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Recordings and terms

Where the music comes from

Every excerpt in this game is a recording that may legally be played where you are:

• Openly licensed recordings (Creative Commons BY, BY-SA, CC0) and recordings their performers released to the public domain. They may be played in every country, with the credit shown after each round and listed below.
• Historical recordings whose protection has ended in your country. The term differs between countries (for example, recordings released by 1962 are free in the European Union, but only those released by 1925 are free in the United States), so these excerpts are offered only where they are in the public domain.
• YouTube Shorts published on the Guess Composer channel, whose music YouTube licenses through its Shorts audio library or its "Remix / Use this sound" feature. They play in YouTube's own embedded player, with YouTube's controls, branding and ads, and only where YouTube makes them available. When you watch one, YouTube's Terms of Service and Google's Privacy Policy apply, and YouTube may set cookies. The music is never copied off YouTube. This site's own ads are shown outside YouTube's player; the ads inside the player are YouTube's.

The music itself is either in the public domain where you are or covered by a licence from the relevant performing-rights organisation.

Availability by country

We choose excerpts according to the country your connection comes from. Visitors whose country cannot be determined, or who connect through a VPN, proxy or data centre, receive only recordings that are free everywhere. Please do not use technical means to appear to be in another country; doing so may make playback unlawful for you.

The game is not offered in countries whose law does not protect foreign recordings, as we cannot apply a consistent rule there.

Excerpts

Excerpts are at most 30 seconds long and fade in and out. Full recordings can be found through the source link shown after each round.

Privacy policy

Playing without an account. Your settings, best scores and favorites stay in your browser. A signed cookie, used for nothing else, holds the number of games you played today and lasts two days. We count visits, games and shares per day and per country, and for each piece which composer players answered and how fast; these counts identify no one and use no cookie.

With an account. If you log in with Discord or Google, that service tells us an identifier and your display name; we do not ask for your email. We store them with your favorites and the number of games you played each day. A cookie, needed for the login and used for nothing else, keeps you logged in for 90 days. We do not sell or share this data, and we do not use it for advertising.

Deleting it. "Delete my account", on your account page, erases all of it at once. You can also remove our access in your Google account or under Authorized Apps in your Discord settings.

Who handles the data. Cloudflare hosts the site and the database. This site uses YouTube API Services: the embedded player is YouTube's, it may set cookies, and it is covered by the YouTube Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy. Ads inside that player are YouTube's.

Questions or complaints: to be added.

Corrections and takedown

If you believe an excerpt should not be available, please write to us with the title shown after the round; we will remove it while we check. Contact: to be added.

Portraits

Composer portraits come from Wikimedia Commons; each is public domain or under a free licence, and its author and licence are shown next to it in the game. The portraits behind the opening screen have their backgrounds removed and are distorted in motion; adaptations of CC BY-SA pictures are shared under the same licence.

Special pictures

This Week's Special combines, cropped, toned and resized, the first page of Debussy's manuscript of the Première rhapsodie (public domain, source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr) and a photograph of a clarinet (copyrighted free use, by Ratigan, Luna04 and Iunity at fr.wikipedia).

Period pictures

The period cards combine a photograph of a building of the time, an instrument drawing and a portrait, all from Wikimedia Commons. They are cropped, resized, darkened and cut out; adaptations of CC BY-SA pictures are shared under the same licence.

Credits for the recordings in the game