IMSLP and streaming

[Dave2002]

I wanted some music today, and went to IMSLP - https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

It has been evolving over the years, and is moving towards a modest subscription model. It's not very expensive really.

However, it seems that as well as providing quicker acces to the scores, and supporting the site, that there are also recordings which can be streamed. Some of the pieces on the site may be rather rare/unusual. The site isn't going to replace Qobuz or Spotify, or some of the other streaming sites - as yet I don't know if it even has a really good player interface - but for those who want to explore different/unusual repertoire this may well be a resource worth paying for.

Currently the subscription is $22 per year.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There's a great deal of copyright infringement involved in the uploaded scores. There are warnings posted, but that's not really enough.

[Dave2002]

There's a great deal of copyright infringement involved in the uploaded scores. There are warnings posted, but that's not really enough.

I didn't realise that, though I wondered. My concern was usually related to whether I could legitimately download a score, because of the different rules in different countries

For the most part I'm looking at scores before (say) 1890, though I do appreciate that if a 5 year old wrote a piece in 1890, and lived to be 120 that the copyright might have only just expired. There are additional "problems" due to editorial amendments, which can effectively extend copyright, and I'm guessing that if someone creates a fancy new music font and a text font to go with it, that they could claim copyright even on a 15th Century work if they typeset it using their notes and text fonts.

Copyright is unfortunate - and while it does hopefully give resources (money) to those who create music/texts, it could cause problems which are truly silly.
It has got worse, aided and abetted by the American film corporations (e.g. Disney) which realised that they were going to "lose" revenue on old films, so lobbied to get the period of copyright extended. Even the person overseeing copyright enforcement in the USA thought things had gone too far, a few years ago.

[kea]

There's a great deal of copyright infringement involved in the uploaded scores. There are warnings posted, but that's not really enough.

Copyright law differs from country to country, & in general IMSLP will indicate if something is not accessible in the US or EU. Everything posted is public domain in either Canada & New Zealand (life + 50 years) or the USA (where some works published more than 95 years ago have entered the public domain regardless of the composer's date of death, & some publications from the former Soviet Union that are less than 95 years old that are ineligible for copyright as part of a Cold War era policy of intellectual property lawfare against the USSR).