Open Music Archive is a collaborative project, initiated by artists Eileen Simpson & Ben White, to source, digitise and distribute out-of-copyright sound recordings. The archive is open for anyone to use and contribute to.
The Open Music Archive concerns itself with the public domain and creative works which are not owned by any one individual and are held in common by society as a whole.
Under copyright law, a music recording has two automatically assigned property rights: A musical composition has a property right and a recording has a separate and independent property right. These property rights are limited by term. In the UK, the term of copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is limited to the life of the author plus 70 years, while the term of copyright in a sound recording is limited to 50 years from the date of recording. The archive attempts to gather recordings and information about recordings whose proprietary interests have expired and make them accessible to a wider public.
http://www.openmusicarchive.org/
Tags: art, mp3, music, public domain, sounds