3 Mutopia project - manifesto
7 Random ranting about the Mutopia project, aka "Music To the People."
8 [Not yet finished, so this is unpolished]
12 Music publishers make lots of money out of selling sheet music which
13 is in the public domain (the composers died a long time ago). It is
14 usually prohibited to xerox the sheet music. Publishers have two
15 arguments to justify this policy: the high prices are there to guarantee
16 diversity (keeping lots of stock is expensive), and to encourage new
19 This is bad. Storing a Mudela file takes almost no space at all, and
20 if sheet music could be had for free, then it would be much easier
21 obtain less famous music. These composers have died long ago, and not
22 having their music available only discourages people from
23 experimenting with it. You deserve to get public domain music for
28 For literature, the project Gutenberg has an archive of public domain
29 literary works. For music, this does not exist yet.
31 We also need an archive of public domain sheet music; this is what we
32 call The Mutopia Project.