eMXR

Jay-Z and Alan Lomax

2011-09-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

A great illustration of current copyright law shortcomings is explained by Ethan Hein on his excellent blog about music and related topics. It explains how someone who has absolutely zero contribution to a copyrightable work can still have their name on it, not via striking a deal, but by inheritance of copyrights. It's a great read - including links to relevant youtube clips and a great infograph - just long enough to tell the story without becoming boring!

Ethan has numerous other blog entires which touch on quite a few topics of interest to music makers in general, and also specifically to remixers. For example his discussion about "samples and community" is a great perspective on what makes remixing such a seductive while simultaneously controversial part of music.

This is one of the very finest music related blogs I've bumped into. So it's now added to the "other blogs i like" section on the right.

ASCAP battling windmills

2010-07-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

OPINION: A little while ago, ASCAP, one of the US based performance royalty collecting societies became the latest volunteer in an increasingly amusing battle to turn back time long after others have already moved on. Quite frankly, I see this attack as being more dangerous to windmills than to the creative commons infrastructure and movement. And I feel sorry for the level of intellectual helplessness this attack implies.

Larry Lessig (one of the founders of some of the organizations ASCAP is vilifying) has his own response and challenge showing levels of truth and humor that the ASCAP attack so sadly lacks.

I publish stuff under creative commons licenses. Like this article. Or a little music with friends I've made online.

For me creative commons licenses are a gift by a bunch of nice lawyers and the people and organizations helping and donating to their cause, who wrote a number of template contracts (licenses) for free. Cool - I didn't have to hire a lawyer to write me a custom contract.

And because they have done that, content creators like me have these blanket contracts, which are reasonably well thought out and crafted, allowing us to protect our copyrights by setting conditions of use for our works. Contrary to what ASCAP says, Creative commons licenses are built totally within copyright concepts and law. Without it, they don't make sense.

Creators generally have a number one priority: get heard, seen and felt. Creative commons licenses quite possibly have stemmed the tide of stuff that might by now implicitly or explicitly go public domain, if that was the only way for an artist to get heard. So maybe ASCAP should be grateful to the Creative Commons and start idea generating dialogs rather than attacks.

However, all that being said, I understand the underlying pain ASCAP is feeling. It's the pain many an industry has gone through, as the product it produced became inexpensively available in higher quantities than the market needs. It doesn't take a degree in economics to know that individual revenues tend to go down when supply exceeds demand.

And here is where ASCAP gets it so wrong. ASCAP's enemy isn't the people who write a bunch of template licenses. Or at the very least they are not the only (nor even the first) enablers of this oversupply of music. The enablers of the oversupply of music include computer makers, the oh so very bad Internet, the writers of software (many of whom also give away (some) of their work for free!), makers of planes and ships who carry people and goods all over the world exchanging ideas and culture. And maybe above all, the oversupply of music is caused by the fact that so many people have some free time to create music. Some of it is even pretty good. And some of it is incredibly good. So you got more music than the market will bear. That brings down prices.

Of course that's hard to stomach for the people who got used to certain revenue levels, that are now shrinking. Sorry, but that's they way things go. And ASCAP isn't the first to feel that pain. Just a few years ago, software makers have been down that road brought on by pretty much the same technological advances and other societal evolutions. And the good one's have reinvented the industry. And make oodles of money in good part by writing software. Programming didn't become an extinct profession. Music composition won't either.

If ASCAP was smart, it would try to figure out how to align itself with the new reality of musical oversupply and create mechanisms that would make money for composers and publishers in the new reality rather than raising money for battles with falsely perceived enemies.

Why isn't ASCAP the organization who invents nifty ways of easily licensing music online, self serve and for prices that the market will bear? If a small label like Magnatune can do it, why not ASCAP? Why doesn't ASCAP offer a huge global online self-serve database service for compositional copyright registration and licensing? Or partner with someone. Or write a specification, so that service providers, labels and others could create something that inter-operates. Something that easily interacts with other royalty streams. There's a ton of good work waiting to be done by someone with industry insight and a true service commitment to their membership. Automobile Associations (also membership based) have evolved - why not ASCAP?

