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Free Music
Free Music - a branch on a much larger tree. It would seem to make sense, based on comparison with
Free Software. But there are differences, which destroy the logic of any theory, so leaving nostalgia
and idealism; either of these better than continuing blindly on the same predictable track.
Breaking away from conformity
Part of the intuition came from recording in studios, and sampling that moment when,
after an hour or a day, some piece of music gained its own life, and stood out from the musicians,
just as soon as they called it a creation. And just at that moment, when balance is most required, the musician's fixed narrative is justified (up until this mythical moment, all is suffering against loss; after, all that suffering is translated into suffering against gain, and any embarrassing indulgence, suddenly justified by this newly born). It was this which destroyed the muse's appetite for musicians - who had become trapped in a fixed set of values, which involved recording, like monkeys with typewriters, until some life form came at random. Given time and talent, this is an inevitable outcome. What has happened is that this inevitability became part of the machine, and so the life forms themselves ceased to be part of their natural continuum, and were, at birth, enslaved to the narrative, not of the music business (which everyone thinks is evil), but of the musicians themselves.
It was this particular moment, closely observed, which I wished to depart from. Ambition is so strong, that all the main tributaries of utility had to be separated away from the piece of music. To do this, there would be no royalties, no film rights, no financially valuable rights at all, when such a life form suddenly chooses a musician through which to express itself. In this way, one might hope to find out what the muse/music really wants, and for the musician to participate in that, rather than treat the whole process as the factory-farming of sound. To sum-up: Avoid that moment when the musician's ego turns upon his or her own creation.
The Ethymonics Free Music License
The
Ethymonics Free Music License is based closely on the
GNU General Public License, the license used for most Free Software, including the Linux operating system.
However, before, and especially since the Free Music License was written, considerable effort has gone into creating a similar licensing scheme appropriate to music and creative content in general. The best example of this is the Creative Commons, a flexible licensing scheme to match the specific level of copying freedom which a musician or creator wishes to apply to their work.
The
Ethymonics Free Music License specifies a fixed ideal: that a piece of music can be shared by copying, downloading or performing. It is even okay for people to sell those copies, because this is seen as a way of making the music widely known.
A couple of important links
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