I recently visited the Retail Print Music Dealers Association website and made my way over to the copyright info page, where they summarize US copyright law in simple terms. I wanted to compare these somewhat restrictive Sheet Music Rights vs. the expansive rights you automatically get as an Art of Sound Music customer.
Ability to Make Copies
| Rights under US Copyright Law | The Rights AOSM Gives |
|---|---|
| You are not allowed to copying music for any kind of performance, with the exception of an "emergency". | You may photocopy parts and scores you have purchased to serve as a backup copy, to accommodate extra players in your group on certain instruments and/or to give to group members to practice with at home. These rights are granted to the PURCHASING USER ONLY for your own group’s use. You may not copy and/or distribute parts to any other person or entity for any other purpose. |
| You can do emergency copying to replace purchased copies which for any reason are not available for an imminent performance provided purchased replacement copies shall be substituted in due course. | You may photocopy parts and scores you have purchased to serve as a backup copy, to accommodate extra players in your group on certain instruments and/or to give to group members to practice with at home. These rights are granted to the PURCHASING USER ONLY for your own group’s use. You may not copy and/or distribute parts to any other person or entity for any other purpose. |
In addition, we give free Part Transportation service and free Lost Part Replacement service. For more details visit our Parts Policy page.
Part Transposition
You may manually transpose parts to accommodate players with instruments in different keys than that supplied using the parts we’ve provided. Alternatively, we can transpose the part for you free of charge for scores we have in music notation format and that are still active in our catalog at the time of your request.
Lost Part Replacement
If you’ve lost a part and don’t have a PDF and/or photocopy backup, we can replace the lost part free of charge if that score is still active in our catalog at the time of your request. The replacement part will be emailed to you.
Summary
It is our intent to treat customers as trusted partners, not criminals. For this reason, copying of scores and parts are allowed for your own group. We think that the basic law is too restrictive and puts music directors in an unnecessarily awkward position.