Musopen is a non-profit organization raising money with Kickstarter to record classical music whose scores are in the public domain, and release the recordings royalty free. When someone performs and records a public work, the performer retains a copyright on the recording as if it were original, so while plenty of great music is in the public domain, quality royalty-free recordings are hard to come by. So far, Musopen raised enough money to record the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky, and every $1,000 earned funds another project.

The Kickstarter rewards are quite affordable: $10 for early access to digital recordings, $25 for early access to a copy of CDs, all the way up to levels that earn permanent display of your name as a benefactor and pick the pieces that get recorded with your money. You can help purchase great works of art for the world to enjoy in perpetuity.

The Musopen website already has dozens of recordings, sheet music, and a start on an open content music theory textbook. Also streaming radio.

Update: After listening to Musopen's streaming radio for a while, I'm compelled to update this entry with a reminder that volunteer-contributed content isn't always great. Like Wikipedia, Musopen's recording collection to date is mostly awesome, and is pushed to more-than-awesome status because of its purpose and its license. And some of their recordings are top notch.

I feel bad criticizing some of the lesser recordings, because the amount of effort it takes to get most of the notes right is so great that punishing the whole thing for not hitting 100% commercial-grade virtuosity is unfair. Perhaps it is fair, however, to count performance mistakes against the production of the recording. In studio, professionals do multiple takes and blend together the best bits. That's much harder for an amateur to do than to just post a single take, but it's easier than getting a single take that's perfect.

The Kickstarter-funded effort will involve hiring an orchestra and studio time, so that's still exciting. I've heard some not-great orchestras, but many of them already populate the dregs of classical recordings on bargain labels. And more recent classical-in-bulk packages actually have some great stuff in them.

Another update: Pepsi is giving away money for attention, and will give $25,000 to Musopen if it's voted up the ranks. You can vote once per day.