I’ve been wanting to write an article on the Creative Commons music scene for a while.  This is a subject that I find fascinating and quite honestly really inspirational.  As a precursor for the uninitiated let me first try to quickly explain the concept of Creative Commons.  Creative Commons is an Not for Profit Organization that released a number of licences freely to the public.  Unlike pure copyright, these licences allow the creator to indicate which rights they wish to either waive or reserve.

A common mistunderstanding is that Creative Commons is an alternative to copyright.  This is not the case; let me explain.  Copyright is a principle of Law.  If you create a video or a piece of music, your work is protected by the laws of copyright in your country.  Copyright says that by default, people cannot copy, perform, distribute, broadcast or otherwise use your creation without your explicit consent.  The exception being Fair Use, but I’m not going to go  into that here.  Creative Commons licences do not replace copyrights.  What Creative Commons does is modify some of the default principals of copyright.

So as an example, lets take the Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons licence.  A work carrying this licence carries all the protections that copyright grants; however you may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it so long as you give the author credit for the work in the manner specified and use it only for noncommercial purposes.  In addition, the ShareAlike part stipulates that any derivative work you your create must carry the same license as the original.  The original artist still owns the work.

I used the above example on purpose.  On the internet today is a thriving community of first rate musicians, DJ’s and artists who are creating music and releasing it using the same Creative Commons licence I just described.  The intention being that creating a piece of music is not so much the end goal but a foundation on which other artists can build upon.

We are seeing websites that are designed with the intention of facilitating musical collaboration.  Tracks, musical parts and samples are released on these sites using Creative Commons licences.  Other artists are encouraged to download these components and remix them into entirely new pieces.  It’s a brilliant idea.  The leading site in this regard is ccMixter.org .  Catering to both the artist and the music enthusiast.  I encourage you to go have a look at their About Page as they explain the concept quite succinctly.  This site is really the place to be if you’re into remixing, sampling and mash-ups.  Often the site will be hosting a “call to remix” or “secret Mixter” (similar to a Secret Santa).  Truly novel ideas when it comes to musical production.  There are also a number of artists who release a cappella tracks.  This encourages people to put together songs using these vocals.  The result is a torrent of remixes based on this originating a cappella performance.  The differences and creativity in the output is really astounding.  A number of innovative mainstream artists have released samples to the site, Beastie Boys, Chuck D and David Byrn to name a few.  I recommend you have a look the Picks page for the best of the best and what’s hot at any given time.

Another website that operates with the same principle is Indabamusic.com. Indaba Music, like ccMixter is a site designed for inter-artist collaboration and idea sharing. The site features an enormous library of clips that are Creative Commons and it allows users to work with. Collaboration is the name of the game with Indaba. The admit that they’ll never replace being in the same room with other musicians, but they if this is the alternative it’s still great! Like ccMixter, Indaba hosts remix contests. These often feature mainstream artists: The Roots, Mariah Carey, Yo-Yo Ma, John Legend, Crystal Method, Alkaline Trio to name a few.

The second site you need to visit on our tour is Jamendo.com.  Unlike ccMixter, Jamendo is more of a free music store where the content is for noncommercial use.  The site facilitates licensing should you wish to purchase commercial rights to songs.  Artists using Jamendo usually package their music in album format or as 4 or 5 song EP’s complete with cover art.  The Creative Commons licence is clearly displayed and for the most part the content is licenced as free for noncommercial use and ShareAlike.  Jamendo is very well laid out with a Billboard style chart and popularity rankings.  The music is tagged by genre so it’s really easy to find music in the genre you enjoy.  There’s also a free iPhone application that ties into the site and your account quite nicely.  I’ve grabbed some really great music off of Jamendo.  Go make an account.

