IMSLP Forums

Hi there. Just on NKoda and I keep seeing scores that shouldn't be on there. Faber Music on NKoda are really greedy, hiding Public Domain scores behind a paywall. Nkoda is a good service for stuff still in copyright, but not for 100 year old songs clearly under public domain. I'll give you some examples.

A Blooming Ballad by Ernest Hastings and Astley Weaver. Hastings died in 1940, and Astley died in 1933. Public domain worldwide.
Absolutely Wrong by Tom Clare and Fred Chester. Tom Clare died in 1946, and Fred Chester not long after. Probably Public Domain worldwide.
Ask Me No More by Tennyson and Lawrence Hanray. Hanray died in 1947, and Tennyson in 1892. Public Domain worldwide.
I Can't Find a Place for That by Harold Montague and Ralph Roberts. This one is in a grey area. Montague died in 1932, but don't know when Roberts did.

I emailed them about this about this and got this response:

"Dear Sir,

Thank you for your email and interest in our publishing.

Faber Music invests hundreds of thousands of pounds each year to create new content for our printed and digital music publications so that our customers can access a wealth of diverse repertoire. Each piece selected is an investment – we pay researchers, arrangers, engravers and editors to ensure each of our scores is top quality. It is important that we recoup this investment, or we would go out of business. The graphic rights in each score are owned by Faber Music and are not in the public domain. You are absolutely right that public domain works are widely available via IMSPL but, for the reasons outlined above, we do not supply to this channel.

All the material we publish on Nkoda is made available to users for a free 1-month trial period and they can then decide whether or not to subscribe to the service thereafter.

I hope this is helpful.

Best wishes"

This doesn't make sense for several reasons. For one, a few public domain pieces being released for free isn't going to make them go out of business. Especially since the wealth of their income comes from other places. Auto making the file look nice, and other things doesn't mean it's your copyright. You can't claim the Mona Lisa's yours when you've fixed up a picture of it. At least the email was in good faith. It's no way the fault of the workers, just the greedy higher-ups.

I just wanted to let everyone know about this, as I don't think it's right at all.

Thank you everyone, and stay safe.

-Ross

Hi everyone again. Before anyone panicks over A Blooming Ballad on IMSLP. I just want to explain:

It's not a reupload on what's on NKoda, I took that and compiled it into Sibelius, therefore it's nothing to do with graphic rights on making the file look nice. It's not the NKoda file, it's something completely different I made from it. It's now strictly musical rights, and since it's in public domain, it's safe. The graphic rights technically belongs to me, but I've marked it as CC 4.0, so have fun with it.

I have to say Nkoda does a damn good job with making it so you can't take pictures. Snipping Tool, Bandicam, Print Screen all return Black screens where Nkoda is. Just a shame that this means PD scores are trapped on there.

-Ross

Watching https://www.nkoda.com/work/A-Blooming-Ballad it seems there is a public domain cover but the score is retypeset! See their sample. AFAIK it is a derivative work in US.

It's the original score just cleaned up. They haven't add anything or created anything new.

-Ross