Upcoming changes

[imslp]

First, let me echo Christian's post a while back (viewtopic.php?f=1&p=40301#p40301) - I think Christian's post touched on one of the fundamental reasons for the change. Ultimately, the increased focus on funding is intended to better match IMSLP with the type of society we live in, and which I see as the only way to ensure sustainability in the long run. Yes, a sense of novelty and purpose can push us forward the first few years, but I want to position IMSLP for long term sustainability.

With respect to the non-profit vs. for-profit debate, we did indeed investigate the non-profit route. As Choralia knows, I asked for CPDL's 501(c)(3) paperwork as reference a few months ago. But as I mentioned in one of my e-mail discussions recently, I keep on getting stuck on the question of where funding comes from. Publishers are certainly not going to provide us charitable funding. Many of the great European music libraries exist in large part because of governmental funding for the arts - a level of funding not matched in the United States or Canada to any extent. And, where are the grants? No foundation I know of will give a significantly large grant for maintaining an online score library that has already stuck around for 10 years (and has stirred some legal controversy in the past to boot). Plus, significant grant dollars are not usually given without an agenda or request on the part of the giver, and I do not wish IMSLP to be subject to the whims of a single foundation (or even several foundations) who does not necessarily have IMSLP's best interests at heart (not blaming them - they have their priorities). Not to mention, who is going to spend the time writing all the grants, doing the research and making the contacts?

With respect to alternative revenue sources and whether I've seriously tried searching for them, let me give a bit more backstory. At the very beginning, after IMSLP was resurrected in July 2008, we had a section of each work page dedicated to recordings on Amazon (who remembers those times!?). It was absolutely ugly though it did gave a minimal amount of income. But it kept being an eyesore for me, so after a few years I replaced it with a "Purchase" bar which survives to this day and offers a feature to search Amazon and do price comparisons on books/scores (and looks much nicer). We took a significant revenue hit because of this change - apparently (or so I read), the percentage of your web page covered with Amazon links is directly proportional to the amount of Amazon revenue you generate and the quality of the links matters much less than you'd imagine. But in any case I was happy, because I didn't have to stare at that eyesore of a section on each page. That said, I had to make up the lost revenue somehow, so I tried offering a paid API service, and in conjunction, partnered with mobile app developers to see if maybe we can generate revenue from selling mobile apps (e.g. iClassicalScores that you see in the sidebar, among a few others). No luck, the income was and is really quite underwhelming. Then, after realizing the API would only generate lackluster results, we partnered with Performer's Edition (a reprinting firm) to offer a print-on-demand service on most of the items on IMSLP (which you can find in the gear dropdown menu). The income has gotten better over the years, but is still significantly less than even the API. After that, I thought it may be interesting and gainful to sell Kalmus orchestral scores and parts directly from IMSLP in the Purchase bar in addition to the Amazon stuff. The income at first was absolutely underwhelming, though it has gotten better over the years. It is now our main source of revenue, but frankly that is saying very little. Ironically, with the increased uptake of tablets, the security of this revenue source is in some debate because of IMSLP itself. In any event, after a while I decided to add Barenreiter items to the mix, but I'm not sure we are even breaking even on that (we are required to purchase newly released editions as a condition to being a distributor, and I'm not sure we've managed to sell many of those; the sales otherwise are also quite light). After that I thought maybe we can offer a place in the Purchase bar for mp3 accompaniments - after all, many people would like to have a piano accompaniment while they practice, and surely there would be people lining up to sell mp3 accompaniments, right? Well, apparently not, plus there's SmartMusic. Finally, sometime mid-2015, I figured we can try selling all the Kalmus stuff on Amazon in addition to the Purchase bar. After much preparation I managed to add nearly 150,000 items to Amazon (i.e. one item for each Kalmus part), which increased the number of books on all of Amazon by 0.5% overnight. You'd think we'd be rolling in money by now, but you'd be wrong. We average less than half a dozen sales a day, and usually of the cheapest items (i.e. where we get the lowest margins). The Amazon devs weren't terribly happy at us either - they kept trying to merge our items (apparently they think a Flute 1 part is the same as a Flute 2 part) and we kept fighting back (it does appear, though, that we've mostly won the battle on that front). And, sometime in the midst of all of this, I decided to try being more aggressive in asking for donations. As some of you may (or may not) have noticed, in addition to the "Donate" button in the sidebar, you will get a prompt to donate once for every 50 downloads you make. Very little happened. I don't think most people even notice the popup and go straight for the "X" in the upper right corner.

