CC Talks With
2007 October
CC Talks With: Beatpick
BeatPick is a record label started in London that bills itself as a “FairPlay” music label. From the BeatPick website, users can enjoy a range of different styles of music from all over the world, from pop to electronic to hip-hop to rock; all licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. The website is available in English, Italian, and Chinese (with Spanish coming soon).
The idea for BeatPick came from founder David d’Atri’s Masters in Business Economics thesis. BeatPick made its public debut in February of 2006. As of October 2007, BeatPick represents around 120 artists with over 3,000 music tracks. In addition to BeatPick’s London base, the company has recently opened an office in Rome, Italy as a result of being partially acquired by an Italian software company.
Creative Commons’s former general counsel Mia Garlick caught up with BeatPick.com founder David d’Atri earlier this year to learn more about the company, its artists, its business model, and how it uses Creative Commons licenses to achieve its goals.
It requires quite some determination to take something from a Masters project to a real live business; what was the driving force that lead you to turn BeatPick into a reality?
As a young adult, I was involved in setting up a small label: we specifically did not put a copyright warning on our vinyl and did not pay the collecting societies which we were not members of anyhow. Later on, we began to encourage people to download our music for free from our website. We felt that this was an acceptable way of getting known and making money.
During my studies, I began investigating if whether or not by relaxing the rigid existing copyright laws and decriminalizing file sharing, the music market could become truly competitive. I was also increasingly interested in finding out if it was possible to devise new business strategies that were radically different from traditional ones.
After having completed my MSC, I was hired at a small record label in London where I acquired some practical experience in music licensing. I soon realized that I wanted to replicate the model I had previously used with my old label but on a larger scale. I was curious if I could come up with my own system, something that would provide me with a secure legal framework; that’s when I found out about Creative Commons. I suppose it was discovering the much-debated issues with Creative Commons that really encouraged me to embark on a project like BeatPick.
No Comments »CC Talks With: Strayform
Continuing with our Featured Commoner revival, we are pleased to present an interview with Brandt Cannici, founder of Strayform, a “creation network” that uniquely helps artists fund their works by utilizing Creative Commons licensing.
What’s Strayform all about? What’s its history? How did it come about? Who’s involved?
Strayform is a new model for digital content. With the internet, distribution of digital goods is practically free; the true value is in their creation. Strayform allows people to pay for creation and lets distribution happen naturally and without restriction. Furthermore when you cut out middlemen who act as distributors, something amazing happens. Creators and consumers can now interact naturally as partners. No longer are you a passive recipient of a CD or film. With Strayform, you helped fund it, you watched it grow, you worked with the creator, you had input and could affect the final product. I believe because of this interaction the future will be full of all sorts of creative media projects that are not even imagined today.
I am the founder and I got the idea while working in Japan. My sister and I used to argue about piracy. She claimed that it hurts the artists while I said every dollar you pay to the big distributors is used to force artists into unfair contracts. About that time my friend’s band signed a multi-million dollar deal with EMI. But EMI sat on the contract and my friend went bankrupt. So I came up with an idea that cuts out the distributor, lets artists get paid more, and lets consumer use and file-share freely. I moved back to Texas and made the product, afterward moving to San Francisco to launch. In comparison to our competitors we are a tiny, boot-strapped team – a couple of guys in a coffee shop eating ramen to stay afloat. However, the site is quite sophisticated in what it does.
Read More…
CC Talks With: GiftTRAP
We’re going crazy over here at CC. Not only did we just go live with our website redesign, launch our 3rd Annual Fundraising Campaign, and get a new general counsel/vice president, we are also happy to announce the return of the “Featured Commoner” series to our blog!
“Featured Commoners” are people, groups, or tools that use CC licensing in unique and original ways. Short interviews will be posted to our blog, offering insight into the ways CC licences have helped these people and projects realize their respective goals.
Our first “Featured Commoner” in this new wave of interviews is Nick Kellet of GiftTRAP, a wonderful board game that we have talked about before here.
What’s GiftTRAP all about?
Isn’t gift-giving a gong show in your family? We all have funny stories about the gifts we’ve received and wondered, “What were they thinking?”. That’s what GiftTRAP is all about.
It’s an emotional intelligence game themed around giving gifts. Playing means you can drop hints about what you’d like, try and guess what your friends want or even give really bad gifts just for fun! It’s all about getting the “social” back into board games.
Some games are about winning and others are about taking part. GiftTRAP is an experience that’s all about great conversation and getting friends and family talking about things that matter. In GiftTrap, getting better is as important as winning.
No Comments »
