Free music
Encyclopedia
- For information on swapping of commercial music see File sharingFile sharingFile sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
, NapsterNapsterNapster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
or eMuleEMuleeMule is a free peer-to-peer file sharing application for Microsoft Windows. Started in May 2002 as an alternative to eDonkey2000, eMule now connects to both the eDonkey network and the Kad network...
. - For the WikiProject of this name, see WikiProject Free music.
Free music is music that, like free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
, can freely be copied, distributed and modified for any purpose. Thus free music is either in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
or licensed under a free license by the artist or copyright holder themselves, often as a method of promotion. It does not mean that there should be no fee involved. The word free refers to freedom (as in free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
), not to price
Price
-Definition:In ordinary usage, price is the quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services.In modern economies, prices are generally expressed in units of some form of currency...
.
The Free Music Philosophygenerally encourages creators to free music using whatever language or methods they wish. A Free Music Public License (FMPL) is available for those who prefer a formal approach.
Some free music is licensed under licenses that are intended for software (like the GPL
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
) or other writings (the GFDL
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
). But there are also licenses especially for music and other works of art, such as EFF
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
's Open Audio License
Open Audio License
The Open Audio License is a free music license, created in 2001 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation . It provides freedom and openness of use for music and other expressive works...
, LinuxTag
LinuxTag
LinuxTag is a Free Software expo with an emphasis on Linux , held every summer in Germany. It is relatively large, claiming that it is the largest expo of this kind in Europe, drawing visitors from many countries....
's Open Music License, the Free Art license
Free Art license
The Free Art License is a copyleft license that grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works without needing the author's explicit permission.The Free Art License recognizes and protects these rights...
and some of the Creative Commons Licences.
History
Before the advent of copyright lawHistory of copyright law
The history of copyright law starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1709, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein...
in the early 18th century and its subsequent application to music compositions first, all music was "free" according to the definitions used in Free Software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
or Free Music
Free music
Free music is music that, like free software, can freely be copied, distributed and modified for any purpose. Thus free music is either in the public domain or licensed under a free license by the artist or copyright holder themselves, often as a method of promotion. It does not mean that there...
, since there were no copyright restrictions. In practice however, music reproduction was generally restricted to live performances and the legalities of playing other people's music was unclear in most jurisdictions. Copyright laws changed this gradually so much so that in the late 20th century, copying a few words of a musical composition or a few seconds of a sound recording, the two forms of music copyright, could be considered criminal infringement.
In response, the concept of free music was codified in the Free Music Philosophy by Ram Samudrala
Ram Samudrala
Ram Samudrala is a professor of computational biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. He researches protein and proteome folding, structure, function, interaction, design, and evolution spanning atomic to organismal levels of description...
in early 1994. It was based on the idea of Free Software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
by Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
and coincided with nascent open art and open information movements. Up to this point, few modern musicians distributed their recordings and compositions in an unrestricted manner, and there was no concrete rationale as to why they did it, or should do it.
The Free Music Philosophy used a three pronged approach to voluntarily encourage the spread of unrestricted copying, based on the fact that copies of recordings and compositions could be made and distributed with complete accuracy and ease via the Internet. First, since music by its very nature is organic in its growth, the ethical basis of limiting its distribution using copyright laws was questioned. That is, an existential responsibility was fomented upon music creators who were drawing upon the creations of countless others in an unrestricted manner to create their own. Second, it was observed that the basis of copyright law, "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", had been perverted by the music industry to maximise profit over creativity resulting in a huge burden on society (the control of copying) simply to ensure its profits. Third, as copying became rampant, it was argued that musicians would have no choice but to move to a different economic model that exploited the spread of information to make a living, instead of trying to control it with limited government enforced monopolies.
The Free Music Philosophy was reported on by diverse media outlets including Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
, Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
, Levi's Original Music Magazine, The Free Radical, Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. Along with free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
(a free operating system), copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
licenses, the explosion of the Web and rise of P2P
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
, the cementing of mp3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
as a compression standard for recordings, and despite the efforts of the music industry, free music became largely the reality in the early 21st century. Organisations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
and Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
with free information champions like Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...
were devising numerous licenses that offered different flavours of copyright and copyleft. The question was no longer why and how music should be free, but rather how creativity would flourish while musicians developed models to generate revenue in the Internet era.
Record labels and websites distributing free music
- Audition RecordsAudition RecordsAudition Records is e-magazine project born in Berlin in 2010. Audition Records focusing efforts on publishing and promoting artists working on sound improvisation and electroacoustic music....
free and non-free CC licenses - DogmazicDogmazicDogmazic is one of the primary free music download managers in France. Dogmazic was created in December 2004 by the Bordeaux-based Association Musique libre!, a major proponent of the French free music movement....
— free and non-free CC licenses, GNU GPL - Free Music Archive
- JamendoJamendoJamendo is a music website and a community of music authors. It bills itself as "the world's #1 platform for free and legal music downloads under Creative Commons licenses."...
(free and non-free CC licenses, Free Art License) - LOCA RecordsLOCA RecordsLoca Records is an independent electronica and post rock record label based in Brighton, UK. All the music, artwork and videos are released under copyleft licenses and distributed physically on vinyl, CD, and cassette...
