Set the music free

[sesquipedality]

See, this is why copyright expiration is a good thing. These people will pay professional musicians to create public domain recordings of out of copyright music. And then the music really is free for anyone to enjoy. Doubtless some of the free software nerds at the back will be grumbling at the public domain thing, but I still think it's cool.

Rather than buy a classical CD of a loved piece, consider pledging the same amount of money to have it recorded for everyone.

Here's two I've pledged money for:

ETA 128Mbit MP3 though? I'm unimpressed. I've emailed them to see what's up with that.

ETA2 And a lightning fast response:

"Most of our recordings should be 256 to 320kbps. We don't offer lossless currently because most of our visitors would be really confused if we did, and we try to cater to the general public. You wouldn't believe the number of emails I get just asking how to download, youll notice a pop-up now "Please right click to download".

I do have plans to release FLAC versions, I want to wait until some of our partnerships are announced and we grow our library."

Comments

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

As with all copy-right/public domain stuff, I have deeply mixed feelings about this. I think that what is given away for free is often undervalued, and I obviously have a vested insterest in continued demand for new recordings, for which artists get paid reasonable money. And then I get back to the idea of, well, if nobody ever got paid for anything we'd all have to value everything for its own sake, and I wouldn't even want to be paid for recording in the first place as long as my needs were met, and, y'know, Marx, except that doesn't work and we all know that, and recorded music kills live concerts anyway, and gives us a false impression of what music ought to sound like because you can edit the mistakes out, and it's all so irreconcilable......

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

The nice thing about this is that they're paying professional artists to do the recordings, so it's effective creating work for professional musicians that wasn't there previously.

Consider the analogy with the software industry. The emergence of Linux hasn't stopped Microsoft and Adobe and Sun from being able to make money out of selling software. Obviously the two aren't directly comparable, but music is our cultural heritage. I'm uncomfortable with restricting that.

Recording quality has been fantastic since the mid to late 80s. If the availability of cheaper recordings was going to adversely affect sales of classical music, everyone would already be buying Naxos, and no new music would be being recorded. I see this as being about bringing classical music to a wider audience, some of whom will be a potential market for your future professional recordings, and some of whom, you'd never have reached anyway. On the whole, I think that such things are a positive influence for performers, who are by and large exploited by the record labels anyway. By changing the models by which we monetarise music, we are putting the power back in the hands of the creators.

Of course, inskauldrak and I have this argument from time to time. He works for the Musicians' Union and has very different opinions from me on it.