Buy or Print?

Musicians don't have to run to the music store and buy expensive scores each time they want to learn a new piece or prepare an excerpt for an orchestra audition.  They don't even have to order the score online from Amazon, and pay for shipping and wait 4-10 days until it arrives.

There are a number of websites that offer downloadable music scores for a reasonable price. Sheet Music Direct is one site that allows a user to listen to music, print it and transpose it.

Another website is FreeHand which allows the user to, in addition to downloading and printing, also manipulate and change the tempo, key and instrumentation of the piece to suit a musician's needs.

I browsed the Internet a little longer and discovered many more websites where a user can download music scores, but most of them offered only pop music. Finding a Mozart violin concerto score for download was much more difficult. I found Scribd, a website that allowed users to download music, but there was no option to manipulate or change the score in any way.

Publishing companies, who own the rights to the printed music, are the biggest barrier to publishing scores online. They are afraid to be in the record companies' position having to sue people who break the copyright laws and copy the part. Further, publishing companies won't be bale to charge as much money for their parts sold online, because their customers will shoulder the burden of printing and binding their own scores.

Buying the parts of Mozart's ten celebrated string quartets on the Internet costs at least $40 without shipping. The parts of three Beethoven string quartets published by Henle costs, when ordering online and after a price reduction, $63.96.

Isn't it about time that classical musicians will benefit from modern technology and stop being held by the greed of publishing giants and record companies?