With respect to an annoucement and discussion with the general public prior to the rollout, I wanted to avoid panic and rumours before people got a chance to actually see what it is and realize that it is optional and not a "paywall" or the typical membership scheme. I did solicit feedback early December in the administrator forum (when the membership project was just starting), and had gotten generally positive feedback which eased my concerns. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it was what it was.

[Bangles]

IMSLP is one of my favorite music websites. It is one of the ones I recommend most to students and fellow musicians. It is wonderful for score study during music school and beyond, and helps me research works I want to play. It is often a gateway to purchases of sheet music "on pretty paper" in a size I can read better. One of the things I love most about IMSLP is that it represents to me the generous spirit of Edward and other librarians (who may or may not be professional librarians). Many of the pieces I have looked for were uploaded by somebody named Generoso, who I imagined was working away at some music library in Italy, to help all us strangers who also love music. Building something useful and beautiful for the common good is truly a noble project, and I thank all of you who have taken part in building IMSLP.

The Internet is a rather anonymous place, and perhaps Edward and others were surprised by the outpouring of emotion from people who have been quietly enjoying this website and want it to stay the same. I am one of those people because I have admired the idealistic and unifying nature of this project. I have donated in the past, but maybe not as regularly as I would have if an annual banner popped up like on Wikipedia. I assumed most of the contributors were professional librarians and that the servers were somehow sponsored by libraries, so I didn't really know there was a need. I wish an ugly "plea for help" banner that took up half the page had been tried. I wish you would try it still, so students and newbies could be equal to members.

That being said, I am a "member" of other charitable organizations that have employees and expenses, like World Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, or PBS. Paying to be a member doesn't really detract from their noble mission in any way. I will continue to support IMSLP and recommend it to others. I hope feelings are mended in time and that the site will be sustainable well into the future.

[azumbrunn]

Regarding Edward's latest post about the various funding attempts I had an idea: Why not talk to similar "enterprises" who may have been able to manage this problem? Specifically I am thinking about ACMP (amateur chamber music players, acmp.net; if you don't know it check it out, I truly recommend it! And if you play camber music, please join!). They seem to be in decent shape financially. They do charge an annual membership fee of $35 (tax deductible; you can declare yourself too poor and still get into the directory though). They have professional staff for administration (not large I think).

So one might seek the input of their staff or board members and maybe get some ideas that haven't surfaced yet (i.e. not ask them directly for contributions, just about how they manage to get funding; they are likely to be sympathetic to IMSLP; they do recommend it in some of their literature).

I also would like to point out that asking for a membership fee is not the same as running a for profit business. I hear that IMSLP decided not to be a non profit--but this is a technical and legal decision. As a common sense matter IMSLP is not for profit with or without official non profit status, with or without a membership fee and a 15 second wait.

P.S.: I can't quite understand that the Amazon ads have been given up out of aesthetic concerns. Some blogs and web sites of classical music radio station get some income that way. You'd have to ask IMSLP users to navigate to Amazon via the link/ad on IMSLP for whatever they buy, not just disks and sheet music (here Amazon is quite weak anyway). Lots of people do that.

[Choralia]

As Choralia knows, I asked for CPDL's 501(c)(3) paperwork as reference a few months ago.

I confirm. I was contacted on this subject as I'm a board member and the Chief Financial Officer of CPDL. I didn't mention this earlier as I didn't want to disclose something that IMSLP might have wanted to maintain confidential.

I think that the re-incorporation of IMSLP as a non-profit would be a good move to provide the most clear evidence that IMSLP exists for the benefit of the community. The non-profit incorporation process takes some time (and cost), however it may be worth the effort.

To some extent, the (very criticized) IMSLP membership mechanism is very appropriate for a non-profit organization, as it gathers resources from the community rather than trying to sell products via Amazon or other channels (which is indeed most typical in the case of for-profit organizations).

