Digitally Published Sheet Music - Digital Preservation Coalition


Sheet music licensed and published in a variety of digital formats and subject to copyright restrictions and often protected by digital rights management technologies.
Group: Sound and Vision	Trend in 2021:	Unanimous Decision
Added to List: 2019	No Change	Previous classification: Endangered
	Trend in 2022:
	No Change
Imminence of Action Action is recommended within five years, detailed assessment within three years.	Significance of Loss The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on people and sectors around the world.	Effort to Preserve It would require a small effort to address losses in this group, requiring the application of proven preservation tools or techniques.
Examples This entry includes all manner of published sheet music including choral works, orchestral works, scores published in different forms such as PDF, PDF/A and XML.
‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions Encryption; uncertainty over intellectual property rights; uncertain business model of publisher; lack of legal deposit mandate.
‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice Rights management conducive to preservation; held in a trusted repository; legislation in place such as legal deposit enabling copying.
2021 Jury Review In 2019, this entry was added as a subset of a previous 2017 entry, ‘Digital Music Production and Sharing,’ which was split to draw attention to the different challenges faced by the different forms. This entry focuses on digitally published sheet music, which often takes the form of PDF and PDF/A and E-Book formats. The 2021 Jury made no changes to this entry classification or trend but did comment on the importance of legislation (such as legal deposit) to manage associated risks.
Additional Comments The commercial value of these materials should be a protection against their loss, and the history of the music industry indicates that sheet music continues to have value, so even if an individual organization fails or its DRM servers go offline, and some music becomes inaccessible, it is not lost. However, the difficulties of archiving DRM-locked files remain real.