The open source movement has caught on to many an industry – software, hardware, information, text, etc. Most of these efforts are headed by Creative Commons.

But we haven’t changed what currently goes on in the music industry, yet.

Of course, there are public-domain sounds, tracks, and whatnot, but what I’m here to talk about is mainly musical compositions. The problem that we’re facing is two-fold:

  • Music composition is very private: music isn’t really written in big groups. Instead, one person or a few (in the case of a band) write the music.
  • Publishing is also very corporate: most compositions right now are published by big publishers, without an open Creative Commons alternative. Not only does this put huge restrictions on what can be done with published works and how they can be modified (assuming that they are corporately published), this also completely shuts out the additional community creativity that arises from open-source creation.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to work with other people to create music?

Let’s take an example. One person, who I’ll call Adam, wants to write, let’s say, a march. He has already thought up a few motifs, so he begins planning out the form. After beginning to notate some parts of the piece, he creates an open-source project, uploads his plan and his current score, and shares it with the world. Someone else comes along: his name is Bob. Bob finds the open-source project, checks it out, and wants to add to the piece. He uses the documents Adam uploaded to add more notation, which he then submits as a “patch”. Adam sees the submission, looks it over, and accepts the inclusion.

I think Creative Commons seriously needs to look into this field. Here’s how I think it should be organized:

  • Open format: MusicXML is proprietary, maybe create something very open called MML or MusicML (Music Markup Language)? There should then be converters from other proprietary formats (e.g. Sibelius files, Finale files, the aforementioned MusicXML, etc.)
  • Subversion/Github-based revision-tracking systems: Changes need to be kept track of, so that people can submit their additions to the music, these additions can be accepted, and every change is recorded. If something goes wrong, you can always go back to an older version!

The whole version control idea would be great, but how do you segment music creation and composition into “parts”/revisions? I think this should be approached the same way as it works in the software development field: each task of adding or changing something is inputed in separate check-ins, using common sense.

Of course, there may be some copyright problems. Arrangements of non-open-source musical works would probably be a no-no, but compositions are OK. Each work would be placed under the copyright of the originator or originating group and licensed under a Creative Commons license. Arrangements of this new music would be derivative works.

We can go so many places with this, just as was done with open-sourced software. Next: an online collection of user-submitted motifs, all open-source, as well as a system resembling Google Code for version control and project hosting.