CC Talks With: Mr. Mayo’s Class Integrates CC, Skypes with Lawrence Lessig

Jane Park, November 19th, 2009

Photo by Mr. Mayo CC BY-NC

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to talk to George Mayo, known as Mr. Mayo to his students, a middle school Language Arts teacher in Maryland. Mr. Mayo was brought to CC Learn’s attention by Lawrence Lessig, CC’s founder and current board member, who Skyped with Mr. Mayo’s class for thirty minutes, answering questions on copyright, YouTube’s take-down policy and downloading music. Mr. Mayo and his class have integrated CC licensed works into their daily activities, documenting it all at mrmayo.org. Instead of elaborating on the various innovative ways Mr. Mayo and his class uses CC, I’m going to let George speak for himself. The following is the interview I had with him via Skype. You can also listen to the audio here.

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ccMixter→ArtisTech Media

Mike Linksvayer, October 29th, 2009

Only 5 years ago the benefits of CC-enabled remix — fully legal, easy, and respectful of both original artists, remixers, and fans (but not necessarily of those less and less useful strict divisions) — was mostly a vision, unrealized potential. ccMixter played a big part in changing that, beginning with its launch featuring tracks from the WIRED CD — the Gilberto Gil, David Byrne, the Beastie Boys, et al.

Since then, ccMixter has hosted remix contests and challenges from many top artists (check out DJ Vadim Remixes You, wrapping up next week). Many other music remix sites supporting CC licensing and garnering cool contests have also sprung up — seeing the potential of web-mediated, fully legal remix requires no imagination at this point — though there’s still a long way to go to realize its potential to change culture. However, the real strength of ccMixter (and a far leading indicator of cultural change on the horizon) is the ccMixter community and the many years of distributed yet very friendly collaboration embodied in that community. If reading is your thing, check out site admin/developer/mentor Victor Stone’s ccMixter memoir for a deep account of ccMixter’s nature, contributions, and lessons.

For some time CC has been thinking about how to take ccMixter to the next level and looking for just the right entity to do that.

Now, we’re very happy to announce that ccMixter will henceforth be run by ArtisTech Media. For details, see the transfer FAQ, Victor Stone’s take, and letter from Emily Richards, the CEO of ArtisTech Media:

I love ccMixter – exactly as it is. In all my years in music and tech, I’ve found ccMixter’s community to be the most positive, cohesive, and collaborative I’ve been a part of. The music collectively created at ccMixter is uniquely powerful, because of this amazing community of talented, visionary artists. Our goal at ArtisTech is to continue to help foster this talent and community as it grows. And for those seeking even more opportunity for their art, well, our aim is to help you find ways to share your music with the world, without disturbing the balance of this beautiful musical jewel we all love (ccMixter.org).

As the old saying goes ‘if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it’ so we see no need to change things. We may add capacity to allow for larger file uploads and perhaps other improvements of a similar nature, but ccMixter belongs to all of us and it works so magically right now, as it is.

I first uploaded tracks to ccMixter in October 2006, based on the recommendation of ArtisTech co-founder, Jason Brock (spinningmerkaba). When I listened to my first group of remixes (by norelpref, Hundred Schools of Thought, Briareus and PorchCat) I knew I’d been lucky enough to stumble upon something extraordinary. More than three years later, I am more amazed by ccMixter than ever before.

The longstanding participation of Emily (known as Snowflake on ccMixter) and others in the ArtisTech team in the community was a huge plus — adding to the team’s great mix of business, music, and technology experience, and their great spirit and respectfulness.

So CC is really excited about this transition. We believe that in ArtisTech Media we’ve found just the right entity to take ccMixter to the next level, but only with maximum respect for the community and adherence to the forms of openness that have enabled the site and community so far.

If you’re already involved in the ccMixter community, we hope that after reading the FAQ and posts from Victor and Emily you’ll be convinced the long search was worthwhile and that you’re very excited to participate in ccMixter’s next step. If you’re not involved yet — check out the site!

p.s. A huge THANK YOU to all who have helped make this transition possible over the past year, in particular Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati for pro bono legal help, and CC’s General Counsel, Diane Peters.

