well, yes, but that (C) symbol on scores of public domain works refers to the work of typesetting and/or editing the old composition, not to the composition itself. If your data comes from a 19-th century edition that is out of copyright, or if it comes straight from the composer's manuscript, you should be fine. Getting hold of - and deciphering - a manuscript is probably hard, but 19th-century (or early 20th century) editions are relatively easy to come by. A lot of that kind of data is even on the internet.
- Rainer

My database is also overwhelmingly classical music, and does not hold any musical notation, MIDI files, reprints of compositions, or recordings or snippets of actual recordings. It merely holds ten intervals to define each melody. However, we both know that music notation is frequently an expensive purchase, despite the fact that the composers died two centuries ago, as publishers are still avidly printing these public domain works and their publications have the (C) copyright symbol prominently displayed!

Since ALL music can only be performed as a result of learning the piece either from notation or by ear (the latter course being unavailable where Bach, Beethoven and a 1000 other composers are concerned), this implies that the ten intervals in each of my database records comprise a musical snippet when rendered through a loudspeaker, even though the snippet is only about 10 seconds long.

(I am trying to look at this from the point of view of "ambulance chaser" lawyers with an eye to some ready cash!)

these are interesting questions - but I am not a laywer, so I cannot really answer them authoritatively. Am very interested in comments from experts!
The overwhelming part of the Musipedia collection is classical music and therefore in the public domain, so one should be able to do with those data whatever one pleases - as long as we are only talking about the musical themes and not recordings thereof, recently typeset sheet music etc.
- Rainer

I've just discovered this web site! The melody search feature is very impressive. Back in 2007 I converted an Apple Mac-based Tunefinder database to Windows. (The result is here: http://www.littletyke.myzen.co.uk/index.html) One question I have always had - but can't afford legal advice (I am retired and am just doing programming as a hobby now) - is, to what extent can fair use be claimed if one plays up to ten notes of a melody?

I see that the Musepedia Melody Search allows such a music fragment to be played, so the author of the feature must have considered the copyright issue. Previously, on a Piano World forum, I received mainly negative reactions, with the suggestion that copyright law was so Draconian, no fragment of any length could be considered fair use without obtaining expensive legal advice first.

In my application the ten notes are all that is stored for each tune. The intervals between the notes locate the tune and the resultant hits, if any, are displayed in a list box. The list box lists the composer, name of the piece and movement, where applicable. My application could be enhanced considerably by allowing the user to hear the search fragment within the context of the 10-note excerpt.

Thanks for any advice!