I think that the introduction of the membership approach could have been more gradual, though. The current "pay or wait 15 seconds" mechanism could have been introduced only if less invasive solutions demonstrated not to be sufficient for the financial sustainability of the project.

As an example of a less invasive solution, my own website (Choralia) makes use of a "be reminded as you download" mechanism: the larger is the number of files downloaded by a user, the more frequently the user receives a message reminding him/her to support the website with a donation of any amount. The reminder can be bypassed right away by just clicking on a "remind me later" button, without any delays. Choralia is not a non-profit organization, however one third of all donations received is then donated by me to CPDL, and, over the years, these donations have been the main source of income for CPDL.

Max

[MassMusician]

I've given this a good deal of thought, and I can see both sides of it. For me, IMSLP has saved me so many thousands of dollars, particularly in practice parts and study scores, that I can't possibly complain about being asked to make a small contribution, especially when it's still completely optional. Might I have liked a slightly less in-your-face way of getting me to contribute? Yes, but this one worked, so I can see its positive side.

I don't think that 15 seconds is so long that you can't still browse quickly, especially if there are preview pages. Anything Creative Commons doesn't fall under the restriction. Yes, all of this material is public domain, but it has to be scanned, reviewed, uploaded, and maintained. Much of this is done graciously for free, but bandwidth and storage are not free, and if they are to be reliable, there needs to be a financial infrastructure in place to keep it running, otherwise we can look forward to a sudden shutdown and then we're all out of luck. Barring the long-term donation of a dedicated server, we need this security.

Perhaps there could be very inexpensive student memberships ($5/year), for which a valid university email account would be required. Maybe people could apply for financial exemptions. The fact of the matter is that even if you have a large music library on campus, there are a lot of things that you cannot check out and would need to photocopy for extensive research, and that doesn't come for free either. $1.90/month is 19 copies at a college photocopier, if you're lucky. Really, the subscription is extremely nominal.

[NeveudeRameau]

I don't get the 15 seconds bit. I tried to look at a score today and wasn't allowed past page 1. 30 seconds? No. 60 seconds? No. So right now, I can't use IMSL at all. And that is jolly inconvenient
A very reasonable annual subscription would be acceptable to me. As someone else pointed out, printing out at home is cheaper than photocopying in the library.
So if money is needed to keep the system going, let's introduce a simple, labour un-intensive subscription system. If we start to introduce differentials rates, we are wasting that money. If students can afford 100s of dollars/pounds/euros to update and run their smartphones (and in my experience they spend a lot more than that on their e-umbilical cords), they can jolly well pay the proposed 30-/annum.
So back to basics: if organising and running the site require additional funds, let's cough up. I don't know anything about Canadian charity law, but if another legal structure would mean simplify/improve efficiency and maintenance on the site, let's invest in that. It might also help us to remove the copyright breaches that are currently damage the reputation of IMSLP.
Incidentally: what would be the position be if commercial giants like Amazon decide to "buy out" IMSLP??? Would the volunteers be allowed/able to withdraw their contirbutions?

[almound]

I don't buy a lot of subscriptions. In fact, I'm a right royal leech if you must know. I don't just view scores ... I download and archive them. (LOVE the scans of the original hand-written opera scores housed at La Scala!) I'm a composer and I post my stuff to IMSLP, because it lends an air of credibility to my (yes, entirely independent) music productions. Here I can post some of my sheet music and recordings with proper documentation that they have been made public for non-commercial purposes (Creative Commons Licensing).

When I went to my local venue, The Whitehorse, http://www.whitehorseblackmountain.com/ to listen to a local pianist play with a local woodwind quintet, they played the Sextet for Piano and Woodwind Quintet, Op.6 http://imslp.org/wiki/Sextet_for_Piano_ ... _Ludwig%29. The pianist, Daniel Weiser, http://www.amicimusic.org/the_front_door.aspx mentioned during the introduction that not only did he learn about the piece from IMSLP, but downloaded the score and parts there as well. Thuile? Who'd have thought. But that is what I love most about IMSLP. I discover all sorts of composers I wouldn't have otherwise known about, like Alberto Nepomuceno for instance.