DJ Vadim Remixes U in Secret ccMixter Event

Victor Stone, October 7th, 2009

DJ Vadim and Creative Commons are celebrating ccMixter’s fifth anniversary with Secret Mixter October ‘09. In this event, the 6th of its kind on ccMixter, starting today, musicians and singers sign up to have their name put into a virtual hat. After the two week sign-up period, everyone is notified, in secret, with a remix assignment. They then have two weeks to do a remix of their
assignment. On November 4th, everybody will upload their remix – including Vadim!

DJ Vadim has long been a strong proponent of including his fans in the musical experience. He has been sharing the full studio stems and a cappellas to his albums on ccMixter.org for several years. In early 2009, in advance of his album “U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun,” he gave a featured commoner interview where he said

“…releasing music is communication. Nowadays, that means participation and that is what ccMixter offers. It is a combination of the two, letting fans and music people participate and communicate together, with you, with me and create new music and ideas.”

With his participation in the Secret Mixter, Vadim is making the ultimate statement about what it means to communicate with his fans.

Come and join the ongoing musical conversation of the Commons at the Secret Mixter October ‘09 – you never know who’s going to remix you.

CC on the Free Music Archive

Cameron Parkins, August 12th, 2009

It has been just over four months since the Free Music Archive launched as a destination for high-quality, freely licensed music. Since that time, the site has developed an avid community and grown to include a number of fantastic curators all while expanding upon the site’s initial catalog to host over 11,000 tracks. All told, the FMA has, in a very short time frame, become an indispensable destination for music lovers looking for freely-licensed music to download, share, and reuse.

The FMA has always offered and promoted CC licenses as a means to share the majority of music uploaded to the site. Today we are ecstatic to announce that CC has joined the FMA’s curatorial ranks! We’re celebrating with 50 great tracks that will be both familiar to the CC community while hopefully offering some new names as well. The launch is split into two mixes – our FMA Inaugural Mix and The WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.

We’ll be doing regular updates to our collection over the coming months and our next featured mix will highlight some of the great community-driven artists and collaborations found at sites like ccMixter, Jamendo, Beatpick, Sutros, and more. We are on continuous lookout for great CC-licensed music to add to our page and would love to hear your suggestions on tracks and artists in the comments.

ccMixter: Using our Imaginashun with CC0, an Upgrade and Podcast

Victor Stone, June 8th, 2009

The Creative Commons’ sponsored music community, ccMixter, has had a busy week.

Imaginashun Remixes

DJ Vadim, featured and interviewed last week, put out a Call for Remixes for his new album U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun and the remixes are the community has responded in kind and some amazing remixes are starting to come in.

CC0 Enabled

ccMixter is now offering the CC0 (CC Zero) waiver for sample uploads. (CC0 FAQ) With this waiver, musicians who upload samples of their work in the form of solo instruments (often looped for easy re-use) are indicating their willingness to participate in the vast public domain (like the World Wide Web itself). The CC0 license carries with it the most freedoms possible, or put another way, the least “friction around your work,” meaning, it’s the most accessible form of sharing available. James Boyle’s The Public Domain (mentioned here many times before) remains the best resource around for getting to understand the importance of a public commons, especially in terms of our culture and creativity itself.

It only took a few minutes for the waiver to be enabled on ccMixter for veteran member spinmeister to upload all the samples to an original composition under the CC0 waiver. “I personally like the idea of a world,” he explained, “where a portion (not all) of good stuff is gifted. I also think it’s pretty cool when people who have received gifts are making gifts to someone else as their ‘response’.” Read the rest of spin’s explanation in the forum thread announcing the arrival of CC0 at ccMixter.

ccHost 5.1 Release Candidate

ccHost is the open source project that powers ccMixter and is currently going through a release candidate phase for the it’s 5.1 version. The previous major version, 4.0, was the winner of the Linux Journal’s LinuxWorld Expo Product Excellence Award for Best Open Source Solution and has been very popular as a remix-aware, web management system for liberally licensed content. Last year saw the release of a major upgrade (5.0) while this 5.1 update marks a full year of real-world usage, making it one of the most stable releases of ccHost ever, with 100s of bug fixes on top of the 60+ feature enhancements leading up to this RC release. Those enhancements include many that ccHost sites have long been asking for, including support for OpenID log in and registration. This release boasts extensive admin control of licensing options, built-in special handling for CC0 waivers and support for Creative Commons’ latest license tools like RDFa scraping. For the more visually oriented, 5.1 comes with a new skin that mirrors the 2009 clean, simplified look and feel of the mother ship CC site. (See the release notes and changelog for the gory details.)

