Hey Piratio.
An interesting manifesto!
But what about Art?
Who Are We?
Launched in November 2008, OpenMusic is an open source music label run by musicians. We operate from Brighton, UK. Open is run by Piratio but is greatly helped by John Cohen & Leo Piggot.
We don’t believe in the conventional record label. OpenMusic’s objective is to release great music and sound projects from around the world, in a freel, share-friendly and re-distributable manner. We encourage you to redistribute individual tracks or whole releases via sharing links, Peer-to-Peer networks, MP3 Blogs and any other form you see fit, as long as you respect the rights of the respective Artists and follow the rules of the Creative Commons Sharing License.
Remember - this is not your music - you just have some files on your hard drive.
Thanks,
The OpenMusic People
Barry, Leo & John
The Open Manifesto
1. People will share your music with one another.
Most people who download music for free don’t think of themselves as thieves, they don’t think of themselves as pirates, they just want to listen to your music. So, just for a moment, don’t think of file sharing as stealing and let’s see what can happen. The whole goal in the music industry is to get as many people as possible to listen to your music for the purposes of making money. When people share music with one another, they are doing that musician a favor by increasing that bands listener base. It is hard to think of file sharing as a benefit to musicians since most musicians [influenced by the history of The Industry] see their music as a product to be sold in album form. If people are sharing your music with one another for free, how can a musician make money? Seperate the product from the content and new ways to make a living from being a musician can easily emerge.
2. Music is not the product anymore, it is the content.
The dilemma of keeping music profitable becomes a lot easier to solve when you think of music as content and not as a product - we used to buy CDs, for example, because it was a product that contained pleasing sounds. Now that we have separated the content from the product, we no longer need the physical format to hear the pleasing sounds; music now only exists as content. Many different kinds of media have used content to make money; TV has used free content to make money since the 1940’s.
3. Be the provider of your own content.
There are hundreds of torrent download sites and MP3 leak blogs making a fortune from providing free content. They advertise to the thousands of people who visit their sites. They get thousands of people to visit by providing free content… content created by other people. This is money that should be going directly into a musicians pocketbook. Musicians should be less angry that there are people hearing their songs for free and more angry that the web traffic is going to a torrent site instead of their own web site. The best way to capture those advertising pennies is to directly compete by providing your own content for free; if someone has two options, sift through a sea of unscrupulous torrent sites for your new single, or download it directly from the artist for free, the customer will download the content from your web site every time. The internet itself, and the monetizing revolution proves that almost everything can be ad supported.
4. Bands and solo artists are many times more important than the products they sell.
Many musicians and record labels will cringe at the thought of giving away music for free, but it cannot be avoided, anymore than current trends can be ignored. The fact is that these days, very few musicians make a living from selling music alone; most make their money from live performances and associated merchandise. Your product has become a flyer for your content. We’re always hearing that The Industry has changed. That’s not quite true. In fact, it’s changing – and that’s quite a different thing. Hopefully, it will never stop changing and it’s up to us as individuals to make decisions as consumers and creatives that influence the direction these changes take. If you give it away for free, nobody can steal it. Being a full-time musician is a full-time job and the hours are long. It’s a choice, and it’s up to us.
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13 Comments
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Steven Taylor, September 24, 2008:
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yo
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Montezuma, November 19, 2008:
“The best way to capture those advertising pennies is to directly compete by providing your own content for free; if someone has two options, sift through a sea of unscrupulous torrent sites for your new single, or download it directly from the artist for free, the customer will download the content from your web site every time”
- Sorry, but this is rubbish. One website is as good as the other. Not many people care where their mp3’s come from. If you can search successfully through a torrent site or a blog aggregator for say, 10 pieces of music that you wanted to hear, why the hell would you visit 10 different sites to do just that ? This is why advertisers are interested in these kinds of sites. Because they’re fast, reliable and you don’t have to move far from one spot to find what you want. And if these sites want your content, well they can just go ahead and take it, there’s no stopping them. Thankfully, the only refuge and possible left for music now is in the area of live performance. If you want to make money, go to business school and study hard. If you want to make music, go home and practice and get off the damn internet !
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Hi Montezuma.
Okay, you’re officially our first flamer. I hope you took the time to download some music.
You’ve covered a few areas here so let’s go through them, all under the umbrella of my humble opinion.
