Your Questions Answered: Why Free Sheet Music Costs More Than You Might Think

A question that comes up from well-meaning customers now and again is why all of the sheet music at Musicnotes.com isn’t free. The (very) short answer is, because we love music. Like, really, really love music. And we want to be able to ensure future generations are able to fall in love with music, too.

We’re aware that there are websites that claim to offer ‘free sheet music.’ The problem is, not only are these sites illegal, the unlicensed, unprofessional arrangements they’re advertising come at a much higher hidden cost, the burden of which is put on music’s greatest supporters. Often these sites ‘sell’ advertising space, so they’re making a profit while literally and blatantly stealing from the music’s owners and creators.

[blockquote source=”Taylor Swift”]I just don’t agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free.[/blockquote]

When you download 100% officially licensed and legal sheet music at Musicnotes.com, a substantial portion of each sale goes directly to the song’s publishers, writers, performers and creators.

In fact, Musicnotes has a huge list of publishers that we work with, including a whole bunch of small and independent music publishers. We’ve invested a lot of time and talent to make sure all of them receive their fair compensation accurately and promptly. To us here at Musicnotes, loving music doesn’t just mean loving to play and enjoy the art of music, it means loving all of the hardworking people who make the music possible.

In addition to the music creators and publishers, some of those hardworking people just happen to work here. Our in-house staff of professional sheet music arrangers, engravers and editors meticulously transcribe many of the titles available on our site. That’s how we can offer the brand-new One Direction or Adam Levine or Disney film song as sheet music before you’ll find it anywhere else. They also transpose their official arrangements into any key you would need and make sure each high-resolution digital sheet music file is laid out cleanly and precisely.

So what else happens when you download licensed, legal sheet music at Musicnotes.com? You can instantly sync that music to our 100% free downloadable mobile and tablet apps. Our technology team here at Musicnotes is second-to-none, and they’ve imagined, constructed and exhaustively tested our iOS and Android mobile apps to ensure your music is always with you when you need it. (Psst… Have you tried out our new playback features on our iOS and Android apps? Yeah, our tech team continues to amaze us and make us exceptionally proud every day.) All of our apps are free for ANYONE to download, and we even offer a selection of pre-installed public domain songs at no-charge to test them out with.

Artist compensation, professional engraving, key transposition, apps… if you can believe it, your sheet music purchase at Musicnotes.com comes with even more! It provides access to digital sheet music’s most knowledgeable support staff, ready and happy to answer any questions you may come across during your sheet music shopping or playing process. Not to mention all the folks behind-the-scenes making sure that your shopping experience is simple and completely secure with a Norton™ Safe Shopping Guarantee , that we have any and all the music you’re looking for, and that you know of all the special sales and offers we’re running.

For those of you here looking for free sheet music, we do offer a selection of rotating public domain titles as our gift each month. Our free sheet music gifts come with all the same added values as the rest of the sheet music at Musicnotes.com. You can also join our 100% free Musicnotes Rewards loyalty club and earn sheet music prizes by shopping, writing reviews, sharing Musicnotes with your friends and more. Musicnotes Rewards was created by music lovers for music lovers. Enjoy!