IMSLP Forums

Hello,
I have grown so accustomed to IMSLP for pre-1923 music that it seems very inconvenient now to find (and afford) 20th and 21st c. music.
(Even when you buy 20th-21st c. music, music publishers haven't really gone digital yet, so all you get is a book which then has to be scanned if you like to keep scores on the computer.)
I recently signed up for a Spotify premium subscription (I love it, I'm never going back to trolling YouTube for recordings) and it got me thinking about how great it would be to have a subscription option for copyrighted scores in IMSLP.
If I could pay like $10 a month for access to scores under copyright, knowing that the money was going to the copyright holders and to support IMSLP, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
Might be good exposure for contemporary composers too, whose work might otherwise languish in the back pages of a publisher's catalog.
What do you think?
Heather Reichgott

It's an interesting concept, but I see potential pitfalls. I somehow doubt the publishers would allow IMSLP to let you download the files, only view them (a la ScoreExchange), and at that point, is it a service worth paying for?

The real problem with ScoreExchange is the same as the problem with most sheet music sites on the web: insufficient inventory. ScoreExchange has no Hindemith, no Martinu, no Bernstein. The only Gershwin is a couple of arrangements for middle-school band. The only BEETHOVEN is a couple of easy arrangments of well-known melodies.

But IMSLP's vast library is what makes IMSLP useful. A ScoreExchange-like price scheme with an IMSLP-size library would be just fine.

One imagines the issue is the sheer number of publishers that would need to be on board for it to be feasible,

That would be an issue. I wonder how Spotify handles it. (or maybe they're not telling.)

Spotify can deal with record labels that have far more reach than any music publishing house, and so far it seems that when they've dealt with independent labels, they've been insanely cheap.

Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported in 2009 that record label Junior Racing had only earned NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times.[80] According to an infographic by David McCandless, an independent artist on Spotify would need over four million streams per month to earn US$1,160.[81] However a band can opt out of having their music on Spotify.

Oh, and apparently it's not terribly good for classical music.

jemiller226 wrote:Spotify can deal with record labels that have far more reach than any music publishing house, and so far it seems that when they've dealt with independent labels, they've been insanely cheap.

And Spotify is hardly the first example of this. There's been subscription services for years, and there was even a couple other free services beforehand. Plus, all the 'normal' download stores. So all told, it's a 'normal' thing for recordings -- something which has an audience of orders or magnitude greater too boot -- where it isn't so for sheet music.