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Getting MIDI files
Archives and datasets of MIDI files, with what their licenses actually allow. Open any file in the MIDI Reader to see what's inside.
Copyright: the short version
- The composition and the MIDI file are separate works. A file of a public-domain piece can still be copyrighted by whoever sequenced it. Look for an explicit license on the file itself.
- MIDI arrangements of copyrighted songs are not free, even when a site offers them for free download: the song is still protected. Most pop, film and game music falls in this category, including much of what's in large web-scraped collections.
- Datasets have their own licenses. Several popular ones are non-commercial (NC) or gated, and a permissive dataset license doesn't clear the rights in songs it contains.
- Site terms apply too. Some sites forbid redistribution, bulk downloading, or use for AI training.
This is general information, not legal advice. When in doubt, ask the rights holder.
Public-domain & free archives
6
Collections with a clear license for every file. The safest place to start.
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The Mutopia Project Commercial use OK
Volunteer-typeset editions of public-domain classical music, each published as PDF, LilyPond source and a MIDI preview.
License: Public domain / CC. Every piece is public domain or under CC BY or CC BY-SA, and each piece page names its license. Mutopia says all of its music may be freely downloaded, copied, modified, performed, recorded and used commercially, with attribution and share-alike where the license requires it.
Size: 2,124 pieces.
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IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library Varies by file
A huge library of public-domain scores that also accepts MIDI among its permitted recording formats, so some works include MIDI files.
License: Public domain / CC. IMSLP says each item is either public domain or released under a license by its copyright holder, and reviewers check status only for Canada, the US and the EU. Items under a license (some are non-commercial) carry their own terms, so check each file and your own country's copyright law.
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The Session Commercial use OK
A community database of traditional Irish tunes in ABC notation, with a MIDI download for each setting.
License: ODbL + custom terms. The Session's data dumps on GitHub are licensed to share and adapt for any purpose, even commercially, with the database itself under the ODbL. The same license forbids using, processing or training on the material with large language models, apart from an accessibility exception.
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Nottingham Dataset (cleaned ABC and MIDI) Commercial use OK
A cleaned copy of the Nottingham Music Database of British and American folk tunes, converted from ABC to MIDI.
License: GPL-3.0. The repository says it is released under the GNU GPLv3. The ABC files come unchanged from the Nottingham Music Database and were cleaned before the MIDI conversion.
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Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL) Varies by file
A volunteer library of free choral and vocal scores; contributors are asked to upload MIDI and MusicXML alongside the required PDF, so many editions include a MIDI file.
License: CPDL License / CC. Scores on the CPDL server fall under the CPDL License, a GPL-style license that allows copying, distributing, performing and recording (even for a fee) as long as modified versions keep the same license. CPDL also accepts Creative Commons licenses that allow cost-free use, and some listed editions link to third-party sites with their own terms, so check each edition.
Size: 56,000+ works.
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Wikimedia Commons: MIDI files Commercial use OK
The Wikimedia Commons category for MIDI files, with subcategories such as MIDI files about music, files created with LilyPond and karaoke (.kar) files.
License: Free licenses (per file). Commons only accepts media that is explicitly freely licensed or in the public domain in the US and the source country, and rejects non-commercial-only licenses. Each file page names its license, which may require attribution or share-alike.
Datasets
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Large collections built for research and machine learning. Read the license and the paper before training on or redistributing them.
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The Lakh MIDI Dataset Commercial use unclear
176,581 unique MIDI files scraped from the web, 45,129 of them matched and aligned to the Million Song Dataset.
License: CC BY 4.0. The dataset is distributed under CC BY 4.0, and the author asks that you cite the project page and his thesis. He did not create the MIDI files: most are fan transcriptions of copyrighted songs whose authors cannot be reliably credited, so the CC license does not clear rights in the underlying music.
Size: 176,581 files. Paper
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Lakh MIDI dataset code Commercial use unclear
The code used to build the Lakh MIDI Dataset by matching and aligning MIDI files to audio.
License: Not stated. The repository does not declare a license. It holds the matching and alignment code, not the MIDI files themselves.
