Download Free Music from 150+ Classical Composers, Courtesy of Musopen.org

Yes­ter­day, we told you about a new Kick­starter cam­paign that intends to put 245 pieces by Frédéric Chopin into the pub­lic domain. The cam­paign is being spear­head­ed by Musopen.org, a non-prof­it locat­ed a few miles up the road from us, in Palo Alto, CA. Oper­at­ing since 2005 (a year before we took flight), Musopen pro­vides free pub­lic domain scores and a library of record­ings by clas­si­cal com­posers that you’ll want to check out.

The library is best accessed via this page where you can browse record­ings orga­nized by com­pos­er, per­former, instru­ment, form, and time peri­od As you’ll see, Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart — they’re all there. So is Debussy, Rav­el and Cop­land, not to men­tion anoth­er 140+ com­posers.

Music can be streamed online for free. But if you become a reg­is­tered user for the site, you can down­load 5 tracks per day in stan­dard audio qual­i­ty. Or, if you pay $55 per year, you can enjoy unlim­it­ed down­loads in high qual­i­ty audio. Pay­ing mem­bers help sus­tain the site, and they also get to help deter­mine what music will be made avail­able online in the future. Have more ques­tions? Check out Musopen’s FAQ.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load