musescore-downloader

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download sheet music from musescore.com for free, no login or Musescore Pro required

Star this project on Github and Gitlab (Mirror)
Rate this on Greasy Fork

Need dataset of musescore.com for analysis / machine learning? try musescore-dataset.

Fair Use

For the purposes of research and study only

About

Musescore Pro ($6.99/mo) is required to download sheet music from musescore.com recently.
(However, a few months ago, it was free to download.)

The Musescore company said that this is about copyright and licensing, and they must pay to the copyright owners.

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.
Is it illegal that they sell them for profit?
Note: Putting ads (to sell Musescore Pro) on the website also means that they use it to generate revenue.

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

Installation

This script is available as a Userscript. To use this Userscript, you need to first install a user script manager, like Tampermonkey.

Install from Greasy Fork

View this project on Github | Gitlab (Mirror)

This repo is also available on IPFS to avoid DMCA takedown.

Building Instructions

Make sure you have Node.js environment installed.

npm install
npm run build     # build as User Script
npm run pack:ext  # pack Web Extension

Feedback

Github Issues

License

MIT

About the Takedown Request

I received a takedown request email 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.

Firstly, if I violate the rights of major music publishers, the takedown request should be sent by them instead of the Musescore developers.

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 (GPLv3), serverless, offline-first, frontend-first, and totally free alternative to musescore.com, LibreScore. Everyone is welcome to join the project development by opening an issue or emailing me.

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, I could translate the source code to js, or compile it into asm.js/WASM.

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musescore-downloader

English | 简体中文
中英文版本项目 README 分开撰写，中文版较不完整。如果有能力，请阅读英文版。

免登录、免 Musescore Pro，下载 musescore.com 上的曲谱

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在 Greasy Fork 上给项目评分

关于

在 musescore.com 上下载曲谱需要支付 Musescore Pro 了，
这种吸引人气后再对原来免费的东西收费的盈利模式十分令人反感，
并且也违反了曲谱作者发布时的许可证协议（通常是 CC-BY-NC 署名-非商业使用，平台网站却将其作商业使用）

参见官网文章 Score download becomes a part of the Pro subscription

安装、更新、讨论

脚本以 Userscript 的形式提供，需要事先安装一个 用户脚本管理器，例如 Tampermonkey

在 Greasy Fork 上查看、安装

在 Github 上查看、讨论、更新

License

MIT