One website is not as good as the other. That’s a totally unfounded and illogical statement. I’m not going to waste any time arguing against this.
I disagree about people not caring about where their music comes from. Given the choice of easy access to a free album and a stolen one, I would hope that most people would opt for a ‘legit’ version. If not, then there is a larger issue than music product legalities.
With your example of searching for large volumes of music; why does the music need to be so disparate? I assume that when you’re downloading music illegally, you’ll use a search engine of some sort. How is typing a name into Google any more labourious than into PirateBay? Even if it takes twice as long and we’re too lazy to extend a few extra mouse clicks, then there’s not much hope for us. Plus, if I download an album via a torrent, I usually have to be wary of all manner of malware such as virus, trojans etc. Downloading from legitimate sources is relatively safer, obviously. Bandcamp is a great example of a virus-free music social service. Check it out.
Are you actually suggesting that, in the 21st century, one must be an instrument player to make music or to be a ‘real musician’? You really are on the wrong site my friend. I’m in no way suggesting that being a musician is a fast track money-maker [because it obviously isn’t] and I totally agree with you that if you want to make lots of money, music is not really the place to do it, but you’d be naive to think that musicians don’t want to be able to, and this is key, make a living from being a musician.
And finally, you’re really not getting the whole point. If I give my music away, then you cannot ‘steal it’ in any sense of the word. What’s the big deal? Yes, there’s nothing I can do to stop people from grabbing our content, but why would I want to? see below…
OpenMusic’s objective is to release great music and sound projects from around the world, in a freel, share-friendly and re-distributable manner. We encourage you to redistribute individual tracks or whole releases via sharing links, Peer-to-Peer networks, MP3 Blogs and any other form you see fit, as long as you respect the rights of the respective Artists and follow the rules of the Creative Commons Sharing License.
Thanks for your input, and please try to be nicer in future… This is a happy place; Look at the cute little animals.
Barry
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Fuzzy, November 22, 2008:
Nice one! Liking the dubstep! Want some music?! :)
Jim -
Hey guys greetings from a fellow Brightonian
Just wanted to say thanks for providing another channel to promote ourselves and get our tunes out to the world..
Easy
myspace.com/mischiefmakersinc
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Hiya,
When you mention the license, you’re linking to a more general Creative Commons Wikipedia page. Is it this license? http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
So, say, if I made a film, I could use the audio here, mixed into a soundtrack.. but then the whole film would have to be released under CC SA license to..? So the film itself would have to be licensed as re mixable + re distributable etc..?
Is that right?
ta
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Hi Lucy,
Thanks for your comments. The link above is to the Wiki so that people who are unaware of the CC License can find out more - the exact license used for releases is on the individual pages.
Using your example, yes you could use a track here in a film, but as soon as you make it a commercially available, or showing it in a paid-entry cinema, then you are technically in breach of the license conditions. I don’t know if you’d need to license your film using CC, but we would encourage you to do so. A much easier option is to approach artists directly and get explicit permission to use the tracks. Then you can make your own arrangements outside of our CC agreements. Remember that one important aspect of the license conditions is to give due credit, so you’re in a better position to use content with an artist’s consent - that is not for us to give.
If you get in touch with the CC people, they are pretty helpful and can give you very clear guidelines.
If you have any more questions, contact me direct - info@thisisopenmusic.com
All the best,
Barry
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long live the free music revolution!
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Diggin your concept! Nice to have a library of like minded music makers in the same space.
I’ll be sending in some in once I get my feet in the mud. But in the mean time if you’re looking (or anyone else out there!) for album art, hit me up.
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nice one
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azurblå, October 9, 2009:
Hi! I’m not 100 % sure about this, so I’ll ask even it’s stupidI’m going to do an animation and it will be showed in a free-enter exhibition. Can I use the music found from this site?
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2jazzy, October 13, 2009:
In the example of using music as a soundtrack for a film, the fact that it will used commercially is not affected by the basic CC license as long you acknowledge use of it. You still copyright your film under a different license, but the soundtrack can be used by anyone under CC. If the author modifies the license and barrs commercial use, then it can’t be used that way. In its basic form the CC license allows to modify, package or whatever to the product, make money if you can, but always pass on the CC licence i.e you cannot change the license terms
