IMSLP Forums

The IMSLP main page currently has the description "The free public domain sheet music library". As a we are growing and getting more and more recordings, books, and documents, I think it should be changed to "The free public domain music library", or something along those lines. That way it is more inclusive. What does everyone think?

Changed. Good idea.

I'm wondering if "public domain" still makes sense. Most scores are in fact PD, but I believe that most recordings are not.

Unfortunately, in English there seems to be no good distinction between "free as in free beer" and "free as in free speech", or "gratis" and "libre" as it is sometimes put. Otherwise, "The [free-as-in-free-speech] music library" could have been a good tagline.

Thoughts?

If there was something in English to disambiguate the two terms, it might be a good tag line... but I don't really think the ambiguity of 'libre' and 'gratis' would really cause too much confusion anyway. Right now, I don't really see too much of a point in changing it (or what we would change it to, except for 'free'), since a majority of the material on IMSLP is public domain But, I think the IMSLP welcome:

"Welcome to the Petrucci Music Library! Our goal is to create a virtual library containing all public domain music scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge."

Should possibly be changed along the same lines as my first suggestion. The sentence "public domain music scores" and "scores from composers" should be changed, since we do offer more than scores now. Possibly change it just to 'music', or 'classical music'... whatever would work the best. That way it's more inclusive and precise. Thoughts?

I agree. How about something like this:

""Welcome to the Petrucci Music Library! Our goal is to create a virtual library containing all public domain music, as well as music from composers who are willing to share their work with the world without charge."

While we're at it, are there any other things that should be changed on the Main Page? I was thinking of putting it up as the first "Translation of the Week" soon, and it would be good to make all necessary changes before that.

Leonard,

Yes, I like that. I think it's better that way. Another thing that might be a good idea to change (Perlnerd's idea) is "Featured Scores" to "Featured Music". That way it we have the possibility of including recordings. Especially if there are good quality historic recordings.

Note: The only reason that I personally haven't changed that (because I can, BTW is because I didn't see enough of a response to be worry-free about the change

I still think it's a fair idea, and should probably be done. I don't know why more people didn't end up commenting on that