Many musics on musescore.com are already in the **Public Domain**, that means either the author posted them in Public Domain, or the author has been dead for over 70 years.
Do they need to pay to those composers who died hundreds of years ago?
*Update: sheets in Public Domain are able to be downloaded without Musescore Pro now, but we still need an account to access them.*
Also, there are many sheet music authors on musescore.com who created their own songs and posted them under [CC-BY-**NC** (Creative Commons Attribution-**NonCommercial**) License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
This is absolutely not acceptable, and the only purpose is to profit from stealing.
There is an article on their website: [Score download becomes a part of the Pro subscription](https://musescore.com/groups/improving-musescore-com/discuss/5044610)
## Installation
This script is available as a [Userscript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userscript). To use this Userscript, you need to first install a [user script manager](https://greasyfork.org/en/help/installing-user-scripts), like Tampermonkey.
Install from [Greasy Fork](https://greasyfork.org/scripts/391931)
View this project on [Github](https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader)
This repo is also available on IPFS to avoid DMCA takedown.
I received a [takedown request email](https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5) from one of the Musescore developers, but I would like to say something against it.
> All not Public domain content on musescore.com is licensed by major music publishers (Alfred, EMI, Sony, etc.). Distribute licensed music content from Musescore.com for free you violate their rights.
Secondly, musescore.com is not a simple music sharing website. The authors of sheet music must transcript and rearrange the original songs to sheets, not just copying files from somewhere else to musescore.com. As a result, the licensing should focus on the rights of transcription/rearranging to the sheet music authors, instead of the rights of sharing the music on some websites.
Thirdly, the copyright ownership of contents on musescore.com is not clear. Not every non-public-domain songs on musescore.com is owned by major music publishers. There are many small music publishers and independent songwriters; Songs might be licensed under free licenses like Creative Commons. Also, there are many authors who created their own songs and posted the sheet music on musescore.com. Does musescore.com pay to those authors?
If we can't see proof that musescore.com really pays licensing fee to the copyright owners, we may think it is just an excuse to get profit from stealing.
> you illegaly use our private API with licensed music content.
No, the API document is on https://developers.musescore.com/.
**I will launch an open source, serverless, offline-first, frontend-first, and totally free alternative to musescore.com.**
**Also, I'm developing musescore.js. It could convert a mscz file into any format that the Musescore software supports, and in the browser.** Because the Musescore software is open source under [GPL](https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/blob/master/LICENSE.GPL), I could translate the source code to js, or compile it into asm.js/WASM.