Calls for donations leave me cold. Begging by web\site\community\etc. administrators glide over me like so much hot air. A membership gives me a stake in the game. It got me to fork over some bucks. Does IMSLP really need the money? Give me a break. Can they get it from other sources? Maybe. But let me ask you this ... are you willing to let IMSLP founder in order to find out? Not me. I need this service, unlike almost every other Internet do-dad of which I can think.

[Dhmellor]

I'm a newcomer to this forum, but I've been a user of IMSLP for a few years now. I'm astonished by the attitude of some respondents on this thread. IMSLP is a fantastic resource, and it is wonderfully convenient to be able to sit at home at your desk and access scores of so much music. It certainly beats trekking to some university or conservatoire library and having to spend hours there leafing through complete editions. I already choose to donate £5 per month to Wikipedia, as I use that so much, and I am equally happy to take out an annual subscription to IMSLP - at £16 it is a bargain, and I want to thank everyone involved in running it, for providing musicians with such a brilliant resource. Thank you!

[StephenWest]

I have produced a relatively small number of modern editions of early music. Initially, I hosted these on my own website, but then I discovered IMSLP and decided that there were all sorts of good reasons for moving the scores here. However, like others who have posted in this thread, I understood that I was contributing to a project that would make my work freely available to everyone, anywhere in the world, for the foreseeable future. I have continued to add scores, sporadically over the years, and I logged on, a few days ago, with the intention of adding a few more that I have typeset in recent months. Again like others here, I was dismayed to see that IMSLP is moving to a subscription model. I would not have contributed my (admittedly modest) set of scores to a project that was not completely free to all and I certainly will not do so from now on. In fact I may have to go back to hosting scores on my own website: this is a great pity because there is so much more value in consolidating collections in one place, such as IMSLP, rather than fragmenting them around the Internet.

[Notenschreiber]

@Stephen West. Just to make it clear: All your contributions can be downloaded without any restrictions and will be downloaded, if they are
interesting enough. On your private homepage they will probably waste away.

[Savage]

I registered just so I could place a post here because I think the actual danger of this current decision is being lost.

The danger is not that a 15-second wait will put off users. It's not that the amount being asked for subscription will put off users.

The danger is that for years, IMSLP has amassed over 300,000 scores from contributors who were led to believe that IMSLP would not inhibit users from accessing their contributions in any way other than the work being in the Public Domain in their region. Contributors are saying that they now regret having made their contributions and may not make contributions in the future.

IMSLP is not made by the users. It is made by the contributors. Were it not for the contributors and the trust that they put in IMSLP, there would be no IMSLP. If contributors dry up, and the 'odometer' indicating the number of scores only shows new compositions provided by the composer, IMSLP won't have enough paid subscriptions to accomplish the stated goals because the users visiting will drastically decrease.

I'm not demeaning contemporary composers for publishing their works on IMSLP. I'm merely pointing out that, truth be known, most users don't come to IMSLP to see the latest new compositions. If the contemporary composers are honest (because I'm one though I haven't posted any of my works here, and I feel this to be true), most users come here for scores of more 'classic' compositions. And these are compositions that a contributor took the time to find the score, carefully scan it into a file, and upload it. And some of these compositions are quite large, and making sure that page after page is properly aligned and the resulting file is correct is no small task! Yet, they do it. Why? They get nothing in return for it. It's not their composition, so they get no remuneration or credit for performance, just a small credit that they uploaded it. The only reason is that they wanted the world to be able to have free access to the scores.

And now, the situation under which the contributors provided the scores on IMSLP has changed. It makes no difference whether the decision was a right or wrong one as far as a 15-second wait or a subscription fee. What matters is that the contributors, the ones who made all of this possible, are saying that they feel wronged, that had they known this would happen they wouldn't have contributed in the first place, and that they may not contribute in the future. And all of the 'reasons' in the world are not going to make the wrong go away; in fact, it's some of the 'reasons' that make them feel their trust has been abused.