This is 2010, not 1914. The ASCAP founders did some breakthrough and novel thinking suitable to their times. Music creators could really use some of that forward thinking leadership now. Why wouldn't ASCAP want to provide that? And raise money for winning ideas embracing the present and the future rather than fighting loosing battles with imaginary enemies?

Good Free Music

2010-03-29T09:25:00.013-07:00

As regular readers of this blog know, I've been a participant and even more so an avid fan of ccMixter.org, a community of music makers, who post individual music tracks of their own creation specifically to make them available for other music makers to use in their work, which most of them post to ccMixter.org as "remixes". These remixes are typically complete songs ranging across a wide variety of genres. All of this made possible by creative commons licensing, and until late last year also sponsored by the Creative Commons organization and since then operated by startup ArtisTech Media.

The website ccMixter.org was mostly created and organized to facilitate this P2P sequential time-shifted collaboration process between music makers more so than catering to music "users". Still, the music became attractive to podcasters, video makers on YouTube and elsewhere and lovers of independent music everywhere.

Enter the new website dig.ccMixter.org, a new home for friendly creative commons licensed music for DJs, music for podcasts, music for videos (YouTube or otherwise) , and free music for listening. This new website, making it much easier to "dig" into the considerable catalog of ccMixter music makers, is a labor of love created by long time ccMixter community leader and chief software developer fourstones in collaboration with software designer nvzion.

One of the valuable features is the little i button, showing additional information about a particular piece. So one can find for example who was the singer (also often the original song writer) of a particular piece of music, by first clicking on the i button and on the resulting page, clicking on the "Sample History" link, which leads to information about all of the individual snippets of music which were used as sources for the piece in question, including the vocal parts (where applicable). You may want to middle click or otherwise force your browser to open a new tab or window, so the song that's currently playing doesn't stop.

One of the interesting aspects of ccMixter music is, that on ccMixter one can "dig" with more accuracy into the artistic composition and history of a piece of music than with many traditional music sources, where the contributions of participating artists are frequently obscured.

Delightful Bach Connections by Freeman-Attwood and Carey

2010-01-23T18:25:00.006-08:00

Allow me to confess that I love a wide variety of music. This includes the occasional good dose of classical music. So when my email inbox this morning contained an announcement by John from magnatune.com, with whom I have a subscription, I discovered that one of the albums was a delightful set called "Bach Connections" by Jonathan Freeman-Attwood and Colm Carey.

I'm not much of a music critic, so my words wouldn't do the pleasure of this album enough justice.
So courtesy of magnatune's embedding code, here you can preview this delightful collection of organ and trumpet music from the baroque period.

bachconnections by Jonathan Freeman-Attwood and Colm Carey

Refreshing Holiday Music by snowflake and ccMixter

2009-11-24T21:39:00.008-08:00

Please note this disclosure.

The next generation music label ArtisTech Media has just released what in some years down the road may just turn out to be remembered as an iconic holiday album. "Peace of Winter" represents some intriguing, yet accessible remixes in some of the best ccMixter.org tradition. From the beautiful and sublime, to the worldly exotic and even a refreshing hint of quirkiness, this album has it all. The spectrum ranges from inter-faith classics to new expressions of the joys of winter.

This compilation has been curated by exquisite songstress snowflake, who herself is impressively comfortable on both sides of the remixing console.

And in the holiday spirit of promoting peace and sharing between communities, half of the proceeds from this album will be donated to the Dalai Lama Foundation.

While the album can be listened to and even downloaded for free, those who want to express support for the music makers and their cause can also purchase a copy or leave an online "tip".

This is quite a milestone for the ccMixter community and the team at ArtisTech Media, who have just recently assumed the responsibility to operate the ccMixter community while keeping it free for everyone. Maybe one of many more to come?

