How are MIDI files of copyrighted music licensed?
<p>Anyone with a music studio can easily download a .midi file from the internet, and then use it to produce a musical track.  A midi file  exists online for almost every song in the world, and you can do a song title search along with the keyword midi.  It's often an entire arrangement, everything one needs to produce a full blown song, all you need is further programming and studio equipment. One triggers various synthesizers to perform the contents of these .midi files, and it sounds like music.  </p>

<p>Midi files contain every note that every instrument in the orchestra plays.  Is this "art" or merely raw data?  If I can obtain this data online, I won't have a lengthy data entry phase or need to do any composing, but it doesn't sound ethical or legal.  </p>

<p>I'd have to get a license from the publisher to sell this new recording, of course.  But what about for using someone else's midi from the internet? How do I handle credit or licensing here? </p>

<p>The midi is an artistic work and protected by copyright just as sheet music or an actual recording would be.</p>

<p>It’s possible, even likely, that a midi file running free on the internet is itself an infringing copy. If so, any purported licence is worthless. The onus is on you to validate a clear licensing chain from you back to the copyright holder of both the midi file and the music itself - the midi is a derivative work of the music with its own copyright (assuming it was legally created). The midi file has copyright protection even if the original music has entered the public domain (given the age of the technology, no midi file would have had its copyright expire as yet).</p>

<p>Basically, the rules of preforming the song will be the same whether you preform the song or a computer does as far as copyright laws.</p>

<p>If you can't play a song publicly or record it the computer can not either etc, etc.</p>

<p>It is hard to answer more specifically without knowing what you intend to do. </p>

copyright licensing music