Wait... Is muse score no longer free???

• Jan 21, 2020 - 16:54

Okay. I wanted to download some music as it has been a while since I have played anything. Anyways, I logged on and found some sheet music. I clicked download then PDF. It said to get a PRO Trial to download the music. I needed to pay? Am i doing something wrong, or is musescore no longer free?


Comments

The MuseScore score editing program is always free. But the score sharing web site MuseScore.com does require a subscription for download of copyrighted music - the copyright owners need to be paid somehow. But for discussions of that website, best to over there.

In reply to by Sebastián Scarano

In the past, musescore.com let people upload and download copyrighted music illegally and just waited until they got threatened with lawsuits and then took the illegal scores down. Eventually the threats became too much to deal with and they decided instead to be legal, and actually pay the copyright owners. That happened a year or so ago, plenty of announcements and discussion of that over there on that site.

In reply to by coherentbass

Please see https://musescore.org/en/faq#faq-20657.
This site (.org) has nothing to do with the executive decisions of that other site.

Then again, I find a decision to honor copyright law (however skewed it may be) and remain operational not a very questionable decision compared to the alternative of being shut down for violating the law(s).

Even more so while at the same time protecting their users from being sued and keeping public domain and original compositions available for free (if the uploader marks them accordingly).

In reply to by jeetee

Indeed, it has been a long held misconception that if you see it on the internet, then it must be free. The reality is that most everything on the internet has some amount of copyright protection. It depends on the creator of the item. People have gotten so used to being able to do whatever they want with what they find.

I have to agree. I wouldn't deny their charging, but all over the internet it seems to say it's free (not just public domain, their app which is public source, etc.). I'd much rather they be up front about it instead of making it be like buying a used car,

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