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MAESTRO Non-commercial
About 200 hours of virtuosic piano performances from the International Piano-e-Competition, with MIDI aligned to audio within about 3 ms.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Google LLC releases MAESTRO under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, so it may not be used commercially and derivatives must be shared under the same license. Cite the ICLR 2019 paper when you use it.
Size: ~200 hours, 1,276 performances. Paper
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GiantMIDI-Piano Commercial use unclear
Classical piano MIDI automatically transcribed from recordings, covering 2,786 composers.
License: CC BY 4.0. The README lists the license as CC BY 4.0, and downloading requires agreeing to a disclaimer that the data comes as is. The MIDI files are machine transcriptions of recordings found on YouTube.
Size: 10,855 files. Paper
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GigaMIDI Non-commercial
A very large symbolic music collection with annotations for detecting expressive performance and loops.
License: CC BY-NC 4.0. GigaMIDI is distributed under CC BY-NC 4.0 for non-commercial research and education only. Hugging Face gates access, and you must agree not to infringe copyright or harm the creative rights of artists.
Size: 2.1+ million files. Paper
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Aria-MIDI Non-commercial
Solo-piano MIDI transcribed from about 100,000 hours of recordings, with genre, composer and performer metadata.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The dataset card says Aria-MIDI is distributed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, and accessing it means agreeing to the authors' disclaimer. The transcription tools are released separately under Apache-2.0.
Size: 1,186,253 files. Paper
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Slakh2100 Commercial use unclear
2,100 multi-track songs rendered from Lakh MIDI files with professional sample libraries, with the aligned MIDI for every stem.
License: CC BY 4.0. Slakh2100 and Flakh2100 are licensed under CC BY 4.0, and the authors ask you to cite their WASPAA 2019 paper. The MIDI comes from the Lakh MIDI Dataset, so the same caveat about transcriptions of copyrighted songs applies.
Size: 2,100 tracks, 145 hours. Paper
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POP909 Commercial use unclear
Piano arrangements of 909 Chinese pop songs, with melody, bridge and piano tracks plus beat, chord and key annotations.
License: MIT (repository). The GitHub repository is MIT-licensed, and the authors ask you to cite the ISMIR 2020 paper. The MIDI files are arrangements of copyrighted popular songs, so the repository license does not grant rights in the songs themselves.
Size: 909 songs. Paper
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MetaMIDI Dataset Commercial use unclear
A large scraped MIDI collection with artist, title and genre metadata, and many files matched to Spotify and MusicBrainz.
License: Restricted access. Files are on Zenodo with restricted access: you must give your name, institution, contact details and research project, and agree not to share or distribute the dataset. The authors did not create the MIDI files and provide a list of the files' copyright meta-events instead.
Size: 436,631 files.
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Los Angeles MIDI Dataset Non-commercial
A large, de-duplicated MIDI collection for music information retrieval and music AI, with metadata and chord data.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The Hugging Face dataset card declares CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, although the companion GitHub code repository is Apache-2.0. The files were assembled from web scrapes, so the underlying songs keep their own copyrights.
Size: ~405,000 files.
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ADL Piano MIDI Commercial use unclear
Piano-only tracks extracted from the Lakh MIDI Dataset plus other public sources, organized by genre and artist.
License: Varies / unclear. The repository does not state a license. About 9,000 files are piano tracks taken from the Lakh MIDI Dataset (CC BY 4.0), and about 2,000 more were scraped from other public sources on the internet.
Size: 11,086 pieces. Paper
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Groove MIDI Dataset Commercial use OK
Expressive, tempo-aligned drumming by hired professional drummers on a Roland TD-11 kit, with synthesized audio.
License: CC BY 4.0. Google LLC releases the Groove MIDI Dataset under CC BY 4.0, which allows commercial use with attribution. The performances were recorded for the dataset rather than transcribed from existing songs.
Size: 1,150 files, 13.6 hours. Paper
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Expanded Groove MIDI Dataset (E-GMD) Commercial use OK
The Groove MIDI performances re-recorded through 43 drum kits, giving 444 hours of audio with velocity-annotated MIDI.
