Can There Be Open Source Music?

Lemeowski writes "Cygnus Solutions co-founder Michael Tiemann takes an in-depth look at whether music can truly ever be open source. Leaning on his personal experiences of trying to convince the market that a company that provided commercial support for free software could be successful, Tiemann argues that similar to how 'the future of software was actually waiting for the fuller participation of users ... so, too, is the future of the art of music.' In his essay, Tiemann makes a case for open source music, from licensing for quality recordings to sheet music with notes from the original composer in an easy-to-reuse format, and he offers ways to get involved in making music open source." Apropos open source music, reader rDouglass adds a link to the Open Goldberg Variations project, last mentioned on Slashdot in 2012.

isn't music already open source?

[roc97007]

It seems to me that music for which a written score exists is open source by definition, the score being the "source code" for the music. I'm not sure what notes from the original composer is supposed to entail these days. Back in the old days composers would include notes on how the music is to be played, but we have audio recordings for that now.

Re:Of course there can.

[rubycodez]

but the media cartel has extended copyright to ridiculous lengths of time to prevent music from becoming part of tradition or belonging to the people. the original reasonable limits had exactly that in mind.

My take

[matthewtift]

I led the effort within Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) to make radio history in 2012 when WPR broadcast the entire Open Goldberg Variations recording on air while simultaneously broadcasting the score on the Web. I think public media would provide a particularly good "home" for this kind of music. I'm fascinated by the idea of "open source music" and I've shared my thoughts about it on my blog, in various posts, such as: Public Music for Public Media: An Introduction [matthewtift.com], Open-Source Music: 10 More Reasons Why It Fits [matthewtift.com], and On the Role of Open-Source Music Scores [matthewtift.com].

You were trying to be funny but... AAYSR

[RobertLTux]

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsMidi [emacswiki.org]