I just made a wonderful find, thanks to EFF Deeplinks: the Musopen symphony project on Kickstarter.

Musopen has a great mission; to create an online library of music available in the public domain. Many great musical works have expired copyrights, but most of the modern sound recordings of these works ARE under copyright. Musopen solicits donations in order to make (or obtain the copyright to) recordings that they can then release these into the public domain, for all to enjoy.

For their latest project, they are using Kickstarter to try to raise $11,000; if they can raise that amount, they will be able to fund a recording of the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky! Amazing.

I’ve made my donation, and I wish them luck. I also find Kickstarter to be a really interesting funding approach. It’s an all or nothing model…the donations are aggregated and tallied by Kickstarter, but no money changes hands unless the project is fully funded before it’s time expires. Great concept; it allows for experimentation with low risk for both sides. I’m poking about the site looking at some of the other projects. Some cool stuff.