White Cube Remix Project at ccMixter

2009-11-09T22:27:00.005-08:00

There's a very intriguing new remix project called The White Cube at ccMixter.org. Please note that remixes have to be licensed with the popular Creative Commons CC-BY license in order to be considered for use during the exhibition. So no remixing Cream or some band from Liverpool's double album or some song about nights on bed sheets! :-)

This all is in support of an upcoming exhibition in the RAM Galleri on Oslo which is celebrating it's 20 year anniversary and wants to explore "How to explode the white Cube".

Deadline for remix submissions is on the 7th of December 2009, just 3 days before an unrelated small party in that very city of Oslo. Hopefully our friends in the black limousines doubtlessly all over Oslo right around that time will not misunderstand the context and confiscate all the remixes!

The remix project is organized and the two source audio packages are provided by Gurdonark (whom I've had the privilege to interview last year and the ever lovely and talented (I always wanted to say that!) SackJo22, whom I've had the honor and pleasure to work with on one of her many projects.

Given that the very first LP (yes, it was vinyl!) I ever bought was ELP's "Pictures of an Exhibition", this kind of thematic project holds deep intrigue and I may just have to fire up my trusty DAW software and mess around a little. mmmhhh let's start with a little extra compression here and maybe some reverb there ...

ccMixter.org - under new management

2009-10-28T17:32:00.004-07:00

Big news from the world of open music: ccMixter.org is has changed hands from the Creative Commons to ArtisTech Media.

Victor Stone, ccMixter's heart and soul is endorsing this evolution wholeheartedly.

While change is always accompanied by uncertainty, I'm personally quite pumped about this particluar one.

However, let me start out by saying that there aren't enough words to describe how grateful I feel about the contribution of Victor Stone - one of the understated and under-famed giants of open music. As regular readers of this blog know, ccMixter has been the at the core of my musical life for a bit over 2 years now. This site continues to be one of the most amazing places for music makers to mingle and make noise together. While every member of the community deserves varying amounts of credit for that, there's one person who deserves a very largely disproportionate share of credit: Victor Stone. He has not only diligently and innovatively continued to work on the technical infrastructure of the site, but above all, he has set and enforced a tone of mutual acceptance, respect and even caring for each other, which reverberates throughout ccMixter and is extremely hard to find in any larger community on today's web.

So while it remains to be seen how much and which way Victor remains involved (I hope it will be a lot!), this is a good a time as any to say THANK YOU, VICTOR!

Looking forward, I'm am very excited about the new management being led by Emily Richards (at ccMixter she's known under the handle of Snowflake). She is amongst that very rare of combinations of being a great musician and an accomplished business person. She has shown in words and in deeds her passion for developing radically different business models based less on exclusion and greed and more on openness and sharing. It's always been really hard for artists to make a living from their art and maybe that's even more so the case today.

So I wholeheartedly cheer Emily, Alex, Jason, Derek, Kirsten, Dale and the whole current and future team at ArtisTech Media on while they try to figure out artistic and economic models that aren't evil or stupid. While they figure out how to evolve free and commercial side by side and mutually benefiting from each other. There will be bumps on the road. That's ok. Good and open minds combined with good and open hearts can overcome a lot of issues and build something special.

May ccMixter's next 5 years be even greater than the first 5!

spinmeister interviewed

2009-08-13T13:31:00.006-07:00

File under "shoe on other foot" or "what goes around, comes around": After having been on the "safe" side of the virtual microphone of interviews, my very good long distance musical friend Jeremy Osborn from Houston's Wayside Drive has turned the tables on me, conducting an interview with spinmeister complete with a much-too-kind introduction. Thanks Jeremy!

Catching The Waves of great free music

2009-07-21T21:32:00.004-07:00

The Catching The Waves (or is it "sound the free trumpet"?) blog is an interesting place to go exploring for good free music. As the tagline says "Reviews of (legitimately) free netlabel and/or Creative Commons music. Yes, the music is completely free. Yes, the musicians know. Yes, they welcome donations and purchases. No, you won't be arrested. Dive in."