To all the ccHost-enabled site administrators and developers holding off upgrading from 4.x to 5.x, this is the stability release you’ve been waiting for. Please download the RC and send us feedback on what you find.

ccMixter Music Podcasts

In a forum posting from June 17, 2008, MC Jack in the Box, our resident double-agent from the very cool RemixFight (a forerunner and model for ccMixter) mentioned nonchalantly that he might have come up with “a cool way to build buzz for the playlists if people can record their own radio shows featuring ccMixter uploads. … I’d create a themed show, with me adding a few ‘hidden’ voiceovers to the show. Hell, I might even do a weekly ‘best of ccMixter’ kind of show if that could happen.”

Thus began the “Cool Music Show“, a weekly feature that quickly became the most popular way to discover new music on ccMixter. Every Friday, like clockwork, he curates upwards of 45 minutes of the best uploads from the previous seven days on the site. Last week, MC Jack posted episode #50 (!) to raves, kudos and much hazaa from a grateful ccMixter nation.

We decided to use the occasion of the 50th show to launch the new ccMixter Music Podcast. Using the ccMixter playlist as a basis, we developed the tools to create a single, seamless MP3 and post it to the archive.org.

To subscribe to the show, just drag this link to your podcast-aware music player (e.g. iTunes, Amarok, etc.).

We seeded the podcast with the last 7 Cool Music shows, but as explained in the announcement thread, we want other community members to contribute their own shows. So, if you have curating and MC skills you’d like to share, we invite you to submit a ccMixter music show of your very own! Instructions for how to do make and submit a show is here.

CC Talks With: DJ Vadim

Cameron Parkins, May 20th, 2009

Having played over 1600 gigs in over 60 countries, DJ Vadim is no stranger to the concept of ‘fan interaction’. Beyond his live shows, Vadim pushes experiments with interaction further, having held a remix contest at ccMixter a little under two years ago to promote his album The Sound Catcher. The contest was a great success, and as a result Vadim, active as both a DJ and producer, is back at ccMixter doing the same thing with his latest album U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun.

The contest is in full swing, with winners receiving inclusion in Imaginashun – Power to the people, an album filled “with remixes from pro’s and bedroom producers from around the world” slated for release this autumn. We caught up with DJ Vadim to learn a bit more about his creative process and how he views the changing nature of interaction and communication in music. Read on to see what he had to say.

DJ Vadim supporting Mos Def at The Islington Academy, James Bradley

Can you give our readers some background on yourself as an artist? You’ve worked with a wide variety of musicians, from The Pharcyde to Kraftwerk, and released countless albums, singles, and remixes. Your career is long in scope and prolific in production but perhaps you are able to distill it all into a manageable chunk.

I started my music journey in the late 80’s, first with DJing, and in 1992 I started getting involved with production. It was very simple back then, just an Atari and a sampler. There weren’t the possibilities people have now. In ‘94 , I set up my own label and the rest is history.

In that journey i met and have worked and performed with lots of people, although rocking Glastonbury in 1999 and performing at Sonar in 2006 with DJ Krush and DJ Shadow stand out as highlights.

Have technological shifts changed how you approach music production? What kind of production tools do you do use?

Yes. I have so many more possibilities now that didn’t exist 15 years ago. I have so much more equipment, software, and toys for creating music now that didn’t exist or was not affordable. It is a bit like riding a push bike and going on a top of the range Yamaha super bike – they both get you to where your going but you have so much more options with the super bike, right?

I use Cubase, an MPC, my Apple computer and Ableton Live.

The environment leading up to your new album U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun was one of personal turmoil and growth. What was the process you went through on the way to releasing this album? How did the aesthetic of the album come into fruition as a result?

Well, when you go through turmoil and tragedy you can come out of it either being overwhelmed, pensive, and quite depressed or come out fighting and positive. I did the later. I felt that if cancer couldn’t hold me back, nothing would. It was hard – personal turmoil with my family, personal relationships and my own health. It was like being stripped back to nothing. But now I feel good about life and that is the most important.

What is your motivation behind the U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun remix contest? You’ve already done one successful contest on ccMixter – what was your experience like previously?

