Museopen to set classical music "free"
I'm a semi-professional classical musician, and while I think this is an interesting idea I think it's important to know what this is and what it is not.<p>This is a great way to be able to hear a performance of a recognizable melody.  It serves the same purpose that sound clips in an encyclopedia serve: it lets you hear an example of the piece.  And if you're creating a commercial where you want the audience to hear a piece they recognize, this will work just fine.<p>But this isn't something that would ever be taken seriously by real musicians, at least in its current form.  Sure, there might be some legitimately good performances in there (especially if you're hiring the London Symphony Orchestra).  But a lot of it is clearly quite amateur -- like the recording I found of Bach's First Cello Suite was performed on a piano! -- and no one wants to wade through a bunch of low-quality stuff to find the good stuff.  And the people who are good don't want to be associated with the low-quality stuff.<p>Musicians fill their record libraries with names they recognize, based on other good work that artist or ensemble has done.  There is such a big variation between the best recordings and the worst recordings that it's always a better bet to get recordings of names you know.