It has some excellent reviews of truly free and independent music and appears to be a genuine labor of love. Well worth a bookmark for friends of new independent music. I love days when I bump into sites like this! And maybe one day it will even feature a section for the creative commons remixing scene. :-)

DJ Cary's Chill Podcast Extraordinair

2009-06-10T16:22:00.003-07:00

For people who like chill and downtempo music there's are the most excellent chill/downtempo podcasts of DJ Cary (Cary Norsworthy). She is featuring mostly independent music makers in her podcast treasure trove of sonic goodness assembled from a wide variety of sources. Lovingly assembled in iTunes compatible AAC and generic mp3 formats, she offers a new podcast about once or twice a month.

Also worth bookmarking is Cary's list of sites for downtempo, chillout, nujazz and trip-hop artists and fans.

Free Music Software and Discounts on Commercial Software

2009-05-23T11:02:00.004-07:00

DontCrack.com is another interesting place to look for music making software. It lists quite the collection of free music software along with regular special deals for commercial software.

I've also previously mentioned some other good resources for free music making software:

FreeMusicSoftware.org - A blog by Crispin with the tag line: A collection of the best Free Audio and Music floating around in Cyberspace.

GERSIC.COM - the giant free audio plugin database

KVRaudio.com - The premier news site for everything related to audio plugins. Fabulous search engine for plugins and host software, which makes it easy to find only free plugins or also commercial one's.

RemixFight.org a new contest every 2 weeks

2009-05-18T00:08:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: MC Jack in the Box has been hosting this fun place for remix contests for what seems to be an eternity in Internet years (since late 2003): Remix Fight!: "Remix Fight! is a remixing community open to everyone. We get people to send us source files for their songs and then make that source available for download. People download that source, make a remix, and then e-mail an mp3 of their mix to us. Then, we post all the mp3s we’ve received and set up a poll so that visitors to the site can listen to the mixes and vote on which one they like the best. After a couple weeks, we close the poll and announce a winner."

RemixFight.org is technlogically delightfully old school, which also means it's easy to use. And it's not about prizes, but about bragging rights, so it's not for the materialistically motivated. :-)

Fourstones, who is the mastermind behind ccMixter.org has often said, that Remix Fight has been his inspiration for ccMixter.

RemixComps.com tracks remix contests

2009-05-10T11:45:00.004-07:00

I just found out about RemixComps.com, who's 20 second pitch looks like this: "Are you a musician, DJ, music producer that enjoys taking sound samples and loops of other musician's pieces of music, loading them into your favorite music production software and remixing them into your own track. Remix Comps lists remix contests found on the internet so that audio DJs and musicians can quickly and easily find a great music track to remix."

From my brief look at the site, this sure looks like the best effort to track remix competitions I've seen. For each contest it lists not only the place to download the stems (parts), but also the prizes, the deadlines, noteworthy rules and notes including IP issues like a contest, where remixes become the property of the contest holder. There's even a page for listing the winners of the various contests.

If you sign up, you can even rate the contests, and participate in forum discussions. There's a blog and they've just added the capability to run a remix contest through the site.

For the contest junkies in the remixing world, this looks like a great site and I can only congratulate Edward Cufaude, the man behind RemixComps.com and he also releases is own music under a Creative Commons license and finally, he also has an interesting site containing tips for audio production called RhythmCreation.com.

I don't think, that at this time he has a thriving business model, just a few of the links (not all) appear to maybe get him a little commission. So this looks like a labor of love, and I hope he'll enjoy doing it for a long time and/or maybe figure out how to make it economically self-sustaining over the longer haul.

The Need for Public Domain

2009-04-12T09:59:00.009-07:00

CBC Spark features an excellent episode featuring host Nora Young interviewing James Boyle, law professor at Duke University. As one of the original board members (serving from 2002 to 2009, in the final year as chair), of the Creative Commons he is one of the leading thinkers on copyright reform.