License: CC BY 4.0. Google LLC releases E-GMD under CC BY 4.0, and it is also mirrored on Zenodo under the same license. Cite the paper that introduced it.
Size: 444 hours. Paper
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NES Music Database (NES-MDB) Commercial use unclear
Multi-instrument scores from NES game soundtracks, extracted from the games' own sound data with expressive attributes.
License: MIT (repository). The repository is MIT-licensed. The music is from commercial Nintendo Entertainment System games, so the compositions remain under their publishers' copyrights.
Size: 5,278 songs from 397 games. Paper
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ASAP (Aligned Scores and Performances) Non-commercial
Western classical piano scores aligned with MIDI performances and beat, downbeat, key and time-signature annotations.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The README says the dataset is available under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, so it may not be used commercially and derivatives must be shared alike.
Size: 236 scores, 1,067 performances.
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ATEPP Commercial use unclear
Expressive piano performances by 49 virtuoso pianists, transcribed from existing audio recordings.
License: CC BY 4.0. The README states CC BY 4.0, while the GitHub repository metadata lists CC0-1.0, and downloading requires agreeing to a disclaimer. The MIDI files are transcriptions of existing commercial recordings.
Size: 11,674 performances (~1,000 hours). Paper
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Bach Doodle Dataset Commercial use OK
Melodies entered by users of the 2019 Bach Doodle, each with a MIDI of the melody and a MIDI of its Coconet harmonization plus metadata.
License: CC BY 4.0. Google LLC makes the dataset available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Cite the ISMIR 2019 Bach Doodle paper when you use it.
Size: 21.6 million harmonizations. Paper
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PDMX Varies by file
Over 250,000 public-domain MusicXML scores from MuseScore, released with compressed MusicXML, PDF and MIDI files for each song where available.
License: CC BY 4.0. The Zenodo record is CC BY 4.0 and the scores were chosen from MuseScore's public-domain listings. The authors found that 12.29% of songs (31,221) carry a different license inside the file than on the website, flag them in a license_conflict column, and recommend the no_license_conflict subset.
Size: 250K+ scores. Paper
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MidiCaps Commercial use unclear
Lakh MIDI Dataset files paired with text captions describing genre, mood, key, tempo, chords and instrumentation.
License: CC BY-SA 4.0. The Hugging Face dataset card lists CC BY-SA 4.0. The MIDI files come from the Lakh MIDI Dataset, so the same caveat applies: many are transcriptions of copyrighted songs.
Size: 168k files. Paper
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EMOPIA Commercial use unclear
Pop piano clips with emotion labels on the valence-arousal quadrants, provided as audio and MIDI transcriptions.
License: CC BY 4.0. The Zenodo record is CC BY 4.0. The MIDI clips are machine transcriptions (made with GiantMIDI) of pop piano covers found on YouTube, so rights in the underlying songs are not cleared.
Size: 1,087 clips from 387 songs. Paper
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ComMU Non-commercial
Short MIDI phrases written by professional composers, each tagged with 12 kinds of metadata such as BPM, key, instrument, track role and chord progression.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The README says the ComMU dataset is released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, is provided primarily for research and may not be used for commercial purposes.
Size: 11,144 samples. Paper
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MusicNet Varies by file
Freely licensed classical recordings with aligned note labels, released with the reference MIDI files used to build the labels.
License: CC BY 4.0. The Zenodo record is CC BY 4.0. The recordings are Creative Commons and public-domain performances, and the metadata file records where each recording and MIDI file came from, so check it for individual files.
Size: 330 recordings. Paper
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Weimar Jazz Database (WJazzD) Commercial use unclear
Jazz solo transcriptions from the Jazzomat Research Project, released as a SQLite database plus a ZIP of unquantized MIDI files of all solos.
License: ODbL. The download page says the database is released under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL), which allows reuse with attribution and share-alike for the database. The solos are transcriptions of recorded improvisations, and the license does not address rights in the underlying recordings or tunes.
Size: 456 solos.
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Vienna 4x22 Piano Corpus Commercial use OK
22 professional pianists each playing the same 4 classical excerpts, as performance MIDI with aligned scores in MIDI, MusicXML and PDF.
