Free as in Bach: Open Goldberg Variations Released

Robert Douglass | OpenSource.com | June 11, 2012

The Kickstarter funded collaboration between Kimiko Ishizaka and MuseScore has released their new recording and score of Bach's Goldberg Variations into the public domain using the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensing tool. This is just one of the ways in which Kickstarter, which has pumped over $36,000,000 USD into the music industry since its inception, is revolutionizing the business of music. OpenSource.com first reported on the project in April, 2011, during the fundraising phase.

The recording has been well received, getting over 300,000 plays and 70,000 downloads from the project's sites alone in the first two weeks. Since the recording is freely licensed it is springing up on important sites across the web, such as IMSLP, the Free Music Archive, the Internet Archive, Musopen, and even on the Goldberg Variations article of Wikipedia. There is also a free iPad app which combines the recording and the score into a full audio-visual experience.