The interview starts around the 7:50 mark right after the excellent winning remix of teru (at about the 6:00 minute mark) of the little contest I mentioned a couple of blog posts ago. Congratulations teru - well deserved recognition for your remixing prowess!

Back to Professor Boyle: His new book "The Public Domain" is not only available commercially, but also for free under a creative commons license. Professor Boyle is not against copyright laws, but is very concerned about the overreach of those laws, and makes an eloquent case, that this is not only robbing society of new art and science, but also a classic case of industries shooting themselves in the foot. With their strategy of locking every intellectual property up for longer and longer time, they are killing their own future revenue potential.

To quote the book's website: "James Boyle introduces readers to the idea of the public domain and describes how it is being tragically eroded by our current copyright, patent, and trademark laws. In a series of fascinating case studies, Boyle explains why gene sequences, basic business ideas and pairs of musical notes are now owned, why jazz might be illegal if it were invented today, why most of 20th century culture is legally unavailable to us, and why today’s policies would probably have smothered the World Wide Web at its inception. Appropriately given its theme, the book will be sold commercially but also made available online for free under a Creative Commons license."

Brian Eno and David Byrne collaborate and publish online

2009-04-05T22:04:00.002-07:00

It's good to see, that not all of my musical heroes have turned into grumpy old men since the advent of the Internet. Having listened to The Talking Heads as well as Roxy Music during the final golden days of vinyl, I was delighted to read a recent interview of theirs with the UK's Guardian headlined 'The business is an exciting mess'.

A couple of my favorite quotes: "It was simply made: two men in their home studios, Eno supplying the music and Byrne the lyrics, sending sound files back and forth across the Atlantic by email." and "When I finish something I want it out that day," says Eno later, in a phone conversation. "Pop music is like the daily paper. Its got to be there then, not six months later."

So us online music makers have pretty good company in the way we make music, including this urge to publish quickly after a work is done!

Their Album "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" can be tracked down via David Byrne's web site. But here's where it gets really amazing: David Byrne's website invites the sharing of this album. It is with great pleasure and excitement that I'm taking Mr. Byrne up on that.

And for those who may not know, Mr. Byrne was one of the featured artists on the WIRED CD which led to the birth of ccMixter.org.

MC Jack in the Box features Cool Music from ccMixter

2009-04-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

MC Jack in the Box has an excellent blog which he calls CoolMusic - My flavs of the week from ccmixter.org in which he assembles some of his favorite ccMixter remixes on a weekly basis and presents them in the style of a relaxed radio show.

While open music is becoming increasingly plentiful, good curation (weeding out the signal from the noise) is relatively rare, so having MC Jack in the Box (a great remixer in his own right) do this with so much loving care is a real treat.

CBC radio call for remixes of Kutiman interview with Nora Young

2009-04-01T14:55:00.008-07:00

Talk about timing. Just a couple of days ago, I wrote about this amazing video remix by Kutiman and now CBC Radio’s Spark is calling for 1 minute long remixes of an Nora Young interviewing Kutiman. The deadline is April 6th, 2009 and the 2 source files can be found here.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your DAWs!

(p.s. there's supposed to be a little prize for the winning entry)

Kutiman-Thru-you - Mother of All Funk Chords

2009-03-27T12:36:00.003-07:00

remix, mashup, call it whatever you want - this is simply great:

End The Loudness Wars

2009-03-25T14:09:00.006-07:00

Much of popular music these days is overly compressed, by the motto, whoever screams the loudest gets heard. Music isn't supposed to be a shouting match -- maybe it's time to re-address this issue. I found this at KVRaudio:

"In January 2009, The Pleasurize Music Foundation launched a wide-ranging initiative for ending the "Loudness War" being waged by successive music releases. This initiative aims to introduce a dynamic standard through several phases. The free TT Dynamic Range Meter plug-in (and stand-alone app.) makes it possible to provide releases with a whole-number dynamic value to be printed on the recording medium as a logo, giving consumers an immediate means of knowing the dynamic quality of a recording. It is currently available as a VST effect plug-in for Windows with Mac OS X, RTAS and AU versions expected to be released later this year."