If the contributors go away, IMSLP will be frozen in time. The Public Domain scores will go to some yet-unknown site that draws the contributors rather than IMSLP. IMSLP will have no need for anyone to check documents or do 'janitorial work' because there won't be enough work for them to draw their pay. And IMSLP will go the way of MySpace: it may still exist, but no one will use it.

What should be really scary for Mr. Guo and IMSLP is that the harm may have already been done. It may already be too late. The coffin lid may already be nailed shut. Even to the extent that the entire subscription process was completely undone, the trust that contributors placed into this site has been potentially destroyed. If 'classic' contributions cease, Mr. Guo, you may not be able to get them to return, regardless of your reasons for making the decision in the first place. It is going to take a lot on your part to reinstate that trust that has been given to you over 300,000 times. The big question now is, are you going to attempt to reinstate that trust, or are you going to just continue with the belief that everything will continue along nicely as far as score contributions are concerned as it has in the past? Read the posts from contributors, realize that there are probably many out there feeling the same but just not saying anything, honestly ask yourself that question, and honestly ask yourself if the current path is worth what could be the end result. If you genuinely care about IMSLP, it ought to scare the hell out of you.

[coulonnus]

Perhaps a site from which we can learn, although you may find it detestable: http://www.free-scores.com/index_uk.php3

Quite a few modern composers have chosen this site.

[daphnis]

I have resisted posting here after reading the multiple posts of people shocked, outraged, and dumbfounded by the recent change in policy to institute a voluntary paid membership and 15-second pause before accessing scores. I have decided, since there have been numerous posts by people stating what they believe to be (or themselves are) the future actions taken by contributors resulting from these changes, to finally post a statement from my perspective as an administrator, yes, but contributor primarily.

I have been involved with IMSLP for about 10 years now and, although I say so most humbly and without any hard evidence, I believe I am one of the most prolific contributors to the site as far as original scanned works are concerned. In those years, I have scanned, restored, compiled, and uploaded countless thousands of PDFs. Yes, that is no exaggeration, THOUSANDS of scores. In opera full scores alone, a list of which is visible on my user page, these few (numbering under one hundred) represent some 30,000 pages, and the body of my entire contribution at one point about a year ago I estimated to be around one million pages. This includes some extensive collections I've researched and gathered, very often on my own dime, and scanned such as the works of Sibelius, Schmitt, and many other French composers to which I have dedicated myself and my work. As you can imagine, this has represented a serious hobby of mine, and accounts for untold thousands of hours in the library, at the scanner, and in front of a computer to produce and share what otherwise would never (probably, in many cases) be accessible on the Internet or at IMSLP. I have done this for the joy of knowing that what I have done and continue to do to this day and into the future is accessible to people around the world who otherwise would not have access to these scores. Students in Thailand, community wind ensembles in Bolivia, orchestras trying to regain their foothold in Iraq, all now have access to scores and parts that simply do not exist in their countries, and they have that access freely and continue to have free access even now. I outline the work I have made for this site not to astonish, not to gloat, and not to request any congratulations of any kind for myself, I do so to illustrate how this site has been built by such contributions and what these contributions ultimately mean to those to whom these represent new and unobtainable treasures. My sole purpose in making these scores available is for this reason alone. People still have the access they once did, and my trust has not been betrayed in any way.

While I am a musician by training, I am an IT professional by present occupation and I deal primarily with infrastructure. In this role, I can tell you through personal experience that what we are trying to do here is not free, nor is it cheap. The site has grown considerably over the years both by contributions (read: backend storage costs) and user traffic (read: network bandwidth consumed proportional to that storage). All of these things cost money from an infrastructure perspective, and someone has to pay for those things when hosting is offered as a service. Infrastructure providers and suppliers have a cost, and they don't care about the mission, situation, or circumstance of the consuming customer. They care about payment. As Edward has mentioned, multiple attempts have been made to recoup these costs without intruding upon the user experience. These have largely been unsuccessful and are not enough to sustain the present costs of running this site, and those costs are going up. How about take one piece of one of the scores I've contributed, the full orchestral score to Puccini's Tosca. Just the first act is about 27 MB, and it has been downloaded over 41,000 times. That's over 1 TB of bandwidth for one part of one score. Understand that this is not daily, but rather distributed over time. Extrapolate that and think about the 400,000+ files which are accessible every day, and you have some serious infrastructure costs. This new optional membership program is designed to keep these costs paid for so all we've amassed remains available to everyone. To repeat what was said, no access will be blocked for anyone.

