Tom Lehrer opens his archive to all-comers!

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The musical satirist Tom Lehrer has made his songs available for a limited time, copyright-free, to stream or download.

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I was just coming here to post that. What an amazing and funny man!

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I’m confused why this is making the rounds now. Didn’t he announce that he was making all his songs public domain like two years ago?

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His lawsuit with the pigeons was on going.

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The website is new. You couldn’t download all of his songs before.

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Ah. Thank you.

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On the Albums page, the link to download Disc 1 of The Remains of Tom Lehrer doesn’t work.
However if you click the “Stream MP3s” link then scroll to the bottom of that page, the download link for the *.rar file there does work.

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He made the songs PD, but the recordings were not.

Now he’s made those free to download as well.

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I’m not actually clear on whether he’s releasing the copyrights to the recordings; the text seemed to imply just the music and lyrics are PD (excluding songs where he either didn’t write the music or didn’t write the lyrics and didn’t use material that was already PD). It seems like he might just be offering the albums as a bonus for one’s listening pleasure (though not reuse), though I may be wrong.

I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that music recordings involve different types of rights than the written music and lyrics, so I have no idea if any studios might have copyright claims on the recordings.

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Previously it was just sheet music and original compositions, but now it covers recordings.

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Will this include “I Got It from Alice” and his Electric Company songs?

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Yes to both. And it’s Agnes.

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You can change the second L in the filename to the number 1 and it will work.

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The most stunning thing about this post is finding out that Tom Lehrer is still alive.

Wow!

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And that he’s been coasting for 50 years. Shake a leg, Tom!

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Look, it’s hard. Do you know how many more elements have been discovered since he wrote the song?

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Yeah, teaching mathematics is such a breeze. Stop slacking, Tom!

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And there may be many others but the haven’t been discahvahed.

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But don’t hang around too long:

THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE

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Next Sunday, A.D.?

Well now I’m wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts.

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