Choral Public Domain Library

Hi;

I'm wondering. CPDL.org advertizes itself as 'Free Choral Sheet Music', but a not inconsiderable bit of it isn't free. An instance is anything hosted on the website sibeliusmusic.com. (well, maybe not everything, I haven't checked the whole site, but everything contributed by Christopher Shaw which I've checked has required payment)

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a guy making a buck, but then I have to ask what 'free' means when I try to find, for example 'Ill Estoit une Fillete' by Clement Jannequin only to find it hosted on a website requiring payment. Sure, $0.10 isn't much, but it's still more than 'free'. And once that boundary is passed, where is the cutoff to be set? 10c? $1, $2 ... ?

Is there a way to exclude such results, or to have the wiki mark them so that those of us who take CPDL at its word know not to bother going there, or do I have to maintain a list myself of contributors to CPDL.org who aren't actually 'free.'

Perhaps I should consider doing the same, hosting whatever scores I consider adding to CPDL.org and charging for them.

Just asking.

Hi!

I understand your concerns about CPDL linking to paying sites, but that's not exactly the case with SibeliusMusic.com
All scores hosted on that site are indeed offered for free printing. You can hear the music and print on paper as many copies as you want. On a couple of scores, though, you may be required to pay a fee if you decide to buy one of their services: receive a pdf copy by e-mail OR a paper copy by post. I think this is fair. Anyway, I will take your suggestion to the other admins and see what they think of flagging these editions with a special kind of copyright licence ("free for printing only").

In case this is still a concern to anyone - all the notAmos scores posted by me on CPDL are now available free of charge in PDF as well as Scorch format.
Mandy

Mandy,

Many thanks!

Chuck

Carlos wrote: "I understand your concerns about CPDL linking to paying sites, but that's not exactly the case with SibeliusMusic.com
All scores hosted on that site are indeed offered for free printing."

But I think this is inaccurate. Please see the following example:
http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/cgi-bin/sh ... eid=130195

Is printing not disabled unless you pay $8?

To clarify, the printing icon is there, but if you print it, you get only one page with 3 big diagonal Sibeliusmusic.com things across the page in 1" high type.

Vaarky, this is new to me! If they also charge for printing, then what I said above is indeed invalid and we'd need to check it case by case.

Carlos, the text above some scores on Sibelius Music (such as this one) is a fairly clear indicator: "Print this score for free - just click [Print button] below." Compare this page which says "Price: $3.95 Add to your basket". As far as I know, there aren't any links to non-free Sibelius Music pages from CPDL, but if any users find such a link, please let us know.

Thanks Robert, I was about to point out exactly that. Certainly all my scores on CPDL are, and always have been, free to print on SiberliusMusic.
Mandy

Agree that it has to be case-by-case. There are definitely free-to-print scores there, and also not-free-to-print scores there. The site allows the composer to specify on a per-score basis, so the same composer can have some of each.