Open Media Review » Open Music

DIY Music Manual Has Been Released

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:49:03 +0000

In my past interviews with Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan, they mentioned a rework of their fantastic book, “The Indie Band Survival Guide”. The new edition would allow them to expand on their research and would be targeted primarily at musicians in Europe. That book, “The DIY Music Manual”, is now available. I’d say even if the local specific legal chapters don’t apply, this is probably work checking out for the extra time the guys have had to further hone this fantastic book. If you are in Europe, then you are in luck because I can think of few other people I would trust to have done their homework and get the details you need to know as an independent creator correct.

Financial Times (UK) Article Urging Copyright Holders to Embrace Downloads

Thomas Gideon — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:10:40 +0000

An industry group, The MCP-PRS Alliance, representing primarily songwriters, publishers and composers, in conjunction with online measurement company, Big Champagne, has released a study that strongly suggests the cost of piracy is well worth the opportunities for success afforded by embracing online downloads and pay-what-you-will pricing models.

Reader Kevin Crosby sent in the story with the following comment:

An article in the Financial Times urging the music industry in particular to stop fighting piracy and start embracing the technology instead. The author suggests that the cost of stamping out piracy is the equivalent of throwing good money after bad. What if the music industry routed all the money spent on lawyers and investigators to the development of a new business model?

The study seems primarily, if not exclusively based on Radiohead’s experimental online release of their album, In Rainbows. The researchers strongly suggest, though, that this example among others lowers the bar for others looking to build new business models and experiment with their own distribution and pricing.

Technorati Tags: filesharing, p2p, radiohead

|\| | |/| – Trent Reznor to fans: “Thank you”

Kaity G. B. — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:48:18 +0000

I’m sure you’ve heard of this by now… but have you heard it yet?

I’ve been listening to the FLAC version since Monday. &All I could possibly say is wow! . . . no *uberWow*.

‘theslip’ is nine inch nails latest album. But unlike ‘Ghost[1-4]‘ nin’s last four digital albums, which Trent Reznor also released online. Where as Ghost gave you the option to pay; theslip is only available for free. Than with theslip you also get all of the cover art, inserts, &etc with the downloads.

Which after you download, you can do literally anything with. I’m already playing around w/remixing portions of track 7 & 9. They’re my two personal faves, for the moment at least.

The last difference between Ghost &theslip is the where as Ghost[1-4] were only instrumentals/digital. theslip is just as lyrically intense as nin’s previous halo albums.

So, as always, take a few minutes or hours, depending on your bandwidth, than, what else? enjoy yourself!

clipped from dl.nin.com

999,999
1,000,000
letting you
discipline
echoplex
head down
lights in the sky
corona radiata
the four of us are dying
demon seed

length: 43:45

streaming audio
available at iLike.

the slip is licensed under a
creative commons attribution
non-commercial
share alike license.

we encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc.

www.nin.com

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are
giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free,
exclusively via nin.com.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or
M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD
quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options – all free.
all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

D(iscover) the R(eal) M(eaning) of ‘free’

Kaity G. B. — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:09:41 +0000

Just to make sure I haven’t confused anyone no there is no DRM on the music at opsound. &Yeah you’re prolly thinking: okay this is prolly a bunch of hippy crap or looped-samples. Well you could prolly find it there, I haven’t yet. Instead its inspired my current, &now entire, music collection. As an open source artist where I express my art using code, distributed as software, &completely truly for free. I’ve always felt this was the best model of distributing art, of all forms. Before there was Beatnik Turtle, Geoff Smith, or Jonathan Coulton(all of whom I love). But first there was opsound the ‘free’ record label. My fave feature: their feeds. Genres, artists, newest songs, &more they offer feeds for them all. So go browse their online store, find some new music, have way to much fun, &support them &their artists. Tell your friends; send opsound &their artists emails; see want free media can really be; &most importantly enjoy yourself. Oh… &you can donate too, *wink*

clipped from opsound.org

opsound

Opsound is a gift economy in action, an experiment in applying the model of free software to music. Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft license developed by Creative Commons. Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine.

Anyone is encouraged to contribute sound files to the Opsound’s open sound pool.

All material for the sound pool will be released under a Creative Commons license (the “Attribution-ShareAlike license“), a copyleft license in the spirit of open source software license which allows for all kinds of copying, remixing, use, and reuse while retaining an attribution to the original artist. [more info]

Opsound: Free Love, Free Music.

SXSW Torrent

Mur Lafferty — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:48:17 +0000

If you’re like me and are unable to attend South by Southwest (wah), the following information might be of use to you – Jason writes to tell us that Wired reports you can Download SXSW 2008 Showcase Bands in One Big Torrent File – check out all the bands that are featured at the show!

[EDIT: link fixed, sorry!]

New NIN Album Available in Part for Free, with CC License

Thomas Gideon — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:33:21 +0000

It looks like every aspect of this album was experimental, what started as an EP ended up as four volumes totaling 36 tracks.

Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing.

Like In Rainbows the album is available as a download and a premium physical package. Unlike that work, the prices are already set. The first volume, 9 tracks, is available entirely for free as high quality MP3 files without a need to provide anything other than your email address. All of the editions, free, download and pay include a download component that comes with absolutely no DRM whatsoever. For only $5 you can get all four albums as a download in the same format, plus some additional formats, including lossless ones like FLAC. Both download editions come with some extra goodies like a 40-page PDF and some desktop wallpapers and the like.

The physical editions contain many more extras along with the physical media. Each one appears to include all of the goodies of the cheaper editions so it really is more of choice of how much you want to spend. The $300 ultra deluxe, limited edition includes premiums like high quality, hard cover books and even vinyl. Given all of the extras in all of the for pay versions, I doubt anyone unwilling to pay for the more expensive editions will feel at all shorted. I am going to grab the $10 edition which seems like an absolute steal considering what you get.

