Open access materials and copyright

Briefly on copyright

On the Music Information Retrieval website, there are examples of openly available materials such as sheet music, images, and videos. However, copyright may restrict the further use of these materials. It is advisable to familiarize yourself with the copyright regulations for different types of materials before using the found material as a source or presenting it publicly. 

Do you know how long the copyright protection period is in Finland? Does it vary by country? You can find the answer at the bottom of this page.

Copyright guide: Music
In the guides of Aalto University Learning Center, you can find a comprehensive copyright guide created by the University of the Arts' copyright services. This guide explains copyrights from various perspectives (composer, lyricist, producer, arranger, etc.) and explains details how sheet music publications can be used legally.

Open Science and the Use of Images 
If you intend to reuse materials, such as copying images, check the copyright of the image. It will tell you whether the reuse of the image is permitted and under what conditions it can be done. You can find more information about the copyright of photographs on the Kuvasto website. Images can also be shared using the so-called Creative Commons (CC) license. You can find more information about CC licenses here.

From the ImagOA guide you can find information on the permissible ways to use images, such as referencing an image in text and in the bibliography. The ImagOA guide is primarily aimed at higher education institutions, but it also contains useful tips for more everyday use. The guide includes recommendations for choosing CC licenses and a list of open international and domestic image resources.

Teosto – a copyright society for composers, lyricists, arrangers and music publishers in Finland

Teosto is a non-profit organization, which exists so that everyone can experience the power of music. Teosto's goal is that music can be made professionally in Finland and using music legally is accessible.

You can find a lot of materials at Teosto's page in English, but the video-based learning materials which contain information about music copyrights and usage licenses, Teosto's operations, and the music industry in general are only in Finnish.

ANSWER: In the European Economic Area (EEA) and the United States, the protection period for works is the lifetime of the author plus 70 years from the end of the year of death.

In Canada, which is the home country of The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), a wiki-based source for public domain music scores, recordings and information about music, the protection period for works is 50 years from the end of the year of the author's death. This explains why scores by Jean Sibelius is openly available on IMSLP. In Finland, their protection period ends only at the end of 2027 (Sibelius died on September 20, 1957).