Free music

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The crossed out copyright symbol with a musical note on the right hand side is the free music symbol, signifying a lack of copyright restrictions on music. It may be used in the abstract, or applied to a sound recording or musical composition. Free music.svg
The crossed out copyright symbol with a musical note on the right hand side is the free music symbol, signifying a lack of copyright restrictions on music. It may be used in the abstract, or applied to a sound recording or musical composition.

Free music or libre 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 should be no fee involved. The word free refers to freedom (as in free software), not to price. [1]

Contents

The Free Music Philosophy [1] generally encourages creators to free music using whatever language or methods they wish. A Free Music Public License (FMPL) [2] is available for those who prefer a formal approach. Some free music is licensed under licenses that are intended for software (like the GPL) or other writings (the GFDL). But there are also licenses especially for music and other works of art, such as Free To Use's Free To Use License, EFF's Open Audio License, LinuxTag's Open Music License, the Free Art license and some of the Creative Commons Licences.

History

Before the advent of copyright law 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 or free music, 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. [3]

In response, the concept of free music was codified in the Free Music Philosophy [1] by Ram Samudrala in early 1994. It was based on the idea of Free Software by Richard Stallman 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.[ citation needed ]

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. [4]

The Free Music Philosophy was reported on by diverse media outlets including Billboard , [5] Forbes , [6] Levi's Original Music Magazine, [7] The Free Radical , [8] Wired [9] [10] and The New York Times . [11] Along with free software and Linux (a free operating system), copyleft licenses, the explosion of the Web and rise of P2P, the cementing of mp3 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. [12] Organisations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons with free information champions like Lawrence Lessig 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. [4] [13] [14]

Record labels and websites distributing free music

Notable bands distributing their music under free or close-to-free conditions

Note that some licenses, such as CC-BY-NC, are not free by definition. [19] However, works under these licenses are listed here as being related to the topic.

TitleLicenses
Nine Inch Nails The Slip CC BY-NC-SA
Ghosts I–IV CC BY-NC-SA
Ophur [20]
Severed Fifth Creative Commons
Twisted Helices [21]
subatomicglue
Brunette Models
Kimiko Ishizaka Creative Commons Zero license – Public Domain [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free software</span> Software licensed to be freely used, modified and distributed

Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines freeware unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification, redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software, which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source license</span> Software license allowing source code to be used, modified, and shared

Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition.

Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and 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 licenses, free of charge to the public. These licenses allow authors of creative works to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Content owners still maintain their copyright, but Creative Commons licenses give standard releases that replace the individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, that are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creative Commons license</span> Copyright license for free use of a work

A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that the author has created. CC provides an author flexibility and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free Art License</span> Type of free content license

The Free Art License (FAL) is a copyleft license that grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works except for computer hardware and software, including for commercial use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loca Records</span> British independent electronica and post rock record label

Loca Records is a British independent electronica and post rock record label based in Brighton, England. All the music, artwork and videos are released under copyleft licenses and distributed physically on vinyl, CD, and cassette. Inspired by the free software movement, Loca Records allows similar freedoms as the GNU General Public License on their releases, including copying, re-release, modification, and sampling, with the requirement that the new work uses the same license.

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">Software license</span> Governs the use and/or redistribution of software

A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Share-alike</span> Condition in some free copyright licenses

Share-alike (🄎) is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Copyleft licenses are free content or free software licenses with a share-alike condition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free-culture movement</span> Social movement promoting the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others

The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's original creators, by using the Internet and other forms of media.

License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to legally combine source code from separately-licensed software in order to create and publish a new program. Proprietary licenses are generally program-specific and incompatible; authors must negotiate to combine code. Copyleft licenses are commonly deliberately incompatible with proprietary licenses, in order to prevent copyleft software from being re-licensed under a proprietary license, turning it into proprietary software. Many copyleft licenses explicitly allow relicensing under some other copyleft licenses. Permissive licenses are compatible with everything, including proprietary licenses; there is thus no guarantee that all derived works will remain under a permissive license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free content</span> Nonrestrictive creative work

Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software program, or any other creative content for which there are very minimal copyright and other legal limitations on usage, modification and distribution. These are works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and modified by anyone for any purpose including, in some cases, commercial purposes. Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the definition of free cultural work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyleft</span> Practice of mandating free use in all derivatives of a work

Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, freedoms refers to the use of the work for any purpose, and the ability to modify, copy, share, and redistribute the work, with or without a fee. Licenses which implement copyleft can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works ranging from computer software, to documents, art, and scientific discoveries, and similar approaches have even been applied to certain patents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU General Public License</span> Series of free software licenses

The GNU General Public Licenses are a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft licenses, that guarantee end users the freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The GPL was the first copyleft license for general use. It was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. The licenses in the GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License and even further distinct from the more widely-used permissive software licenses such as BSD, MIT, and Apache.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Free Documentation License</span> Copyleft license primarily for free software documentation

The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) 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 derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities, the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Software categories</span> Groups of software

Software categories are groups of software. They allow software to be understood in terms of those categories, instead of the particularities of each package. Different classification schemes consider different aspects of software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GPL font exception</span>

The GPL font exception clause is an optional clause that can be added to the GNU General Public License permitting digital fonts shared with that license to be embedded within a digital document file without requiring the document itself to also be shared with GPL. Without the clause, conflicts may arise with open-source projects distributing digital fonts which may be used in desktop publishing. As explained by Dave Crossland in Libre Graphics Magazine: "A copyleft font may overreach into the documents that use it, unless an exception is made to the normal terms; an additional permission to allow people to combine parts of a font with a document without affecting the license of texts, photographs, illustrations and designs. Most libre fonts today have such a copyleft license – the SIL OFL or GNU GPL with the Font Exception described in the GPL FAQ."

A free license or open license is a license that allows copyrighted work to be reused, modified, and redistributed. These uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or other Intellectual property (IP) laws. The term broadly covers free content licenses and open-source licenses, also known as free software licenses.

A public license or public copyright license is a license by which a copyright holder as licensor can grant additional copyright permissions to any and all persons in the general public as licensees. By applying a public license to a work, provided that the licensees obey the terms and conditions of the license, copyright holders give permission for others to copy or change their work in ways that would otherwise infringe copyright law.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Samudrala, Ram (1994). "The Free Music Philosophy" . Retrieved 26 October 2008.
  2. ↑ Samudrala, Ram (2011). " "The Free Music Public License" . Retrieved 13 September 2011.[ permanent dead link ]
  3. ↑ "NET Act: 17 U.S.C. and 18 U.S.C. as amended (redlined)". U.S. Department of Justice. Archived from the original on 14 January 2012.
  4. 1 2 Schulman BM. The song heard 'round the world: The copyright implications of MP3s and the future of digital music. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 12: 3, 1999. Archived 2012-04-09 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ Reece D. Industry grapples with MP3 dilemma. Billboard, 18 July 1998.
  6. ↑ Penenberg A. Habias copyrightus. Forbes, 11 July 1997.
  7. ↑ Durbach D. Short fall to freedom: The free music insurgency. Levi's Original Music Magazine, 19 November 2008 Archived 1 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ Ballin M. Unfair Use. The Free Radical 47, 2001
  9. ↑ Oakes C. Recording industry goes to war against web sites. Wired, 10 June 1997.
  10. ↑ Stutz M. They (used to) write the songs. Wired, 12 June 1998.
  11. ↑ Napoli L. Fans of MP3 forced the issue. The New York Times, 16 December 1998.
  12. ↑ Just T. Alternate Kinds of Freedom. Archived 2014-09-03 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ↑ Samudrala R. The future of music. 1997
  14. ↑ Story of a Revolution: Napster & the Music Industry. MusicDish, 2000
  15. ↑ "About Audition Records". Audition Records. Archived from the original on 25 January 2011.
  16. ↑ "Dogmazic.net, musique libre – Les licences". Dogmazic.net. Archived from the original on 11 June 2012. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
  17. ↑ Simon Trask. "Creative Commons, Copyright & The Independent Musician". Soundonsound.com. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
  18. ↑ "Loca Records". Loca Records. Archived from the original on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
  19. ↑ Creative Commons NonCommercial, any version (#CC-BY-NC)
  20. ↑ "RIPIntro". Ophur.com. 22 January 2008. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
  21. ↑ "The Twisted (Helices) page – in 1993 it was called "The Twisted Page" and it made sense – exploratory music". Twisted-helices.com. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
  22. ↑ Ishizaka, Kimiko (n.d.). "The Open Goldberg Variations" . Retrieved 15 June 2012.
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