Free Music Archive

Last updated
Free Music Archive
Free-music-archive.jpg
Type of site
Royalty-free music repository
Owner Tribe of Noise
URL freemusicarchive.org
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
Content license
Various Creative Commons licenses
2 examples:
Example one: Steve Combs, Delta Is - Theme Q,
Instrumental, 4 min 53 s
Example 2:
Rafael Archangel - Dusty Chords,
Instrumental, Easy listening,
1 min 34 s

The Free Music Archive (FMA) is an online repository of royalty-free music. Established in 2009 by the East Orange, New Jersey community radio station WFMU and in cooperation with fellow stations KBOO and KEXP, it aims to provide music under Creative Commons licenses that can be freely downloaded and used in other works. The service launched with an emphasis on curating high-quality works in a manner "designed for the age of the internet". Users can also "tip" musicians via donations. [1] [2]

Contents

While the Free Music Archive is free and open to anyone regardless of registration or other requirements, written and audio content is curated, and permission to upload/edit content is granted on an invitation basis.

In 2018, WFMU announced that it would shut down the FMA due to dwindling funding. In December 2018, the site was acquired by KitSplit and in 2019 by Tribe of Noise.

History

Managing director Jason Sigal explained that due to the SoundExchange royalty scheme, "outdated copyright law and the looming possibility of unfairly high royalties make it difficult to provide audio on-demand, to podcast, to archive, even to stream online", and that the station was being forced to pay royalties for lesser-known artists, while commercial stations were "getting bribed with mountains of cocaine and Ferraris and stuff to play the same top-40 artists that everyone already knows about." He added that the archive "[combined] the user-generated content with the curatorial role that WFMU has always played." Other curators involved in the service included KEXP-FM, Dublab, KBOO, ISSUE Project Room, and CASH Music among others. [3]

In 2012, the FMA held a contest, challenging users to create videos remixing audio from the FMA with video content from the Prelinger Archives. [4] [5]

In 2013, the FMA held another contest, challenging users to compose a royalty-free alternative to "Happy Birthday to You" (a song which, at the time, was encumbered by copyright claims by Warner Chappell Music, invalidated in 2015 as the result of a lawsuit), [6] featuring judges such as Jonathan Coulton. The contest was won by Monk Turner and Fascinoma. [7] [8]

In 2015, the FMA held a contest, challenging users to create videos remixing audio from the FMA with video content which in the public domain (from the Prelinger Archives) calls "Unreel Trailers: A Challenge". [9]

In 2016, the archive surpassed 100,000 songs hosted. [10]

On November 7, 2018, it was announced that the Free Music Archive would be shutting down permanently on November 16, 2018. Existing files would be moved to the Internet Archive collection, but it would effectively end as a growing, ongoing project. Director Cheyenne Hohman noted that its funding from the National Endowment for the Arts had been reduced significantly, and that "material support" for the arts had been "dwindling". [11] The closing date was later pushed back to December 1. [12] On December 12, 2018, it was announced that the service had been acquired by equipment rental service KitSplit, who pledged to ensure its continued operation. [13] However, on September 19, 2019, Kitsplit announced that it had sold the FMA to Tribe of Noise - a group also focusing on the distribution and promotion of free content music under Creative Commons licenses. [14]

Funding

Initial funding for the Free Music Archive came from the New York State Music Fund, a program of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Additional funding support came from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and from the project's users. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Streaming media</span> Multimedia delivery method

Streaming media is multimedia for playback using an offline or online media player. Technically, the stream is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a client, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. Streaming refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital media</span> Any media that are encoded in machine-readable formats

In mass communication, digital media is any communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronic device, including digital data storage media and digital broadcasting. Digital is defined as any data represented by a series of digits, and media refers to methods of broadcasting or communicating this information. Together, digital media refers to mediums of digitized information broadcast through a screen and/or a speaker. This also includes text, audio, video, and graphics that are transmitted over the internet for viewing or listening to on the internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Happy Birthday to You</span> Birthday song

"Happy Birthday to You", also known as "Happy Birthday", is a song traditionally sung to celebrate a person's birthday. According to the 1998 Guinness World Records, it is the most recognized song in the English language, followed by "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". The song's base lyrics have been translated into at least 18 languages. The melody of "Happy Birthday to You" comes from the song "Good Morning to All", which has traditionally been attributed to American sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill in 1893, although the claim that the sisters composed the tune is disputed.

Open-source record labels are record labels that release music under copyleft licenses, that is, licenses that allow free redistribution and may allow free modification of the tracks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audible (service)</span> Online audiobook and podcast service

Audible is an American online audiobook and podcast service that allows users to purchase and stream audiobooks and other forms of spoken word content. This content can be purchased individually or under a subscription model where the user receives "credits" that can be redeemed for content monthly and receive access to a curated on-demand library of content. Audible is the United States' largest audiobook producer and retailer. The service is owned by Audible, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Coulton</span> American singer and songwriter

Jonathan William Coulton, often called "JoCo" by fans, is an American folk/comedy singer-songwriter, known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the Internet to draw fans. Among his most popular songs are "Code Monkey", "Re: Your Brains", "Still Alive", and "Want You Gone". He was the house musician for NPR weekly puzzle quiz show Ask Me Another from 2012 until its end in 2021.

Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the "Music Genome Project"—a means of classifying individual songs by musical traits. The service originally launched in the consumer market as an internet radio service, which would generate personalized channels based on these traits and songs liked by the user; this service is available in an advertising-supported tier, and a subscription-based version. In 2017, the service launched Pandora Premium, an on-demand version of the service more in line with contemporary competitors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">YouTube</span> Video-sharing platform owned by Google

YouTube is an American online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. Accessible worldwide, it was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google and is the second most visited website in the world, after Google Search. YouTube has more than 2.5 billion monthly users, who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos every day. As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyfraud</span> False copyright claims to public-domain content

A copyfraud is a false copyright claim by an individual or institution with respect to content that is in the public domain. Such claims are unlawful, at least under US and Australian copyright law, because material that is not copyrighted is free for all to use, modify and reproduce. Copyfraud also includes overreaching claims by publishers, museums and others, as where a legitimate copyright owner knowingly, or with constructive knowledge, claims rights beyond what the law allows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TuneIn</span> American audio streaming service

TuneIn is a global audio streaming service providing news, radio, sports, music, and podcasts to over 75 million monthly active users.

DeviantArt is an online art community that features artwork, videography and photography, launched on August 7, 2000 by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, and Matthew Stephens among others.

Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 590 million monthly active users, including 226 million paying subscribers, as of September 2023. Spotify is listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts.

A music streaming service is a type of streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to stream digital copyright restricted songs on-demand from a centralized library provided by the service. Some services may offer free tiers with limitations, such as advertising and limits on use. They typically incorporate a recommender system to help users discover other songs they may enjoy based on their listening history and other factors, as well as the ability to create and share public playlists with other users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SoundCloud</span> German audio streaming service

SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming services in the world and is available in 190 countries and territories. The service has more than 76 million active monthly users and over 200 million audio tracks as of November 2021. SoundCloud offers both free and paid memberships on the platform, available for mobile, desktop and Xbox devices. SoundCloud has evolved from a traditional online streaming platform to an entertainment company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radio23</span> Radio station

Radio23 was a non-commercial, freeform radio station founded by Programming Director Jeff Hylton Simmons and launched in 2009. It was shut down in July 2015. The successor called Freeform Portland went on air in April 2016. Based out of Portland, Oregon, where it supported the local artists and community, the station's goal was to provide an international artistic platform for home broadcasters around the world, and to teach anyone around the world how to create radio with a computer and an internet connection. Radio23 is connected with radio stations that include Cascade Community Radio, Hearth Music, WFMU, KDVS, CKUT-FM, KZME, KBOO, Error FM, and Willamette Radio, and also with the magazine War, Semen and Grooviness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">8tracks.com</span> Internet radio and social networking website

8tracks.com is an internet radio and social networking website revolving around the concept of streaming user-curated playlists consisting of at least 8 tracks. Users create free accounts and can browse the site and listen to other user-created mixes, as well as create their mixes. The site also has a subscription-based service, 8tracks Plus, although this is currently only available to listeners based in the United States and Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twitch (service)</span> American live-streaming platform

Twitch is an American video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions, in addition to offering music broadcasts, creative content, and "in real life" streams. Twitch is operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. It was introduced in June 2011 as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv. Content on the site can be viewed either live or via video on demand. The games shown on Twitch's current homepage are listed according to audience preference and include genres such as real-time strategy games (RTS), fighting games, racing games, and first-person shooters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tidal (service)</span> Subscription-based music streaming service

Tidal is a Norwegian-American music streaming service, launched in 2014 by Swedish public company Aspiro. Tidal is now majority-owned by Block, Inc., an American payment processing company that is owned by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey.

Monk Turner is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer. Known as the “galactic defender of the concept album”, Turner has created a number of multi-genre concept albums. He is known for winning the Free Music Archive's competition to create a copyright-free replacement for the song "Happy Birthday to You" whose rights were once owned by Time Warner.

Content ID is a digital fingerprinting system developed by Google which is used to easily identify and manage copyrighted content on YouTube. Videos uploaded to YouTube are compared against audio and video files registered with Content ID by content owners, looking for any matches. Content owners have the choice to have matching content blocked or to monetize it. The system began to be implemented around 2007. By 2016, it had cost $60 million to develop and led to around $2 billion in payments to copyright holders. By 2018, Google had invested at least $100 million into the system.

References

  1. Kiser, Matt (April 10, 2009). "New Website Offers 5,000 Free Downloads That Don't Suck!". Spin . Retrieved November 19, 2018.
  2. Breihan, Tom (April 15, 2009). "WFMU Launches the Free Music Archive". Pitchfork . Retrieved November 19, 2018.
  3. "Interview with Jason Sigal of the Free Music Archive". Rhizome. Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  4. "A Remix Contest Takes Advantage of Dynamic Digital Libraries". KQED. 2012-11-20. Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  5. on the Free Music Archive archived blog
  6. Hunt, Elle (September 23, 2015). "Happy Birthday Ruled Public Domain as Judge Throws out Copyright Claim". The Guardian . London. Retrieved September 23, 2015.
  7. Haglund, David (2013-01-02). "Can We Replace the "Happy Birthday" Song?". Slate. ISSN   1091-2339 . Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  8. Robertson, Adi (2013-02-20). "Jonathan Coulton and others pick songs to replace copyrighted 'Happy Birthday to You'". The Verge. Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  9. "Archived copy". freemusicarchive.org. Archived from the original on 2 September 2019. Retrieved 13 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. "Free Music Archive: 100,000 SONGS!!!!". freemusicarchive.org. Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  11. Stephen, Bijan (2018-11-07). "The Free Music Archive is closing this month". The Verge. Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  12. Hohman, Cheyenne (November 15, 2018). "Update: Closing Date Pushed to Dec 1". Free Music Archive. Archived from the original on November 17, 2018.
  13. Stephen, Bijan (2018-12-12). "The Free Music Archive will live on". The Verge. Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  14. "Tribe Of Noise Acquires Free Music Archive". hypebot. 19 September 2019. Retrieved 2019-09-19.
  15. Connor, Sean. , "Saylor Foundation", 8 March 2013. Retrieved on 24 July 2013.