One of my favorite bands Nine Inch Nails has released a 36 tracks / 4-cd album ‘Ghost 1-IV ‘ under a CC BY-NC-SA license (see the FAQ). It has been released in four different packages :

1) $5 digital download: All 36 tracks in a variety of digital formats including a 40 page PDF

2) $10 2xCD set
Ghosts I-IV on two audio CDs in a six panel digipak package with a 16 page booklet.

3) $75 Deluxe Edition
Ghosts I-IV in a hardcover fabric slipcase containing: 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD with all 36 tracks in multi-track format, and a Blu-ray disc with Ghosts I-IV in high-definition 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow

4) $300 Ultra Deluxe
Includes everything in the Deluxe Edition Package, along with an exclusive four-LP 180 gram vinyl set in a fabric slipcase, and two exclusive limited edition Giclee prints in a luxurious package. Limited to 2500 pieces, numbered and signed by Trent Reznor.

Besides these packages you can download Ghost-I for free:

“The first 9 tracks from the Ghosts I-IV collection available as high-quality, DRM-free MP3s, including the complete PDF.”

Listen to some (excerpts?) of the music using the player below:

I’m very curious about Trent Reznor ’s experiences with going back from the default cut-throat music industry deals to DIY and in this process using CC licenses and different sales models. Somebody should do an in-depth interview with him about this. So lazy web spread the message and get us all an interview with Trent Reznor’s thoughts about this..

ps: Thanks Marco for mentioning this !

We just released another eclectic music compilation with twelve Creative Commons licensed songs together with Mindz.com . The songs range from lounge-like electronics to R ‘n B and from dirty garage rock to indie pop. You can download this release directly (50MB zip) or have a look at the homepage where you can also find our previous free, gratis Creative Commons licensed compilations. I hope you’ll enjoy the music!

From the press release:

The Dutch open music platform Simuze released another free music compilation to promote its artists today. Music lovers can enjoy the twelve eclectic tracks on Mindz Music vol. 1 – the first collaboration with the new Dutch social network MINDZ.com – selected from the varied offer of Creative Commons licensed music on the platform. This is an excellent opportunity for those who’s Dutch is a bit rusty to experience some lovely music from the Lowlands. Anyone can legally download the compilation for free – including artwork and English documentation– in a zip file from: http://www.simuze.nl/live/download.php

 About Simuze.org:

Simuze.org is an on-line music platform for musicians and music lovers, based in the Netherlands. The goal is to combine the essential need of musicians to spread their music with the possibilities to distribute content through the Internet, in order to gain the much-needed exposure to promote their music. Simuze acknowledges and embraces the fact we live in a digital age that offers new creative possibilities, where people are used to discovering and exchanging music for free on the Internet. Because of this, all music on the platform is distributed under a Creative Commons license, which allows musicians to declare that the music they have uploaded to the website – under certain optional conditions – can be copied, remixed and shared for free, on a legal basis.

 

Since the launch of Simuze.org – in July 2005 – over 400 artists have uploaded more than 1500 songs. The music available on the platform ranges from obscure avant-garde experiments to finalists and winners of prestigious Dutch music contests. With over 100,000 unique visitors on a monthly basis, Simuze is becoming an important channel for Dutch musicians to promote themselves. At the moment the platform is still in its public beta stage, but in 2008 a new version of Simuze will be launched. This version will include a huge increase in functionality and usability for both musicians and music lovers, and also a beautiful new design.

Lawrence Lessig founder of Creative Commons considers running for United States Congress. Lessig already mentioned in Croatia during the iSummit 2007 (see also in crappy Youtube galore ) that he would change his focus from copyright reform to reforming American politics and since a few days it has become apparent that he means business. Today I heard about lessig08.org and I watched his presentation on ‘change’. I suggest to have a look as well:

I sincerely hope Lessig will go for Congress.

I suggest all Americans able to make this happen to have a good look at his ideas. Lessig is just what the USA and all of us striving towards copyright reform and a more balanced world could use. I wish we all could have more politicians of the stature of Lawrence Lessig. The world needs more knowledgeable people in influential positions.

Thanks to Lucas Gonze and Starfrosch I’m currently enjoying a great minimal(?) techno mix of various netlabel artists called ‘Klänge der Nacht Vol.3′ by Tom Larson. Nice side effect is that this also pointed me in the direction of an interesting looking DJ sets website named Mixotic.

Enjoy ze musica!

Today the new website for Creative Commons Netherlands has gone ‘live’.

The old design needed a make-over. It was not consistent with the Creative Commons mother organisation anymore and the technology behind could use some attention as well. The new site is completely built with the excellent open-source blogging (and nowadays ‘poor man’s’ content-management system) Wordpress and can be easily updated.

The layout was inspired by the design of the Creative Commons mother organisation and implemented using the theme Mistylooks by Sadish Bala as a starting point. Sadish theme was according to the info at themes.wordpress.net influenced by ReOrganize. If you have a look at all these three ‘versions’ you’ll will notice that they are more different than alike yet all of these share something in common. Be it a piece of code, some particular clever way to deal with cross-browser compatibility or something less tangible such as the desire to craft a nice and useful design, that’s what Creative Commons is also about: sharing.