Despite members being automatically granted free memberships for a 10-year period, I have still decided to schedule a monthly recurring payment to the site above and beyond what a membership would cost. I have done this because I know what we have put together as a community is of immense value that cannot be found anywhere else on the Internet, and that its impact on those around the world has been life changing. Knowing that my contributions have, to non-members, been delayed by a mere 15 seconds is a trifling concern and does not throttle my ambition or drive to continue to add to the substance of our collection in any way. Knowing that we are still afloat and are able to do what we set out to do from the very beginning is everything, and that is what should drive contributions from our community as it will continue to result in use and support from the viewers of the site.

[Sallen112]

I think EVERYBODY here who is a regular User should pay attention to what Daphnis wrote, this is exactly the kind of post EVERYONE needs to understand. Me also being an Admin, reading all of these negative posts speak from an ethical and entitled standpoint, not from a practical and realistic standpoint. If you think trying comparing Wikipedia to IMSLP, it doesn't exactly compare because WIkipedia doesn't host PDF files like IMSLP does, they have millions of pages of text but IMSLP goes a step further and host not just hundreds of thousands of pages of text, but also hundreds of thousands of large files, which consumes more bandwidth and data. The reason Wikipedia exists still is because of there massive Userbase, which is hundreds of thousands of times larger than IMSLP, they can rely on donations as there main source of funding because they have the Userbase for it, IMSLP is much smaller.

If everyone here thought that the site can be sustainable forever with purely donations, especially with a site like this that host pages of text and files, this sort of thing won't last and isn't sustainable. We could find months where the donations start declining and then the site could be faced with a total shutdown, which nobody wants. With a subscription now, Edward can be more free of worry financially and he might be able to make the site even better than before to use with more income coming in, WHILE still keeping files free to download for us all! From now one, like Daphnis said, I will do the same and give a small amount of money to the site every month, despite my free membership, because I want to see this site continue to thrive and grow. This is one of the few sites on the internet for classical music for sheet music that you can find rare music or hard to get music no where else or is not online.

[Rob Peters]

I don't get the 15 seconds bit. I tried to look at a score today and wasn't allowed past page 1. 30 seconds? No. 60 seconds? No. So right now, I can't use IMSL at all.

That reminds me of an organ student of mine, who complained today that she couldn't access IMSLP anymore, "without paying".
I replied that it should always be possible to access files for free (and I couldn't reproduce the issue myself), but after hearing lots of similar stories, I'm not sure anymore that IMSLP makes it clear enough to non-tech-savvy people that the site is and remains free to use for non-paying visitors.

EDIT: after a log-out I see the "nag" page now, I can understand why my (elderly) student was confused. The page uses every trick in the rapidshare book to lure people into subscribing and even making them thing a subscription is the only way to get your downloads: big buttons for the subscription models and an almost invisible text link for the regular downloads. In the best tradition of every scam site ever.

As a composer who shares his complete oeuvre at IMSLP, I'm a bit concerned about the direction we're moving in, and whether these commercial activities are still in accordance with the terms of service I (and other living composers) agreed with when we decided to share our works for free at this site. And I wonder if payed subscriptions aren't contradictory to the CC (non-commercial!) licenses used to publish our works here.

EDIT: After reading all posts in this thread, I realize the above issue has been addressed to some point. Apparently, the site has been split into different sections: the PD section with its 15-second wait, and the CC-section, with immediate downloads. I guess that's an attempt to stay out of murky juridical waters regarding the CC copyright terms. I can see a juridical problem though: both sections are still part of the same site, with a uniform subscription policy. I can think of a situation where a first-time user tries IMSLP with a PD work, gets the 15-second page and is led to believe that this policy is valid for the entire site, including the CC-section, since it isn't stated otherwise. One could be tricked into buying a subscription that way, even if it isn't necessary for CC-downloads. This could be called misleading, maybe even in a juridical sense.