Another site that’s certainly worth mentioning which I see as an up and coming Creative Commons superstar is Soundcloud.com.  Soundcloud is designed for artists and labels to upload and showcase music and easily allow tracks to be shared and listened to by other Soundcloud artists and certainly the public.  The way the site facilitates these activities is really spectacular.  They offer a lot of great tools including dropboxes, an API for 3rd party developers and of course the Soundcloud Player which is central to the sites functionality.  Apart from simply allowing playback, the player allows for comments to be added to the tracks chronologically during playback which is a great idea as you’ll see.  Many of the comments that listeners leave are specific to that moment in time during playback.  Check it out below and you’ll see what I mean in this great track, a Lisa Mitchell remix by Nilow (Licenced as CC-BY).

Lisa Mitchell – Neopolitan Dreams (Nilow Rmx) by bf-recordings

Now Soundcloud isn’t a pure Creative Commons site like Jamendo and ccMixter.  In fact, most of the music on Soundcloud is not available for download and carries standard copyright.  I felt the need to include it here however because they do have full support for Creative Commons licenses.  An artist who uploads a track can specifiy at that time what the licencing is, all rights reserved, no rights reserved (public domain) or one of the many Creative Commons licenses.   Soundcloud have also gone to great lengths to put Soundcloud out there into social network scene.  There’s great integration with Wordpress, Blogger,  Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.  The problem is that Soundcloud, for whatever reason, will not let you search by licence type.  Until this feature is implemented it’s really not in the same class in so far as facilitating the use of Creative Commons material as Jamendo or ccMixter.  Get with it Soundcloud; your site rocks, make it rock^2.

There are a few other sites worth checking out too.

Magnatune.com with the motto “We are not evil” is primarily a music licensing site however offers all it’s music free for “Non-comercial use” as defined by the Creative Commons Licence.

Dogmazic.net based in France is predominantly Creative Commons site much like Jamendo and offers a lot of great artists.

Electrobel.be is another European offering.  Based in Belgium it features mostly electronic music. I find this site fairly inactive recently and the server seems to have issues more often than not.  There are however some great tracks hosted on it.

I don’t have a whole lot more to say about the subject.  My goal with this article was to introduce Creative Commons music to my readers and shed some light on this great concept and where to start exploring.  You might be asking yourself just what does the artist gain from Creative Commons.  There is some criticism towards Creative Commons in the sense that it conceivably destroys the means by which an artist would get paid.  Remember that Creative Commons was not designed with artist compensation in mind.  What Creative Commons does is introduce a flexible means for artists to distribute and share their works while retaining control over their rights.

The money question is less about Creative Commons and more about business models.  The business model that an artist or label uses is what really defines how profit and compensation are arrived at.  Exclusively selling CD’s for $24 in music stores while fighting in the courts against every person or entity that violates your copyrights is one business model.  Releasing your music free for download as Creative Commons and relying on file sharing between fans to create hype, then making profits from the sales of tickets to live shows is another business model.  Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is perhaps the one truly mainstream, “superstar rock god” who has embraced Creative Commons.  His last two albums, Ghosts I – IV and The Slip were released as free downloads with a Creative Commons Noncommercial licence.  Here’s a direct quote from Trent contained in the readme in the torrent file he released:

“Undoubtedly you’ll be able to find the complete collection on the same torrent network you found this file, but if you’re interested in the release, we encourage you to check it out at ghosts.nin.com, where the complete Ghosts I-IV is available directly from us in a variety of DRM-free digital formats, including FLAC lossless, for only $5. You can also order it on CD, or as a deluxe package with multitrack audio files, high definition audio on Blu-ray disc, and a large hard-bound book.”

The deluxe package was $75 and sold very quickly.  Sure, we are taking about Nine Inch Nails here and he has the kind of fan base to almost guarantee success with this sort of venture; however my point is that his was a different business model and even though the music was released for free, it was still a profitable venture.

I really enjoy listening to and discovering great artists on these sites.  So much so in fact that I have a Shoutcast station playing the content I like.  Check out Citizen Bane Radio for more information.  Visit the sites I mentioned in this article and most importantly, support the artists you find and enjoy.

Citizen Bane