Shareware music, inspired by Creative Commons
I’ve recently been listening and getting familiar with some of the talent that Magnatune has gathered together. Magnatune’s byline sounds awful familiar, but from what I can see, there is a fair, up-front deal with artists on a 50/50 split of paid licensing.
I’ve never really been into 1920’s blues, but I’ve recently discovered that and other talents that have delighted my ears.
The system is based on artists licensing their promotional works through a creative commons non-commercial licenses which allows magnatune to pump out their content both track-by-track and by category (great feature). These features makes sampling the content very easy, and they have a very easy to use purchasing system, if you are a commercial vendor making a film, radio show, for commercial purposes the site says you can have the transaction completed in 5 minutes.
This is a great application of the creative commons license ideas of lessig, however, my favorite piece of creative commons licensed material has to be My Life, Changed. This piece has two tracks, each composed by different people, Colin Mutchler a guitarist who layed down the first track, My Life - followed by Cora Beth who presumably found the original My Life and layed down the second track, a violin.
Enjoy, and support the artists that are using these models, it’s crucial to getting more variety, and besides, you know they are seeing the money, not some media company CEO.
