At 10:15 PM -0500 3/27/12, Paul Hayden wrote: >Apologies if you also subscribe to the SCI list: > >I've been selling my compositions as paper sheet >music for years, but I'm getting more and more >requests for PDFs. I feel a little uneasy about >this since a PDF (even with a password) can be >posted online or emailed to anyone who wants it >for free. > >Any thoughts on this from publishers, composers, >or engravers currently selling PDFs? > >Thanks for any insight! > >Paul Hayden
Paul: If you aren't comfortable with this, then of course you shouldn't do it. But I'm convinced that this is the direction music publishing is going to go in, and probably sooner rather than later. Personally I welcome the technology. It makes things SO much easier and more efficient for me as an arranger and sometime composer. A score and parts can be sent in seconds--minutes at the outside--without any need for all the complications of printing, storage, handling and mailing. And I do think one has to realize that we ALL have to learn to trust people to do the right thing, especially since any paper music can be easily run though a copy machine with no one the wiser. You are already trusting those who buy your music on paper not to do that, even though it's inevitable that SOME people will abuse your trust. So all you're really saying is that modern technology just makes it EASIER to cheat, just as it makes it easier and more efficient to distribute your work. You might not agree, nor may others in this forum, and that's certainly fair enough. But more and more composers are going to self-publishing AND to distribution electronically. Absolute control over our product is not possible unless you are willing never to distribute it at all. Or so it seems to me. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
