Netlabels provide a great model for analyzing CC music on the Web, but they are by no means the only distribution channels for CC-licensed music. Many individual artists are bypassing any sort of label structure at all and releasing their music for free on the Internet, either through their own personal websites or through one of the many online communities that exist as a hub for free music and sound on the Web. New sites such as Jamendo, Magnatune, and ccMixter provide prime examples of large databases of CC-licensed audio that is being sold, shared freely, and/or remixed. By looking at these three sites we can begin to see an even better picture of the large scope of musicians and artists that are adopting free music principles and making their work available to others for sharing, and in many cases still finding ways to profit from their works.

Jamendo is a music community on the Web that allows musicians and bands to upload and share their works, and lets users download those works freely. All of the music is published under Creative Commons licenses. As of March 2010, the Jamendo community has 31,429 albums available for download, all freely shareable. Some interesting features on Jamendo make the site more than just a place to release music for free (Jamendo, 2010). The Jamendo model allows artists to accept donations, sell special products in their own virtual shops, share ad-revenue, as well as license their music for commercial uses for a fee. This is what I would consider a CC hybrid model, releasing digital music freely for no cost, while profiting from selling special physical products like limited edition vinyl releases and merchandising, sharing ad revenues with the site, and licensing music to be used in television, film, or commercials. The functionality of the site makes it simple for users to download, donate, buy products, and clearly see what CC license that music is published with, and what that specific license permits the user to do with the work. I will briefly outline these features, showing how Jamendo is being used to increase fan bases and create revenue, all for no monetary cost to the artists.

The donation feature is one that I find to be essential to any model for releasing CC-licensed works. One of Kelly’s (2008) eight generative qualities is patronage, stating that music fans want to support the artists that they love. By making donations a possibility, Jamendo has created a way for artists to benefit from patronage, allowing users to donate to the artists that they see as deserving of their money. Also, when you download a song or album on the site, the donate option is clearly visible, yet not intrusive, making the decision to donate an easy one should a user decide to do so. Next, Jamendo allows artists to have their own virtual web shops where they can sell physical and/or special limited-edition products, which are called “collector’s items” or “rarities” (Jamendo, 2010). This allows artists to not only give users the ability to download their music for free, but also purchase special physical goods if they are so inclined to do so. Artists who release their music for free digitally can still have an opportunity to sell physical discs, which many fans might buy if they like the free download. Jamendo also has a “Pro” program where artists can sign up to share ad revenues with the site. Depending on how many hits your music pages get, the artist receives 50% of the ad revenue generated by those hits. This is another feature that is attempting to give CC artists new ways to monetize freely shared music. Another important feature of the “Pro” program is the ability to license your works for commercial purposes, for a negotiated fee (Jamendo, 2010). I see this as an increasingly interesting aspect of CC music, as there are unlimited possibilities for licensing free music for public spaces like stores and restaurants as an alternative to expensive music licensing, or licensing for use in other media formats like games, commercials, and mobile, thus providing a revenue stream to artists that does not interfere with distributing the music freely on the Web. All of these features make for an exciting new business model, giving music fans the ability to download and share albums freely, while giving musicians access to new ways of monetizing music in the digital environment.

Magnatune is another site that is using new and exciting methods to make freely sharable music available to users while providing artists an ability to profit at the same time. Magnatune was founded by John Buckman in 2003 as an independent commercial record label that would sell music with Creative Commons licenses, and split the profits from any sales or licensing right down the middle, 50/50, with the artist (Buckman, 2004). Magnatune now uses a subscription-based model, allowing subscribers to download unlimited amounts of songs and albums in the site’s catalog, which as of March 2010 has surpassed 10,000 songs from over 300 artists, for a $15 monthly fee (Magnatune, 2010). The label is different from Jamendo because they do not allow anyone and everyone to release music on the site. Magnatune takes a netlabel approach to filtering what they will release, meaning that they accept music submissions from anyone, but of those submissions only approximately 3% are released on the site (Magnatune, 2009). Along with subscription fees, the site also generates revenue by licensing their artist’s works for commercial purposes. As of 2009, Magnatune had licensed over 3000 songs for commercial use, offering lower prices than the industry licensing standards and giving 50% of the fees collected directly to the artist.

Buckman (2009) puts it like this,
“We sell your music online. How much money does this really mean? We don’t know yet. One thing we do know: the 50/50 split we offer means that a $5 album sale yields $2.50 for you, the artist. A typical record label will pay you 25 cents to a dollar in royalties on a CD sale after they recoup their expenses (if that ever occurs). That means we have to sell 1/10th as many albums to give the artist the same revenue. Can we do it? We don’t know yet, but we’re trying, we’re trying” (3rd bullet point).

