Recently a silly old man from Tamil Nadu was crying foul that he is not getting royalties for his music. Whenever they play his songs on TV or radio or perform it on stage, he expects a share of profit or at least he wants them to seek his permission. While the tyrannical copyright laws facilitate such inhuman extortion, where is the Free Software equivalent of Music? Software industry itself has its origin after the advent of copyright laws. But music is older than Homo sapiens species itself! Greatest works of music known to us were already centuries old when the crude copyrights laws were made. Except few hegemonic and anti-human societies, where advances in science and creativeness in arts were reserved to few group of people (and far worse in cases where it is locked down to people born in to particular family/community), world, at large, always shared knowledge and publicized creativity to the masses. So in this post-human world, are there real humans still left to share their knowledge and creativity to others? May be! They may be very few. But such people are for real. Here are some great sites which allow you access as well as to share music with lesser restrictive licenses.
1. opsound.org
Opsound is a site by Sal Randolph. inspired by free software and applies its philosophy to music. Musicians and sound artists can add their work to the Opsound repository using any of the copyleft licenses developed by Creative Commons. Everyone can download, share, remix, and reimagine music available in their site.
2. freemusicarchive.org
This site hosts lot of MP3 files and they also have apps for iOS and Android devices to access their content. Instead of modeling themselves purely after a later idea like Free Software, they also draw inspiration from Radio! They want to continue what radio did in previous generations, i.e. provide people with free music. Artists can upload their music in whole or part (and hence can attract more customers) and people can enjoy the music without any registration.
3. openmusicarchive.org
Artists Ben White & Eileen Simpson have started this project so that music works whose copyright term has expired and in public domain can be made available to a wider audience through internet. Music with no economic value which are usually forgotten by mainstream record companies are given a second life after their copyright term. Also the site encourages more people to collaborate and make their music publicly accessible.
4. cpdl.org
Is there a Wikipeida of music? Yes, it is cpdl.org. They have a large number of sheet music and music files (MIDI and other formats) in their archive. They host only "free" music without any restrictions even under the funny Mickey Mouse Law of USA. Since its inception in 2005, it has grown to a colossal collection of more than 25,000 scores by more than 2,800 composers.
5. musopen.org
A non-profit organization that aims to provide free sheet music, lessons and books for teaching music. Not only serving as a platform to share music, musopen.org aims to make music education reachable to more people.
What will happen if humans have no civilization or government? Do you think we will be killing each other for food and other needs? Do you think that survival of the fittest means "do whatever to survive"? The answer is "NO!". All communities of humans, be it from so called civilized cities to hunter-gatherers of dense forest, evolved to live a social and community life. Even our non-human ancestors lived in groups and not as "individuals with a will to survive at any cost". Our evolution has shaped us to be co-operative, collaborative and altruistic to some extant. The cut-throat competition and "survival-of-the-fittest" mantra we hear again and again are just modern and unnatural inventions which are making our way of life less and less sustainable. We shared everything before from land to food. Then slowly everything was taken out of the common ownership. The last thing remained in collective ownership was knowledge and creativity as they are inexhaustible resources. But human greed knows no limit and it has even snatched these inexhaustible resources from collective ownership. So to reverse the whole set of damage we have brought on our species and on the planet, we have to start from reversing the latest mistake. By liberating knowledge and setting it free, we can start the process of setting the entire humanity free!
1. opsound.org
Opsound is a site by Sal Randolph. inspired by free software and applies its philosophy to music. Musicians and sound artists can add their work to the Opsound repository using any of the copyleft licenses developed by Creative Commons. Everyone can download, share, remix, and reimagine music available in their site.
2. freemusicarchive.org
This site hosts lot of MP3 files and they also have apps for iOS and Android devices to access their content. Instead of modeling themselves purely after a later idea like Free Software, they also draw inspiration from Radio! They want to continue what radio did in previous generations, i.e. provide people with free music. Artists can upload their music in whole or part (and hence can attract more customers) and people can enjoy the music without any registration.
3. openmusicarchive.org
Artists Ben White & Eileen Simpson have started this project so that music works whose copyright term has expired and in public domain can be made available to a wider audience through internet. Music with no economic value which are usually forgotten by mainstream record companies are given a second life after their copyright term. Also the site encourages more people to collaborate and make their music publicly accessible.
4. cpdl.org
Is there a Wikipeida of music? Yes, it is cpdl.org. They have a large number of sheet music and music files (MIDI and other formats) in their archive. They host only "free" music without any restrictions even under the funny Mickey Mouse Law of USA. Since its inception in 2005, it has grown to a colossal collection of more than 25,000 scores by more than 2,800 composers.
5. musopen.org
A non-profit organization that aims to provide free sheet music, lessons and books for teaching music. Not only serving as a platform to share music, musopen.org aims to make music education reachable to more people.
What will happen if humans have no civilization or government? Do you think we will be killing each other for food and other needs? Do you think that survival of the fittest means "do whatever to survive"? The answer is "NO!". All communities of humans, be it from so called civilized cities to hunter-gatherers of dense forest, evolved to live a social and community life. Even our non-human ancestors lived in groups and not as "individuals with a will to survive at any cost". Our evolution has shaped us to be co-operative, collaborative and altruistic to some extant. The cut-throat competition and "survival-of-the-fittest" mantra we hear again and again are just modern and unnatural inventions which are making our way of life less and less sustainable. We shared everything before from land to food. Then slowly everything was taken out of the common ownership. The last thing remained in collective ownership was knowledge and creativity as they are inexhaustible resources. But human greed knows no limit and it has even snatched these inexhaustible resources from collective ownership. So to reverse the whole set of damage we have brought on our species and on the planet, we have to start from reversing the latest mistake. By liberating knowledge and setting it free, we can start the process of setting the entire humanity free!