Well I think one of the most important things with releasing music is communication. Nowadays, that means participation and that is what ccMixter offers. It is a combination of the two, letting fans and music people participate and communicate together, with you, with me and create new music and ideas. This sort of interaction wasn’t possible 10 years ago.

Music is about communication. Without it you either have a huge MTV campaign or you get lucky – the music that people like is one that communicates with them, music that they (the fans) feel part of.

Both remix contests are using CC-licenses as their mechanism to enable this kind of reuse. As an artist who uses sampling as one of their core techniques, how do you view this sort of licensing? What are the major differences to you between working with live musicians and sampling material?

I think its a great marketing and promotional tool plus it is fun for the fans and producers. In regards to sampling and live musicians, you have more opportunities with live musicians because you can break any piece of music down to its basic elements – bass keys, drums etc. and hence be able to manipulate and control what you do much more

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know? Any plans for the future?

Well touring, releasing more music and making new music. I am up to so much its hard to remember it all. Best thing is to keep up with it via my homepage and MySpace profile!

U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun Artwork, SMALL Studio

FSCONS 2009: Call for Participation

Michelle Thorne, May 20th, 2009

Free Culture, Free Software, and Free Content will again join forces under the banner of “Free Society” at FSCONS 2009 in Gothenburg, Sweden, 13-15th November.  The organizers, Creative Commons Sweden, Free Software Foundation Europe, and Wikimedia Sverige, have just announced the conference’s Call for Participation.

Last year’s conference featured a host of workshops and speakers, including CC’s Mike Linksvayer on “How far is free culture behind free software?” and Victor Stone on ccMixter’s solution to online attribution via Sample Pool API.

We’re looking forward to what this year’s FSCONS has in store. Submissions close on June 21, so send in your proposal soon!

Kutiman Talks to CBC; Interview Audio on ccMixter

Cameron Parkins, May 6th, 2009

If you’re interested in online culture, you’ve probably come across the amazing THRU YOU project from Israeli producer Kutiman (see this WIRED profile for some background). Kutiman mashed together various YouTube clips of people playing instruments (many of them instructional videos) to create something totally new and unique. The result was a collection of seven songs and videos that artfully demonstrate the potential of digital collaboration.

Last month, CBC Radio’s Spark talked to Kutiman about the project and posted the interview audio posted to ccMixter under a Creative Commons BY-NC license for producers to chop up and use in their own tracks. Check it out!

Call for Remixes: Snowflake’s Earth Day Challenge

Victor Stone, April 13th, 2009

Creative Commons and Snowflake are proud to announce a call for remixes in honor of Earth Day 2009. Singer, musician and poet Snowflake has put all the stems, including the a cappella for her song Apologize into the Commons under an Attribution NonCommercial license, hosted on ccMixter, and is looking for remixes to be featured on her site on April 20th.

After all the remixes are posted, Snowflake will pick her favorite remix and include it as a surprise 11th track on her FanClub release “One or Ten” on April 20th. She tells us the remixer will be awarded producer royalties for the track as well.

In addition, Snowflake has generously offered to donate $200 to a green non-profit, to be chosen by the producer of her favorite remix of Apologize.

Snowflake is a long time and popular contributor to ccMixter and thinks “ccMixter embodies a significant evolution in synergistic sound. With creativity expanding from its source, our musical compositions gain color, speed and strength as we share, mix, and mash.”

Make sure to check out Snowflake at her new website that features both her ccMixter source tracks and five favorite remixes.

There’s not a lot time left to crank out the tunes so read more and download the sources at Snowflake’s Earth Day Call for Remixes.

Muted on YouTube? Think CC!

Fred Benenson, January 14th, 2009

As you might have heard by now, YouTube has begun to mute videos containing ‘unauthorized’ music or audio. What does ‘unauthorized’ mean? We’ll leave that for the lawyers to decide, but it probably has something to do with negotiating permissions for the right to use music in advance from rights holders.

Instead of dealing with the suits, why not consider using Creative Commons music in your next YouTube video? Here’s a ccMixter playlist of 100 Attribution licensed music tracks that you can download and use freely so long as you give attribution to the original creator. YouTube has even been so kind as to include these tracks inside their AudioSwap feature, thereby enabling you to automatically add a soundtrack to your video even after it has been uploaded to YouTube.