With the advent of so much amazing DAW software, overcompression is now also in the hands of independent music makers everywhere. So this issue is not only about the big bad record labels anymore, but about many music makers who are using mastering plugins.

I think I'll try this plugin on a few of my own remixes.

4 chords 36 songs

2009-02-22T19:48:00.004-08:00

A different kind of remix - something in it for every age group :-)

4 Akkorde - 36 Songs - WEB.DE Video

Thanks to Bo for the alert!

Work hard without being too hard on yourself

2009-02-09T21:03:00.002-08:00

Wired Magazine's blog has an entry about a delightful message, delivered by author Elizabeth Gilbert, famous for her bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. Ms. Gilbert suggested Thursday that we kill geniuses by demanding super-human powers from them. While her speech was centered around artists who have produced extraordinary works of art, I would suggest that maybe everyone who's work is creative, can take something from the point she is making.

Loosely summarized, Ms. Gilbert suggests that emotionally returning to the ancient concept of "the muse" sometimes visiting and sometimes not, can be a good technique to channel one's sense of frustration and failure in the creative process.

I imagine that most of us who are trying to do something creative on a reasonably regular basis, whether it be in the arts, in science, or in technology have our own little tool-chest of techniques and tricks to massage our minds and emotions into a state of making creativity easier and to ward off bouts with creativity-killing frustrations. So stop reading this blog entry already, and head over to this short, yet uplifting article! :-)

UPDATE (2009-02-17): Or just watch the video:

RIAA moneygrab helpful for Creative Commons Music ?

2009-02-08T18:32:00.004-08:00

According to this interesting article at ars technica, the RIAA seems to be going after what some would consider to be their best marketing arm. From the article:

The "Performance Rights Act" has been introduced in both the House and Senate with the goal of forcing US radio stations to start paying artists whose music is played on the air. Labels are pushing hard for the idea, but radio stations could hardly be more upset.

I sincerely hope that the fee for playing RIAA music will be very high, and the paperwork exceedingly onerous. Because that just might make radio stations take a longer and harder look at alternative suppliers for recorded music. Front and center for non profit radio might very well be Creative Commons (CC) licensed music, even more so than it already is. And for profit radio stations with low profit margins might start taking a hard look at such music next.

If this takes place, low cost and easy to administer music licensing hubs might become even more attractive than they already are for many other commercial users of music. And the CC Attribution license might become more attractive for artists to get their music onto commercial over-the-air radio.

While I have deep admiration for Prof. Lessig and his justified drive for meaningful copyright reform, I also often wonder, what would happen if we all just let the dinosaurs legislate themselves into oblivion.

Maybe a hint of things to come: CBC, the Canadian public broadcaster is frequently (increasingly?) using CC licensed music in their programs (and announce that fact clearly) not only in their web offerings and the progressive CBC 3 channel, but also on their primary CBC 1 radio channel, which has excellent reach across the country (and beyond).

ccMixter : A Memoir

2009-02-04T23:21:00.010-08:00

For anyone with an interest in ccMixter, here comes a fascinating look at the first four years as experienced by the person in the middle of it all, Victor Stone a.k.a. fourstones.

A great read "ccMixter: A Memoir" are the reflections of an individual, who's choice of subtitle "How I Learned to Stop Worrying about the RIAA and Love the Unexpected Collaborations of Distributed Creativity During the First Four Years of Running ccMixter" hints at the sense of humor, passion and intellect that drives the man who drives ccMixter.

To find out a little more about Victor's story there's also the interview he graciously granted me last May.