- MagnatuneMagnatuneMagnatune is an American independent record label based in Berkeley, California, founded in spring 2003 by John Buckman, then-CEO of e-mail software company Lyris. It aims at treating both its musicians and its customers fairly—its tagline is "We are not evil"...
- OpsoundOpsoundOpsound is a website which aggregates links to music released under Creative Commons licenses. Opsound aggregates links to music hosted on other servers, as well as providing discussion forums and organizing real-world events and concerts...
- Sean Terrington WrightSean Terrington WrightSean Terrington Wright is a British songwriter, singer, guitarist, record producer, artist, writer, and poet. He has collaborated with Kim Fowley, Najam Sheraz, Mark Linkous, Mark Tinley, Enrico Coniglio, Yvalian, Josh Woodward, & many indie artists...
(free and CC licenses, Free Art License) - Starfrosch
Bands distributing their music under free conditions
- See also: :Category:Creative Commons-licensed albums
Title Licenses Nine Inch Nails Nine Inch NailsNine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
The Slip The Slip (album)The Slip is the seventh studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released on July 22, 2008. It was the fourth consecutive Nine Inch Nails release to be produced by frontman Trent Reznor with collaborators Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder...
CC BY-NC-SA Ghosts I–IV Ghosts I–IVGhosts I–IV is the sixth studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released on March 2, 2008. The team behind the project included Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor, studio-collaborators Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder, and instrumental contributions from Alessandro Cortini,...
CC BY-NC-SA Ophur OphurOphur was a rock band from the Chicago suburbs in DuPage County. The band performed in the midwestern United States over the course of seven years with national acts including The Plain White T's, Sum 41, Violent Femmes, Local H, Lucky Boys Confusion, Veruca Salt, Two Skinee J's, Duvall, Sleeping...
Paniq CC BY-SA Sean Terrington Wright Sean Terrington WrightSean Terrington Wright is a British songwriter, singer, guitarist, record producer, artist, writer, and poet. He has collaborated with Kim Fowley, Najam Sheraz, Mark Linkous, Mark Tinley, Enrico Coniglio, Yvalian, Josh Woodward, & many indie artists...
CC BY Severed Fifth Severed FifthSevered Fifth is a San Francisco Bay Area band founded by Jono Bacon and featuring Defiance guitarist Jim Adams.The band is noted for its copyright model of distributing its music under permissive Creative Commons licenses, allowing the public to legally download and share music for free...
Creative Commons Creative CommonsCreative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...TWISTED HELICES Ram SamudralaRam Samudrala is a professor of computational biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. He researches protein and proteome folding, structure, function, interaction, design, and evolution spanning atomic to organismal levels of description...
DRIVEN MADNESS subatomicglue Subatomicgluesubatomicglue is an Internet musical group formed in 1999, the brain child of Kevin Meinert.They are among the first bands to use Creative Commons licensing, and is a good example of free music...
Brunette Models Brunette ModelsBrunette Models is a Polish-Cypriot musical project for experimental electronic music and sound sculpture, in the style of ambient music, atmospheric and deep listening music, and is a pioneer of this kind of music in Poland.-Piotr Krzyżanowski:...
See also
- CopyleftCopyleftCopyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
- DeezerDeezerDeezer is a free music streaming service based in Paris, France. Deezer was launched on August 24, 2007. Deezer has negotiated rights to make 165,000 songs available for streaming legally via an agreement with Sony, as well as some of Universal's catalog...
- Free Culture movementFree Culture movementThe free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media....
- File sharingFile sharingFile sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
- List of musical works released in a stem format
- Open musicOpen musicOpen Music is music that is shareable, available in "source code" form, allows derivative works and is free of cost for non-commercial use. It is the concept of "open source" computer software applied to music...
- Open Music ModelOpen Music ModelThe Open Music Model is an economic and technological framework for the recording industry based on research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
- PodsafePodsafePodsafe is a term created in the podcasting community to refer to any work which, through its licensing, specifically allows the use of the work in podcasting, regardless of restrictions the same work might have in other realms...
- SpotifySpotifySpotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had...
- We7We7we7 is a free, advertising supported, music streaming service, with over 6.8 million tracks available for streaming in the UK and Ireland, with content from all four major record labels, and most independent labels and distributors. Most tracks and albums are also available to purchase from the...
- Wolfgang's VaultWolfgang's VaultWolfgang's Vault is a private music-focused company established in 2003 dedicated to the restoration and archiving of live concert recordings in audio and video format and the sale of music memorabilia. It began with the collection of the late promoter Bill Graham, and added multiple other music...
- GuveraGuveraGuvera Limited is an unlisted public company in Australia, officed in New York USA, Sydney and Robina Australia.Guvera inked deals in 2009 and 2010 with Universal Music Group, EMI, The Orchard, IODA, and several rights bodies: APRA, AMCOS, BMI, Rightsflow, SESAC AND ASCAP.Originally designed as an...
External links
- The etree.org wiki: etree pioneered the standards for distributing lossless audio on the net.
- Open Source Music License