The Project to Get All Classical Music in the Public Domain
Saturday, September 4, 2010 at 10:18 AM September 4, 2010
by Andrew A. Anissi
While most classical music, having been written prior to 1923, is in the public domain, the recordings of such music are generally NOT in the public domain. As they embody the more recent performance of orchestras, the recordings are mostly protected under copyright. That means that for an artist to use a recording of Mozart or Wagner in their film, or to use samples of it in their music, they have to contact the record label controlling the rights to the recordings and pay whatever license fee is demanded.
To solve this problem, a company called Musopen is assembling a database of public domain recordings of all classical music. Some of the public domain recordings already exist, such as recordings made by United States marching bands. For other works, Musopen is raising money to hire a band to record the classic music, just so that they could then release the music into the public domain and make it available for copying, distribution, public performance, and making derivative works from it, all for free.
