minimised. Plopping a hired $1000 mic (or three) down on the stage (on stands) may be all that is required, unless anybody else can comment on up-to-date classical recording techniques.

Without reading TFA I would confidently predict that the recordings will be made available in (at least) high quality Ogg Vorbis, lossless CD-quality Flac and some 24/32-bit/96/192Khz format for those who can appreciate such differences. As for 'a process for disseminating' the music, many of us have been using bittorrent for the last decade. Your scenario is not 'unlikely', it is guaranteed.

Re:First

[RDW]

'How in blazes does a *retroactive* copyright extension encourage the creation of the work? Has everybody in power forgotten the whole frapping point of copyright??'

It'll even discourage the creation of better versions of the original work. Right now, companies like Naxos are doing audio restoration jobs on out of copyright recordings that often shame the original label's CD release (if it's even available):

http://www.naxos.com/historical/engineer_thorn.htm [naxos.com]

Re:Open your wallets

[icannotthinkofaname]

Is there be a more noble cause anywhere on this planet?

You mean, I make him better, Humperdinck suffers? Ha ha ha! That is a noble cause!

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Re:Open your wallets

[pronobozo]

I sell about 900 tracks a month. It's not much but it's a nice little bonus check and I am sure it'll grow over time. The value of that money has a lot more meaning to me and I like putting it back into the system of artists, hackerspaces, friends.

I am not NIN. Unfortunatly for me I will never have millions in paid promotion and currently I soley rely on my music being put in youtube videos, podcasts, and tv shows. Search pronobozo on youtube and sort by views, those are the things that have helped me.

I am big on the theme "I like to do it because it's fun" and if it ever became to much like a business for me, i probably wouldn't do it. I share music and it lets me meet more people, more communities, and gets me out to more events.

btw, 6m would be nice.

Re:First

[commodore64_love]

..... a desire by the government to ensure only "approved" books could be printed, and not books or pamphlets that the Crown found objectionable. i.e. It was censorship of free expression of thought. Rightthought could be printed, but wrongthought was not allowed to be.

No wonder Thomas Paine left Britannia, because he was forbidden from printing his works. Ditto many Scottish authors who spoke eloquently in favor of natural rights, but were blocked from doing so after the English Parliament extended its reach into the north.

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Soviet-era copyright-free recordings?

[Derling Whirvish]

I thought there was an extensive library of high-quality copyright-free classical music recorded by Soviet, Eastern-bloc, and Chinese orchestras prior to 1989. None of those countries were Berne Convention signatories at the time and no copyright was ever claimed nor desired since they were "the people's" orchestras performing for the people. If I remember correctly, Muzak used to use Czech orchestral performances as they were copyright-free in the 70s and 80s. Why not use those recordings?

Re:Soviet-era copyright-free recordings?

[adunn]

If you can help locate some, i will have our lawyers look into it Aaron -Musopen

Re:First

[zippthorne]

I don't think the media industry can possibly be sufficiently significant donors to get this kind of thing. The US recording industry's total gross revenues in 2008 were smaller than Microsoft's net profit in that same year.

I think they're donating something other than campaign funds. I think they're donating association. Stroking the egos of politicos by hanging out with them once in a while.

Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?

Re:Yawn . . .

[pxc]

1.) They're planning to hire the London Symphony Orchestra. Would you call them a "pick-up player"?
2.) Many people from Slashdot have donated, more than doubling the amount of money raised since of the time of this article's posting.

... but for those /.ers who want to support the project in a way besides direct donation, there is the PepsiRefresh program, where they can vote [refresheverything.com] for the project to receive $25,000 in funding.

If any /. editors see this, please, please add the PepsiRefresh link to the article summary!

Re:Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?

[RDW]

'Where can I buy a 50 year old CD?'

This actually raises an interesting point. Obviously the out of copyright material on modern reissues has been digitally remastered for CD from analogue sources. Sometimes (especially for older recordings) extensive audio restoration is also required, a process that can involve a great deal of skill and musical judgment (i.e., you don't just hook up your turntable to Audacity and hit 'record'). Is this sufficient to create a new copyright for the digital version? Perhaps not, but the legal situation is apparently not entirely clear:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9lTosTfacJYJ:www.tknet.co.uk/soundrec.htm [googleusercontent.com]
http://www.freeculture.org.uk/copyright/faq#Doyougetanewcopyrightfordigitalremastering.3F [freeculture.org.uk]

So in a couple of years when the Beatles' recordings will start to come out of copyright if EU law remains the same, would it be OK to rip the recent remasters and put them up on your website, or would you have to go back to the vinyl and do a 'needledrop' transfer..?

Re:First

[phaggood]

>I don't think the media industry can possibly be sufficiently significant donor
You sir have an out-sized idea of how little it actually takes to purchase a politician.