Here’s the real silver lining, on the FAQ page, plain as day, the license for all editions: CC BY-NC-SA. That means as long as you don’t sell it, you are free to share and better yet, you are explicitly allowed to remix just so long as you re-distribute anything you create under the same license conditions. This license choice sets Ghosts I-IV apart from similar experiments and clearly shows that Reznor gets how sharing and enabling his fans is a reward that will no doubt encourage many to seriously consider going ahead and putting down the change for one of the non-free editions.

Note: I just got my download link and here’s a clarification. When you download you have to choose a format. The choices are great, but you have to pick one and once you do, you cannot use the link again. The advice on the page is good but having to choose is a bit of a pain. The MP3 option is the highest quality possible with that format. Either of the lossless formats can be burned to CD and re-ripped without any quality loss that you wouldn’t incur ripping a pre-produced CD, so something to think about if you are an audiophile. Since I opted for one of the CD packages, I am considering the download something to hold me over until they start shipping in April so I went with the MP3 option.

KODA Extends CC License Support to All Members

Thomas Gideon — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:04:47 +0000

I wrote last week about KODA, the Danish royalty collecting society, allowing Tone and her label, Urlyd, to release her new album, Small Arm of Sea, under a CC license without having to forego royalty collection for radio play. Traditionally, collecting societies have refused to collect for works artists wish to release using any kind open or free licenses like Creative Commons.

I speculated that the label, Urlyd, was the real driver behind this experiment, based on the tone and content of their press release. I also predicted that Urlyd would expand this experiment to include more of their artists.

I am happy to report I was wrong. The Creative Commons blog reports that KODA is extending support for CC licenses to all of its members. Only the collecting societies in The Netherlands have done this before. The only stipulation KODA is placing on the offer is that the CC licenses must including the non-commercial (NC) condition. This makes sense and reinforces my point that there is plenty of room for everyone to benefit for these sorts of dual commercial/non-commercial licensing arrangements.

First Electronica Album Released under CC, with Radio Royalties Too

Thomas Gideon — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:37:39 +0000

I saw this on Boing Boing last week and discussed it on my last podcast.

In book publishing, there are many examples of CC works being licensed commercially without conflict, though there is much discussion about what type of author this benefits most, newer ones or established. The article claims this is the first electronic album, “Small Arm Sea” by Tone, to strike a similar balance. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the first album regardless of genre. It seems the collecting societies, the organizations responsible for collecting royalties from radio play, have universally refused to collect for works released under Creative Commons licenses.

The label, Urlyd, and society, KODA, in this case are both located in Denmark, a country which I have seen in the news over the years with some more progressive stances on access to information and information technology in general. That may be a factor, here. Regardless, this example should help prove to a reluctant industry that this sort of dual licensing can work, ideally quite well.

The CC license in question is explicitly non-commercial so essentially non-overlapping with radio play and other commercial uses. It also looks like the label may be interested in using this license with other artists, not just this one, Tone (aka Sofie Nielsen).

The details of the free download is similar in many ways to Radiohead’s experiment last year. There are physical versions of the album available that add features above and beyond those of the free version. If you follow the links through to the download page, you’ll even see a PayPal donate button so you can choose to support the artist even if you just grab the free version of the album. One could argue that the only difference, really, is that Tone is less known. One of her singles, though, hit number four on the Danish national charts. I don’t think it is a fair characterization, anyway, as all acts were relatively unknown at the start.

The contrast between an established act and a new one exploring these new opportunities is informative, though. Radiohead could probably take or leave the idea on their next album. If Tone is at all successful, hopefully she and Urlyd will release her next album the same way, rewarding the fans who supported her to that point.

I have downloaded the free album and can say I enjoyed it. The electronica genre covers a lot of territory and Tone’s work is softer, more informed by Jazz influences. Her vocals on some tracks reminds me strongly of Bjork but a bit more mellow. If this sounds like your cup of tea, download the album yourself and if you enjoy it, donate or buy the album on CD or DVD.

Reviews: Funny Music

Mur Lafferty — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:21:41 +0000

Funny musicians (filk, parody, satire, etc) have long seen the Internet as a way to distribute their music to gain a larger following, and as a longtime fan of “Weird Al”, I’ve been expanding my knowledge of several musicians through open media.

Favorites: Throwing Toasters- Grant Baciocco’s band (podcast fans will recognize him as the brilliance behind The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd) is one of my new favorites, with hysterical, non-swearing songs (he doesn’t swear but he does get mildly suggestive in his songs. Still, I play his stuff for my kid and she loves it as much as I do.) In an attempt to write a sentence without a parenthetical, I will say that Throwing Toasters music is not officially Creative Commons licensed, but during an interview Grant told me that the only thing he was adamant about re: his music is that it’s attributed to him, as any non-attributed funny song online usually ends up as a Weird Al attribution.

Favorite songs: Debbie, ScrewU, The R.A. Song, Patrick the Spoiler

The FuMP- The Funny Music Project is a podcast set up by some of the biggest names in funny music: The Great Luke Ski, Tom Smith, Worm Quartet, Sudden Death*, Rob Balder, Raymond and Scum, Robert Lund and Possible Oscar. They post two news songs a week, many of them new, and are totally podsafe (in fact they encourage podcasters’ use). You can download the songs for free at a lower quality, or buy higher quality songs. You can also get a subscription that includes all the songs at high quality, and a compilation CD mailed to you. The songs are also released via podcast (RSS feed here). This is an excellent way to learn about the hottest bands in funny music these days.

* Tom Rockwell of Sudden Death has his own weekly funny music podcast called Manic Mondays.