Does anyone know why some orchestras post excerpt lists (the music as pdf files and/or just a list) online while others chose not to? Is there any good reason to send this by regular mail only?

I noticed that the Minnesota Orchestra and Toronto Symphony don’t list excerpts online while many other orchestras do, LA Phil, Houston Symphony, etc. Is this all arbitrary?

I suppose it's arbitrary in the sense that some orchestras simply don't choose to make the audition list available to anyone other than the auditioning candidates. This is pretty much their prerogative, and I'm sure there are various rationale for either situation.

Regarding .pdf's of the excerpts themselves, I already have seen some orchestras play fast and loose with copyright restrictions. For example, one .pdf of the 1st trumpet part to a rental work that's on every audition has made it into the hands of nearly every player I know, free of charge thanks to a very generous orchestra's audition which took place a few years ago. They simply put .pdf's of everything on the list on their website. Good or bad in principle? You be the judge. But the law is quite clear on which side it stands for at least some of those pieces!

I love it when they do this, especially when they have the excerpts clearly marked so there's no doubt about any measure numbers (say if your copy has rehearsal letters instead of numbers) or editions. As for the copyright issue, I don't think it's a big deal if they're just posting excerpts. It's not like they're posting the entire symphony or piece. I have everything by now: parts, excerpt books, excerpts, copies of excerpts, & the cd-roms come in mighty handy too. It's like digital music vs the real thing on cd, a lot of people will still want to have their own official copies. Having copies made readily available to print anywhere is just very convenient, esp. if you accidentally leave something (which I've done, esp. w/ piccolo excerpts). I often email myself excerpts, & this has come in very handy.

Even when an orchestra distributes copyrighted excerpts, the orchestra still needs to gain permission from the copyright holder in order to pass out excerpts for the audition. While it is obvious that most musicians have copies of parts especially of common excerpts, it becomes extremely difficult for anyone to govern a website which has .pdf files available for download. Most publishing houses do not have contractual language that has allowance for website usage, as this a fairly new advancement, and because of that, often times do not allow it, plain and simple. I know that my colleagues and I take the matter of copyright very seriously, but sometimes confusion over copyright law leads to missteps by librarians, management, and musicians.