How It All Began25 Years of Stretta Music

In 2026, Stretta Music celebrates its 25th anniversary. Today, our company employs 45 people at its Eibelstadt location, shipping up to 1,000 orders worldwide every day. It all began in the late 1990s in a small apartment in Würzburg – with a forgotten opera by Salieri and a bicycle trailer. Join us on a journey through the history of Stretta Music!

The Idea

The two founders and managing directors, Johan and Udo, already knew each other from their conducting studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Cologne. In 1996, they met again at the Mainfranken Theatre Würzburg as conductor and music director. As part of the Würzburg Mozart Festival, they decided to stage a forgotten opera by Antonio Salieri: “Cublai, gran kan de’ Tartari”. The opera had never been performed before – meaning that apart from the manuscript, no printed edition existed. A well-known German music publisher offered to publish the score but estimated a production time of four years. Johan and Udo did not want to wait that long and took matters into their own hands. Just three months later, the full score and orchestral parts were completed, and in 1998 they were able to present the opera’s world premiere in Würzburg. This experience led to an idea: musicians should be able to access sheet music quickly and easily!

The First Steps

To publish the opera’s music, Johan and Udo founded the publishing house attacca! in 1998. Since Udo had been programming software since the 1980s and was experienced in website development, creating their own website was a natural step. In 2000, they launched noten-umsonst.de for digital sheet music. Through this website, they offered self-prepared and attractively designed copyright-free editions of popular classical works. The founders themselves engraved all original scores, arrangements, and compositions digitally.

Customers received the music by subscribing to a newsletter created and managed by Udo. The project was initially financed through advertising embedded in the downloads.

Unfortunately, the launch of noten-umsonst.de coincided with the bursting of the dot-com bubble in early 2000. As a result, funding ran out before the business could be expanded further. This was especially frustrating, as the website had already gained over 60,000 subscribers within just a few months. Nevertheless, it already showed a clear demand among musicians for fast and easy access to sheet music online.

The Launch of Stretta Music

In 2001, Stretta Music GmbH was founded as an online mail-order business for sheet music, initially continuing noten-umsonst.de under the same brand umbrella. At that time, most sheet music was still sold in physical music stores. Offering sales and shipping – including digital sheet music – via a website was still a new idea. The founders pursued a dual strategy: although digital downloads were becoming increasingly popular, many musicians still preferred printed editions. Therefore, Stretta offered both downloads and physical sheet music from the beginning. The idea of free downloads was not abandoned and continued for a long time through the newsletter.

But Where Do You Store All the Sheet Music?

With no alternatives available, Johan turned his apartment on Reiserstraße in Würzburg into the company’s first location. Soon, the 20 square meters were no longer enough, so the storage was expanded into the garage of the Puppentheater Spielberg across the street.

Once all the sheet music had been stored, another problem arose: how should the orders be delivered to the post office?

Since postal pickup services were too expensive for the young company in the early 2000s, the founders had to improvise. The solution was a bicycle trailer, with which Johan rode to a mailbox every day, posting up to 40 orders – even on Sundays when necessary!

Things Are Looking Up

As the business gained momentum, Johan could barely move in his apartment due to the stacks of sheet music. Therefore, the company had to relocate again in early 2002. Over the following years, the business grew steadily, requiring repeated moves to avoid being buried under piles of sheet music. In 2011, Stretta Music finally moved to Landwehrstraße in Eisingen. Johan lived on the upper floors, while employees worked in the ground and basement levels, where significantly larger quantities of sheet music could be stored and shipped across Europe.

Running Out of Space Again!?

After a few years, the company once again reached its limits – sheet music was eventually stacked in almost every corridor. Johan and Udo therefore began searching for a larger building. Although Johan had long become accustomed to sharing his living space with thousands of music scores, it was time for Stretta Music to move into its own dedicated building. They eventually found a location in Eibelstadt, where Stretta relocated in 2021. Today, the headquarters, warehouse, and ample storage for tens of thousands of scores are located there.

Where We Stand Today

From a small startup in a Würzburg apartment delivering sheet music by bicycle trailer, Stretta Music has grown into a Europe-wide company. The founding duo has become a team of 45 employees serving hundreds of thousands of customers. This includes publications by Edition Stretta, our music publishing house founded in 2021. Musicians can also become part of Stretta by publishing their own compositions and arrangements via our webshop. In addition, we now exclusively distribute the catalogue of Symphonic Dimensions Publishing at our Eibelstadt location, a partnership established in autumn 2025. Since March 2026, we also operate our own printing line, enabling same-day production and shipping of sheet music.

Despite all these developments, customer satisfaction remains our top priority. Thank you for your trust – and we look forward to continuing to supply you with sheet music for the next 25 years.