And then there's a few video's floating about of an interview with Victor in the context of the Digital Tipping Point project. Here's the first one:

A Musical Interactive Stageshow

2009-01-22T16:08:00.005-08:00

Regular ccMixter participant and remixing surfer from down-under Scomber has taken the idea of a playlist into new heights. He is using the ccMixter playlist feature to essentially create a musical (script). The whole thing is obviously tongue-in-cheek and from what I've read so far may eventually only be allowed on cable television or as an adults-only off-Broadway play, but it is a really great idea and he is inviting participation to help create a musical which he terms a Musical Interactive Stageshow. At the point of this writing, the first 5 scenes are done.

Who knows how far this will go - but that's not even the point. It's a great concept!

(UPDATED: new links 2009-01-26)

Should Emerging Artists Abandon Non-Commercial in their CC licenses?

2009-01-20T16:28:00.001-08:00

Disclaimer: Any business decision is a kind of a gamble taken by the individual or company and can succeed or fail. As such, no-one can and should make the decisions about your future. All I'm trying to do here is to encourage ways of thinking about an issue. In the end, it's your call ... your gamble.

Does it make sense for emerging artists to license their materials via the Creative Commons Attribution License rather than the intuitively more obvious Creative Commons Non-Commercial?

Even people in searches of day jobs are increasingly doing unpaid internships in order to get additional experience and prove what they can do in a realistic environment. It makes it easier for employers to eventually give them a paying job.

Arguably an emerging artist is in a similar position. So by giving away their work with just their name attached to it, they make it more attractive for others to use in their work.

So let's say someone now uses that work in an advertisement without paying the music maker. There are two ways of looking at this scenario for an emerging artist:

a) I "lost" the revenue I "should" have made, or
b) I have an additional item in my resume, in my quest for eventually getting paid for making music.

But does point a) even really apply, if the song was only used, because it was free?

In a routine scenario, like a theoretically lost couple of hundred dollars, euros, or whatever - this is not a life changing thing you'll be kicking yourself forever for. But how would you feel, if your free song became an international sensation, maybe performed by an established star, or used in a Coke or McDonalds commercial around the world?

As unlikely as that is, you should think this case through, and consider, if that would be a positive or a negative scenario for you. Would you have ever gotten that gig, if your song wasn't free? Established artists may very well and very legitimately say "yes" to that answer, but this article isn't for them :-)

With a worldwide hit to your credit, do you think you could maybe now get paying gigs to write jingles in your local market, get a gig in a trade-show, or maybe sell some t-shirts or ringtones, or a song for Guitar Hero 17 or The Sims "Retirement Home 2" expansion pack? All this because of your now obvious credibility as a hit maker?

Maybe even that wouldn't be so terrible after all?

Imagine yourself at 85, in your fusion-powered rocking chair, with your in-ear iMusicTalkNoiseThingy and looking across your video integrated tri-focals showing beach while you're actually sitting in room 23 of the Shady Pines retirement home in Winnipeg, Canada -- in January.

And someone interrupts your daydream about the good old days asking about your life. Would you rather say: "I recorded 5 jingles for a couple of hundred bucks each. And my CD made 500 bucks on amazon.com" Or would you rather say: "In 2010, Coke used my song for their commercial during the Olympics. And then I was on Letterman. Right after the guy with the animals...".

Again: this may not apply for established artists in a given field of music creation, but it may potentially apply for those wanting to be considered in a new field. And if releasing with an Attribution license, what if they don't attribute you properly? Would the courts give you damages for that? How much does it matter? Or maybe one needs to think about how to ensure that you can prove that it's your song. Because whatever happens, you'll want to be able to take credit for the credit that's due to you. Quite possibly publishing your work on the Internet where you give yourself proper credit is actually a good mechanism for making your claim.

And to preempt an obvious question: But doesn't giving things away for free make it harder for those currently making a living in that field? Answer: Yes it does, and so does your very effort to enter that field.

Once you have achieved a certain amount of notoriety and credibility, it might make more sense to switch to non-commercial licensing, just like you might not be interning once you've had a paying job or two under your belt.

Feel free to argue for or against in the comments section for this article.