My intention is to offer downloads of PDF files. My plan was to source from
public domain sources, such as archives of old sheet music, and indeed parts
of Mutopia which are under certain licence.
I'm not sure I understand why I would want to sell printed music - surely,
here, I would not be able to compete with publishers selling similar
material. In selling downloadable PDF files, you are removing this
overhead,
allowing you to reduce prices, and be competitive with other places selling
sheet music. Also, I don't really have the time to print out post much
sheet music, and would not be able to offer the print quality of a
publisher. Unless... are there online services that can print deliver
music?
Lulu.com looks interesting - it would eliminate the need for
hosting/setting
up an online store... but whether the disadvantage of being on a site with
a
large amount of other work is big enough, I'm not sure.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, Chris.
I initially read this thread as a proposal for offering printed versions
of scores for sale. However, on a re-read, I understand that you're
proposing to offer downloads of PDF files instead.
The attraction of Mutopia for me was the creation of an open source
archive of sheet music, that people can download for free, print out,
photocopy, and distribute. Rather like Project Gutenberg, but for music.
If you want to create a rival archive offering pieces for download at a
price, then you are of course free to go ahead. Speaking from the point
of view of someone who's looked after Mutopia for the last seven years, I
think cleaning up Mutopia pieces and organising them for printing would
be a very time consuming task. Entering new pieces is of course even more
time consuming.
From a legal point of view, you will have to be careful what pieces from
Mutopia you use. Many are licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution or
Attribution-ShareAlike license. Neither restricts you from selling works
based on the Mutopia version, but the latter insists that you release
your versions under an identical license (a bit like the GPL).
My positive suggestion would be to create a new website offering high
quality *printed* LilyPond-engraved music for sale based on Mutopia
contributions, still licensed under open source licenses. We did some
experiments with lulu.com a while ago, and the results were very
promising, so that's one possibility. If we work with you on this, and
improvements are fed back to Mutopia, then we'd be happy to have links
from the relevant Mutopia music pages to your store (ie. buy a printed
copy of this music). Of course, you can pick music from Mutopia which is
already reasonably high quality and likely to be popular. If you're
interested, please let me know.
I would personally be very disappointed if someone were to fork
Mutopia.
Chris
--
Chris Sawer - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Mutopia team leader
Free sheet music for all at: http://www.MutopiaProject.org/
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