Users browsing the Magnatune site that are not members have the ability to stream full tracks and search through the music catalog. Also, Magnatune encourages users to share the label’s music with friends. By using a CC BY-NC-SA license on all of the music released on Magnatune, the site is making sure that while artists get paid, fans also get something extra out of the transaction as well. They are allowed to share the music freely, as well as remix the original music material for non-commercial purposes.

In contrast to Jamendo and Magnatune, ccMixter is a website that focuses specifically on remixes rather than free music promotion and distribution. Creative Commons licensing has played a critical role in the emergence of a thriving remix culture on the Web, and ccMixter is at the center of that culture. Victor Stone is the project lead of ccMixter, as well as the open source projects ccHost and digccMixter that provide the source code for these sites to work. Stone (2009) explains that ccMixter was set up as a music site built around three types of submissions that can be uploaded and shared including samples, a cappellas, and remixes that use those samples to create a new work. Also, when the remixes are uploaded there is a simple interface that allows the remixer to easily identify what samples were used, allowing links and relationships to be made between samples and remixes. Stone refers to the site as a “sample pool” that “is a safe harbor since, by definition, all the samples are provided under a well understood, liberal licensing scheme (p. 11-12). As of March 2010, ccMixter hosts 11,696 completed remixes, as well as over 2,000 a cappellas and over 10,000 samples that are free to be remixed (ccMixter, 2010). All of these samples and remixes are published under Creative Commons licenses that allow for sharing and derivative works. Stone (2009) goes on to state that his “goal was to use ccMixter as a laboratory for the hypothesis that if musicians were encouraged to share their remixes, samples and a cappellas amongst each other, they would, in turn, create more innovative, perhaps even higher quality music, to the benefit of everyone. The ccMixter project would be my existence proof” (p. 29). While we have no way of quantitatively measuring the innovation or quality of music and how that has changed since the introduction of Creative Commons and digital remix culture, sharing and the ability to reuse creative content indeed benefits culture and the public as a whole. A site like ccMixter is essential in helping this cultural economy of open content to grow, allowing for future generations to have infinite “sample pools” at their disposal, encouraging art to build upon art.

Creative Commons licenses are now being used by more and more artists and musicians, both large and small. Some well-known bands have moved away from the major label model and embraced Creative Commons as a way of giving their fans the freedom to share. One of the best examples of this is Trent Reznor’s band Nine Inch Nails (NIN) and their Ghosts I-IV album released in March of 2008 on the band’s website. The album consisted of 36 tracks, released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, and was available to fans in a number of tiered offerings. Users could download the first nine tracks for no charge, or they could pay $5 for all 36 tracks. The tracks were also officially released by NIN on all of the major file sharing services, including the infamous Pirate Bay. This might seem like a sure way to cannibalize sales, but just like the example of Steve Albini’s band Shellac mentioned previously in this paper, Reznor used p2p to his advantage and increased demand for the work. NIN created physical versions of the album at the same time that the free copies were released, including everything from a $10 CD to a limited edition box set for $300. The $300 box set set was limited to 2500 copies and sold out in less than 30 hours, resulting in a gross profit of $750,000 in a little over a day. Add to that the downloads and other physical versions for sale, and NIN took in over $1.6 million in the first week of the album release (Masnick, 2009). This is money going directly to artists, not a label. And this is all for music that was available for free! This example shows that freely sharable copies do not necessarily take away sales, but rather can work as promotional tools for other things that can be sold like limited edition products, merchandise, and/or concert tickets.

Linksvayer (2009) explains,
A few years ago, often I’d hear people comment that tools like CC licensing were only useful for artists that weren’t well known and needed to take extreme measures to promote their works. Ironically, more recently, and especially following NIN’s successes, I see comments that open music can only work for bands that already have a rabid fan base. Obviously both can’t be true, and it turns out neither is. (Para. 3)

Creative Commons can facilitate a new model for music distribution, for both established and new artists. By creating a blend of fan appreciation and the encouragement of sharing with new and interesting ways for fans to connect with the music, we can see a new model that benefits both fans and artists. Masnick (2009) describes this model as “Connect with Fans (CwF) + Reason to Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$)” (Para. 1). He states that NIN presents a perfect example of this model in action, creating “successful strategies for building up a stronger fan base, creating wonderful new works of art, distributing them out to the community and getting paid for it at the same time” (Para. 2). This is an exciting time in music culture, a time where a paradigm shift has deemed the old business model incompatible with the digital world. As major labels continue to fight new technologies and attempt to maintain control with lobbying in Washington, the future possibilities for a shared music culture to thrive on the Web are strong.

Continue to next section (Conclusions) >>

By Adam Porter, 2010.