The Free Music Archive provides a curatorial approach to promoting and discovering music, and allows for the free, legal streaming and downloading of its library’s tracks. Much like an opinion blog, the Free Music Archive acts as a tastemaker with the aid of user generated and suggested content which must first be approved by the site’s curators. Every track on the site is handpicked and pre-cleared for personal use. Users with uploading or editing privileges must be invited. Initial funding for the Free Music Archive came from the New York State Music Fund, a program of the Rockefeller Philanthrophy Advisors.
SoundReef, currently in closed beta, has come up with an interesting angle in a very lucrative ‘indie’ music licensing market which YouLicense.com is competing in and PumpAudio ? acquired by Getty Images in 2007 for $42 million ? has already won a tidy share of. Offering online music licensing solutions for independent artists and small companies, SoundReef hopes to encourage new business by making it possible for clients seeking music for commercial use to license music by compensating the artist (or copyright administrator) with promotional effort. What a clever idea! As most commercial use of music is small-scheme with zero-budget, music buyers now have an alternative currency to barter with and it just so happens to be the most valuable commodity of all for bootstrapping artists: Exposure. Let’s see how this venture kicks off.
SoundCloud is an online music collaboration and large music file management platform. The company positioned itself as a digital music exchange offering but it’s so much more than that. The SoundCloud audio player displays the waveform of the track, allowing listeners to view and intercept specific segments of the music and comment on it. As an artist collaboration solution, artists can share, mix, and remix their music under the Creative Commons licensing designations, enabling the creative process to continue long after the master is ‘complete’. I particularly like the fact that SoundCloud is a music-oriented digital distribution solution, making it super easy to send and receive music files within a community of producers, engineers, DJs, labels etc. who deal with hefty music files on a daily basis.
I’ve been following Bandcamp for a little while now (see earlier post) and I noticed today that the company made some revisions to its home page. Most notably, Bandcamp created a “features” page which lists the entire suite of tools and services. I was also delighted to learn that Bandcamp now provides Creative Commons licensing designations:
Under the Creative Commons licensing designations, artists who make their music public, in this case via Bandcamp, are providing limited rights to other artists and music fans who wish to remix, share, or use the music in a variety of ways without having to formally ask permission.
Ethan Diamond, the brain behind OddPost, the web mail service acquired by Yahoo! and, more recently, founder of Bandcamp, dispatched a newsletter today announcing the band portal’s new feature-set and recent upgrades. The free publishing platform boasts nifty and relevant tools for artists and band promoters to optimize their online presence and provide an uber-cool experience for fans and new comers. Armed with features such as domain redirection to a unique domain name within the site, fan email capturing on transactions, and IP licensing control (courtesy of Creative Commons) associated with the variety of ways to transmit music files, Bandcamp is set to become a popular choice for the brand conscious and online promotion savvy music community. In addition to Bandcamp’s visual bells and whistles and you-control-your-music ethos, the company focuses on pertinent music file meta-tagging and artist profile-specific search engine optimization for its individual members. Did I mention that it’s free? Bandcamp is really quite simple, down to earth, and rather wonderful.
Trent Reznor has done it again. Few musicians have Trent’s gift for realizing trends in the music industry and preemptively meeting their fans needs, rather than simply reacting to changes in the market.
With a note attached that says, “Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years — this one’s on me”, Reznor’s latest album, The Slip, is now available for free download everywhere.
In addition to being offered for free, the album has been released under the Creative Commons “attribution noncommercial share-alike” license, and a post on the NIN site says, “We encourage you to remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.”
The album is available in better-than-CD sounding 24-bit, 96-kHz WAV files, MP3, or lossless (FLAC or Apple), and comes with a printable PDF with album artwork, track listing, etc.
Get your free copy of The Slip now at http://theslip.nin.com
All you need is an email address.
Subscribe via email
Subscribe via RSS
Follow on Twitter