In these days of social distancing, it can be difficult to find places to buy sheet music, and even many online dealers don’t keep large inventory in stock. In many cases, the best available options are either big box music stores or online dealers of digital scores which can be downloaded. In this post we’ll explore some various options for where to purchase sheet music online.
Sheet Music Plus
I’m a huge fan of Sheet Music Plus for purchasing sheet music online, mainly because they have just about every piece of sheet music you could ever want, often with a wide variety of difficulty levels and with a wide variety of instrumentations. The downside of this is that arrangements on Sheet Music Plus can also come with a wide variety of quality. It helps to do your due diligence by checking out recordings, YouTube, or even the arranger’s or composer’s website. But given the open nature of how new music is submitted, Sheet Music Plus offers an excellent opportunity to get some incredibly original and interesting sheet music online. If you prefer to stick with known entities, sheet music from many of the major publishing houses is also available from Sheet Music Plus, and their search engine will allow you to search by publisher.
Click here to browse piano music at Sheet Music Plus
musicnotes.com
Founded in 1998, musicnotes has been one of the world’s best places to buy sheet music online for many years. MusicNotes has over 300,000 titles to choose from in a wide variety of instrumentations, and their in-house team of arrangers is top notch. You’ll find a little more consistency with MusicNotes with regard to quality of arrangements and the layout of the scores, but you’ll pay a little more for it. That said, what you’ll get will be excellent quality and they’ll have many of the latest and most popular titles in their online catalog.
Click here to browse titles on musicnotes.com
Piano Pronto
While more of a specific niche, Piano Pronto fulfills a valuable need in the piano music world for Jennifer Eklund’s incredibly thoughtful and skillfully created series for piano students. She and her team of composers of sheet music for beginner to medium level piano students as either a physical copy or a digital version. Many piano teachers get most of their sheet music from Piano Pronto as Eklund’s series offers material for all age groups and with enough variety to keep all students entertained while they’re learning. The available of this sheet music online in digital format make Piano Pronto an excellent source for piano music.
Click here to browse titles from Piano Pronto
Sam Ash
I never realized what a great selection of sheet music was available at Sam Ash until I wandered into their midtown Manhattan location. As I walked past their sheet music department each time I walked through their store on West 36th Street, I would notice the many titles available. This got me curious enough to browse the various titles they had available in their online sheet music store. I discovered that Sam Ash had a large array of sheet music available through their online store.
While Sam Ash doesn’t sell sheet music for download, they have such a large assortment of titles that it’s hard to ignore. At a time when smaller neighborhood stores might not be able to stay open, Sam Ash ships sheet music from multiple fulfillment centers, offer curbside pickup at many locations, and have many of the standard sheet music available in many different genres including classical, pop, method books, and much more.
Click here to browse titles from Sam Ash
Amazon
You read that right! Amazon has a great selection of sheet music online, both in hard copy and in download version through their Kindle store. A quick search through the sheet music available online through Amazon reveals music in a wide variety of styles, for many different instruments, and for all different levels. While not a complete source for all of your sheet music needs, Amazon can provide most of the sheet music that most teachers would need for their students.
That said, it would still be necessary to augment Amazon’s offerings with more specialized selections in order to meet the needs of all students, but it’s very helpful to know that Amazon provides a formidable selection of sheet music titles through their online catalog.
Click here
Summary
In these unprecedented times, we need music and art more than ever. It’s easy to begin to feel disconnected from the human experience while we’re social distancing. It’s reassuring to know that participation and growth in music studies doesn’t have to disappear from our lives just because our local music store might be closed or have limited availability. We now have many excellent sources to purchase our sheet music online in either hard copy of digital format which can be easily delivered to our doorstep in a matter of days or to our computer’s desktop in a matter of minutes.
Some of the links on this website are affiliate links of which Music Learning Hub receives a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you.
