08.09.2007 A few thoughts on free music

By now, many people, especially those developing software, know the advantages of free software. But what about the music you listen to? Often, we’re used to listening to music that comes with lots of restrictions of what you can do with it. On the other hand, if we were used to listening to free music (which would be free to copy, modify, redistribute, perform, and so on), rather than music which comes with lots of restrictions,

* obtaining music would be easier (no DRM required anyway)
* studying music and reusing musical ideas would be easier, especially if artists started to publish the data files required to make the music along with the music (where possible)
* sharing music would no longer be illegal
* artists could base their work freely on the rich musical culture they live in, like it used to be some centuries ago, where nobody had invented non-free music yet

I bet that almost everybody who reads this blog entry can remember at least ten song titles of non-free music that they like. How many titles of free music do you know? If someone asks you about a great piece of rock music, pop music, electronic music, dance music or whatever you listen to, would you refer them to non-free music or free music?

So, if you like the idea of free music, here are two sites where you can start exploring some of it:
* Jamendo – provides music under various more or less free licenses, search by license is possible
* ccMixter – collaborative site where musicians share creative commons licensed songs and samples