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art copyleft creativecommons internet music

paniq is making an album

That’s right. The final goal has been reached, so Paniq & Sylvia now have all the funding they need to can this awesome piece of free music in the next months.
It’s great, it’s awesome and it’s gonna be free for everyone and all over the web (I think). Well it should be at least, so keep an eye open for this one cause this could be the start of a great new (r)evolution in online art and music making (see this post by @Kurreltheraven about it as well)  and it only took 190 folks to donate.

From Paniq’s post:

You people are awesome. I simply don’t know what to say other than: thank you, times and times again. Never would we have believed that it takes only 190 people and a few days to make something good happen.

Wicked. Now go make a smashing album!

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copyleft copyright creativecommons internet

going commercial

creativecommons.org

A while ago there was this product that came out on the Belgian market that allowed shopkeepers, barbers and anyone who was having a business to bypass the Belgian version of RIAA called SABAM by offering royalty free music in a box. You just had to hook up the little box to an audio system and it would play hours of music that SABAM could not claim any royalty fees for.

Since that little device isn’t cheap I figured the home-made way would be cheaper. You could use an old PC or a laptop and hook that up to your audio system. After all there’s tons of free music out there on archive.org and other sites right? Yes there is. But when I started digging around for some examples it turned out that even though that music is licensed under a Creative Commons license, most of it is restricted from commercial use.

The thing is that this “no commercial use” clause seems to make perfect sense when you publish something online at first. You don’t want someone use your music or pictures just like that and get filthy rich off it, without effort? But the thing is that this clause also prevents all sorts of indirect commercial use that’s not meant to make money off the sweat of your back. Someone might want to use that awesome photo in a business presentation. No can do. Someone might want to play your music in his bar. Nope, can’t do that either. That person might even be a DJ playing at a paid gig. In theory he can’t play any tunes licensed under the non-commercial clause, but you might want that promotion right? Non-commercial turns out to be a bit of a grey area it seems, and it’s clear that the Creative Commons lads are struggling with it as well.

So the question is: what’s the risk of putting your stuff out there under a Creative Commons license that does allow commercial use? Are you going to be ripped off? Maybe. But people are ripping off copyrighted material every day. So it doesn’t matter what kind of license you slap on it? If someone wants to violate it, they will, no matter what. Publishing material under a more liberal license just opens more possibilities for people to use it for all the right reasons. Isn’t that what we are aiming for in the first place? Look at the Open Source movement as an example. There’s no clause in the popular licenses that prevents commercial use. In fact, that’s one of the reasons that Open Source Software is so mature and widely used this day.
I know that software and finished products like music, photo’s, video’s and text are not the same. Software is never really a finished product as it continuously evolves, but the idea is the same.

Paniq does it for all his music for example. He does it for the above mentioned reasons and services like Jamendo sell his music to shopkeepers, barbers and bartenders so they can play this royalty free music without having to pay fees to a silly copyright organisation like SABAM. They pay the artist a percentage of the sales afterwards, so it’s good karma all around.
So I thought I’d go commercial too where I can. My Flickr pictures can now be used commercially, and these awesome wallpapers (if I may say so myself) as well.

Just think about it, the next time you pick a cc-license.

Photo by Andrew*, cc-licensed.

Categories
art creativecommons internet music opensource

help paniq make his new free album

Here’s an interesting business model for ya. Paniq, which latest free cc-licensed album I blogged about before, is going to make a brand-new album. This time however he’s putting his day-job on hold for a few months to fully concentrate on the creation of his music and see if that changes the outcome (hoping it’ll sound totally awesome I guess). Since this will cut in on his cash-flow, he’s looking at the internet to fund his poor artists’ ass while he’s working on the album.

If you’re thinking, “Hey, I don’t mind chipping in a few bucks or euros for some good free music!” then by all means head over to the album’s website and make a donation. It’s conveniently called the-album.cc, so you can’t miss. If you’re feeling very generous you’ll even get extra benefits, ranging from a thank-you on the album booklet, a physical copy of the album or a stripper coming to perform the album live in your bedroom!

Well, that last one I made up, but there are some cool options in there if you’re willing to lay down the cash, so check it out.

Also, worth nothing for the open source zealots out there. The album will be made completely on free software. Awesome.
So? Is “The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet” going to get finished?

Well. It’s up to us, really.

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creativecommons download geek mystuff n3wjack wallpaper

geek space invader wallpaper

Space invaders. Probably one of the first computer games I ever played on a console. The blocky invaders have turned into pieces of geek culture all by themselves showing up all over the place from graffiti to tattoos and post-it art. So at one point I ran into this image on Flickr with yet another space invader on it and thought it would be great to use that as a desktop wallpaper somehow. I tried it out but didn’t like the result enough so I decided to make my own. From there I had a template to create some more and now I’m putting them up here for you to download. Yay!

All images are Creative Commons licensed so you can use them quite freely and share them with anyone you like. To maintain the crispness of the awesome gradient backgrounds (yeah, that’s about how far my Gimping skills go) all images are saved in PNG format for maximum quality. I’m also sharing the original GIMP XCF project files with these so that you can go ahead and create your own smashing mash-up of the space invader wallpaper suited to your own personal taste. There’s a template in there with the space invader ranging from very small to rather large. New backgrounds, new resolutions, new compositions, it’s all within your grasp if you get yourself a free copy of GIMP. Don’t forget to link back here if you create something truly awesome btw. I don’t mind some kick-ass wallpapers myself.

All files are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike license just to keep things a tad fair and make sure that everyone finds it way to the source files and gets the same chances of being creative with them. It’s all about the sharing baby!

Images are available in a blue, gold and green background and in 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900 and 1680×1050 screen sizes.

Click the images to get a larger preview. Right-click the image popup and choose “Save as” to save the background.

Categories
creativecommons internet music producing

soundcloud is where the cool cats are at

Since some of you seem to be digging the free samples posts I’ve been putting up maybe this one will be right up your alley as well. There’s a bunch of music-sharing websites out there by now, or simply sites that allow in one way or the other to put your music up there in a play-list like Myspace. A newcomer on the internet block is Soundcloud however and it’s picking up like a twister. All the cool kids are on it I see. Chaps like Moby and A Guy Called Gerald for example and this guy. Or collaborative stuff like Tara Bush’s free mp3 Mondays.

Soundcloud feels a bit like the Flickr of music. It’s slick, works smooth and allows you to share your tracks with the world, create or join groups, comment and get commented on, you know the drill,  the whole social web 2.0 deal. Cool thing is that it also gives you a neat graphical view of the tracks you’re playing, allows for super-easy embedding in your own website with the same graphical splendour. If you want to comment on that awesome second drop in a track, that’s possible. Just click the second where it starts and enter your comment. “OMGWTF” for example. The author will appreciate it.

Looking for a easy way to share and host music, or just feel like browsing through an already impressive collection of free music by genre? Soundcloud is the place to be it seems.

Photo by polas, cc-licensed.