THE FSM LICENSE »»»»»»»»»

About the Free Sheet Music License

The Free Sheet Music License arose out of my efforts to find a way to give away copies of music that I have written, while still retaining certain rights. I searched the Internet for "free sheet music"; I found virtually nothing about licensing. Although there are composers with sites where you can download scores for their compositions, none of them seems to have considered the legal aspects of their distribution method. In order to address my concerns, I wrote the FSM. It borrows certain ideas from the GNU General Public License, the Open Content license, and the Free Music Philosophy. Here's the text of the license (version 1.0):

Copyright © 2000 <Your Name Here>. This work may be freely copied, performed, and recorded subject to the following terms and conditions:

  1. Any copies or recordings you make must be distributed under the terms of this license. In addition, all copies or recordings must include a copy of this license.
  2. You may make copies of this work and distribute such copies for non-commercial use provided you do not make substantial modifications to this work. ‘Substantial modifications’ for the purposes of this license are defined as changes to the musical content of this work, and does not include formatting or minor editing (e.g. transposition).
  3. You may not distribute this work in standard (paper) book form for commercial purposes without the written permission of the author.
  4. You may not distribute recordings of this work in any form for commercial purposes without the written permission of the author.
  5. You may freely perform this work provided no charge is made for such performance. You may charge for performances of this work, provided that works distributed under this license do not constitute the majority of the works performed.
  6. You may freely make recordings of performances of this work for non-commercial use.
  7. You may perform previously-made recordings of this work for non-commercial use, subject to the same conditions as live performances (Condition 5).

Any use not expressly covered under this license is forbidden without written permission of the author.

The license is intended to cover the major issues associated with distribution of printed/online scores (coping the score, performing the score, recording performances, copying recorded performances, and publicly performing recordings). 

If you wish, you may use this license on your own compositions; the only restriction is that if you wish to use a modified version of the license you must state, "This license is derived from the Free Sheet Music License, version x.", or words to that effect.

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Copyright © 2000 Andy Clifton