Burobjorn installed, configured, customized Wordpress and implemented the design (the latter also had some love from Atypisch, especially in the Internet Explorer department). We hope the new site will be helpful in achieving the goals of Creative Commons Netherlands and we belief that Creative Commons Netherlands is ready  for the future with this new site.

Congratulations Creative Commons Netherlands!

After an ‘interesting’ flight to Dubrovnik, Amsterdam-Brussels-Zagreb-Dubrovnik is not my idea of fun especially if your flight is delayed leaving you less than 10 minutes to catch a connected flight. Anyway, I made it to the iSummit. Thanks to the nice iCommons organisation team I’m at a nice hotel and had a short but refreshing night.

At this moment I’m sitting at the iCommons keynote kickoff talk. I just saw the people behind this hilarious flick called Star Wreck give an interesting talk. The introduction was a nice opener in which one of their filmcharacters introduced them to the audience. After that Sylvan Zimmer was talking about their project Jamendo. I’ve met Sylvan on several occasions and their project is really nice and expanding. Their project is somewhat of an example for our project Simuze and we hope to be as successful as they are. John Buckman of Magnatune gave a talk in which he’s explaining the background about Magnatune an online music label. They apperently do A&R (as in they pick the music out of the demos sent) and sell this online. He also explains that one of their main aspects of their business model is the licensing music to commercial companies (as in business2business) and the other aspects is selling music to consumers. Interesting observation by him is the fact that the money is in the b2b. The last speaker is Chiaki Hayashi who gave a talk about loftwork which as far as I understood is a ‘creatives network’ a sort of platform for creative people to distribute their work. Sadly the website is in Japanese and therefor I can’t find out more about it.

I’m on my way to the iSummit in Dubrovnik (Croatia). Thanks to the scholarship I got from the iCommons organisation I will be able to participate in the event for those involved in Creative Commons and related topics.

Last year I also participated at the iSumit in Brazil as part of the Dutch Creative Commons team and it was the anxious long trip (I really dislike flying! Kinda like B.A.) to Brazil more than worth! I hope this year will be just as rewarding. I will be discussing some of my ideas regarding the commons and open formats. Ideas which have been brewing for the last three months or so and which have lead to the start of Spreadopenmedia.com together with Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves (involved with Xiph.org among others) and more recently Jon Philips (involved with Creative Commons .org). At this moment Spread Open Media is still more an idea / thought than a working project and I’m looking forward to discuss these indeas at the summit!

I plan to blog about these thoughts as soon as I have the time.

Documentary about the current state of copyright and culture. Check out this trailer on Blip.tv.

Download the complete film using Bittorrent (direct link to the torrent on The Pirate Bay) and support the authors here.

If you like these kind of documentries / topics and you haven’t seen it already, you should definately also check out ‘Steal this film’, a documentary also about copyright, culture, filesharing and The Pirate Bay in particular.

image by: mushroom and rooster licensed under Creative Commons BY-ND license

UPDATE: The petition location has changed: http://www.musicfrom.nl/bumawakeup/

Last week, Ard Boer of dutch independent music label RaRa Records and Lopend Vuur podcast co-host contacted us (Simuze) if we were interested in joining his petition to allow for more flexible contracts by the Dutch music rights collecting society Buma/Stemra.

The current situation in the Netherlands is that by becoming a member of the collecting society you’ll have to transfer all your exploitation rights exclusively to them. Any musician or composer that wants to get the money collected in their name has to become a member of this (actually on paper 2 organizations) organization or else they’ll never will get this money. This rights collecting society has been granted the monopoly right to collect rights by the government. Basically this situation stinks and we want to see it changed:

We want to see more flexible contracts (= non-exclusive) for members of the rights collecting society which allows them to choose the conditions under which to release their own music and for instance use CC licenses for this.

So, off course we joined his effort and thus I’m writing this here on my blog. Although there might not be so many reading this blog, I would like ask the few visiting to go an sign this petition:

http://www.musicfrom.nl/bumawakeup/

Ps: For all non-dutch people, it’s a Dutch organization and it would be better for this cause to have loads of affected Dutch people sign it instead of loads of non-affected non-Dutch people. Instead we would like to urge you to start your own petitions, in the hope that we can see a change in the contracts used by the rights collecting societies all over the world and that initiatives like the Creative Commons licenses can be used in conjuction with a rights collecting society membership.

Please spread this message! Contact your Dutch friends, start your own initiatives and raise awarness!

Our Simuze team did it again:

We’ve selected twelve songs from Simuze and created a downloadable CD. Just like the previous virtual cd ‘Spread The Love’, this one can be legally downloaded for free, burned to a CD, protected by a ‘fold-it-yourself’ cover and shared with friends and strangers. All thanks to the musicians and artists using Simuze and licensing their music under a Creative Commons license.

This time we focused on music in the ‘electronics’ genre and I think we made a nice representation of this genre. It will also give all those people whose Dutch is a bit rusty a great opportunity to check out some great music from the Lowlands. So wait are you waiting for?

Download Share This Vibe now and enjoy ze musica!