License: CC BY 4.0. The repository is based on Werner Goebl's official Vienna 4x22 dataset, used under CC BY 4.0, and its updates are also CC BY 4.0, so commercial use is allowed with attribution.
Size: 88 performances.
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Batik-plays-Mozart Non-commercial
12 complete Mozart piano sonatas played by Roland Batik on a computer-monitored Bösendorfer, as MIDI note-aligned to scores and annotations.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The repository's LICENSE is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, so the data may not be used commercially and derivatives must be shared alike. The matching audio is sold commercially and not included.
Size: 36 movements. Paper
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PiJAMA Non-commercial
Over 200 hours of solo jazz piano MIDI, automatically transcribed from thousands of recordings.
License: CC BY-NC 3.0 (repository). The GitHub repository, which holds the metadata and download script, carries a CC BY-NC 3.0 license. The MIDI itself is downloaded from a Zenodo record, so check that record's terms; the files are machine transcriptions of commercial recordings.
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XMIDI Commercial use unclear
108,023 MIDI files labelled with emotion and genre, about 5,278 hours in total, downloaded as one ZIP from Google Drive.
License: Not stated. The repository has no license file and its README states no terms beyond asking researchers to cite the paper, and it does not say where the MIDI files came from. Treat it as research-only until the authors clarify.
Size: 108,023 files.
Other sources
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Popular sites whose files are free to download but not openly licensed. Fine for personal study; check the terms before anything else.
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Kunst der Fuge Non-commercial
A large archive of classical MIDI files, free for a few downloads a day and unlimited with a subscription.
License: Site terms. Files may be copyrighted by their sequencers and carry an embedded copyright label. The site asks you not to distribute any file without its written permission, and any non-personal use requires reading its terms.
Size: 20,000+ files.
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Classical Archives Non-commercial
A long-running classical music site with a MIDI section that can be browsed by composer or contributor.
License: Site terms. The terms limit use to personal, noncommercial use and forbid distributing, modifying or creating derivative works from the content. They also prohibit scraping and text and data mining, including for AI.
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MIDIWORLD Commercial use unclear
A long-running site of free classical, jazz and original MIDI files plus MIDI basics.
License: Varies / unclear. The site accepts only classical, jazz and original files because of copyright, and it does not publish a license for the files. Ask the sequencer before reusing a file.
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VGMusic Non-commercial
The Video Game Music Archive, collecting fan-sequenced MIDI arrangements of game soundtracks since 1996.
License: Varies / unclear. VGMusic says every file is copyrighted by its sequencer and you should contact the author before using one in a project. The files are fan arrangements of copyrighted game music, so the original publishers' rights also apply.
Size: 31,806 files.
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BitMidi Commercial use unclear
A browser-playable index of MIDI files that grew from a large zip of web-collected MIDIs.
License: Varies / unclear. BitMidi does not state a license for its files, which came from a zip of web-collected MIDIs posted to Reddit. Many are arrangements of copyrighted pop, film and game music.
Size: 113,229 files.
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FreeMidi.org Commercial use unclear
A user-contributed collection of MIDI files sorted by genre and artist, mostly popular songs.
License: Varies / unclear. The site does not publish a license or terms for its files. Most files are arrangements of copyrighted popular songs, so reuse beyond personal listening or practice needs permission from the rights holders.
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abcnotation.com tune search Varies by file
A search engine over hundreds of thousands of ABC tunes from online collections, with a score and MIDI file generated for each tune.
License: Varies by tune. There is no blanket license. The site says copyright music is never knowingly returned in search results without the composer's consent: score and sound files are usually excluded for tunes with a named composer unless the tune is traditional, out of copyright or the composer has agreed. Tunes from consenting composers stay under the composer's copyright, so contact them for any commercial use.
Nothing matches. Try a broader search.
Working with the files
Parse and clean files with SMF libraries such as mido, pretty_midi or symusic; for machine learning, see the ML and dataset tooling sections of the catalog. The Standard MIDI Files chapter explains the format byte by byte.