Beatpick Artists Included In Mercedes Benz Mixtape Compilation

Mia Garlick, October 10th, 2006

Beatpick, which bills itself as the Fairplay Music Label and releases tracks online under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, has had two of its artists handpicked by Mercedes Benz for inclusion in Mercedes’ Mixtape compilation 14. Mercedes entered into a separate, non-exclusive licensing deal to use the tracks from the artists Foley and Napolitano Lounge Connection.

The online-compilation “Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tape” is available via the Mercedes site. All of the tracks, as well as background information on artists and music, are available in 192 kbs mp3 to all visitors to the site free of charge. In addition, the compilation tracks are featured in a high quality Digipack Promotional CD, that is sent to the press in order to promote each new Mixed Tape edition (with a small compensation payment going back to the artist for these CDs).

Tracks that appear in the Mixtape compilation have the chance to be included in a “Best Of Mixed Tape” compilation, which is put together every 6 months and sold through iTunes, with the artists receiving a cut from the price of the downloads. Previous tracks selected also featured in a Merces-Benz podcast that debuted in December last year within a few hours as number one in the podcast charts and remained in the Top Charts successfully. As a result of the extensive promotional efforts, Mixed Tape becomes a powerful platform for artists and labels interested in self-promotion and the possibility of reaching a bigger audience: Mercedes counted 22 million downloads in 24 months. Mercedes’ aim is to especially push artists and labels who are not part of the ordinary rotation on TV and radio.

This is another great story of CC-licensed artists gaining recognition and new opportunities for their music to be heard and enjoyed, with the potential for additional revenues. Perhaps we are starting to see the “new reality”…

This is our ‘Mona Lisa’

Mike Linksvayer, October 9th, 2006

An article in Fortune magazine about expensive museum acquisitions includes this bit about the impact of a work’s copyright status on demand for viewing the original (emphasis added):

An example of the long-term benefit of an iconic artwork such as “Adele” can be found at the Art Institute of Chicago, home to three of the most famous paintings in America: Georges Seurat’s composition of colorful dots, “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (acquired in 1926); Grant Wood’s portrait of farmer, wife, and pitchfork titled “American Gothic” (in 1930); and Edward Hopper’s fluorescent-lit diner, “Nighthawks” (in 1942).

Generations of Chicagoans have grown up with the three paintings and consider Chicago’s stewardship of them a point of civic pride. And because each image is in the public domain – anyone from an ad firm to a television producer to a T-shirt designer can use the images without paying for them or needing contractual permission – the paintings automatically market themselves, the museum, and Chicago.

Perhaps a forward-looking museum should encourage artists to CC license works about to be acquired.

NYC concert recap

Eric Steuer, October 6th, 2006

Last Friday night, Wired and Flavorpill hosted a concert in New York to help raise money for Creative Commons. The show featured amazing performances by Peeping Tom, Diplo, and Girl Talk, as well as short introductions by Wired’s Chris Anderson and CC’s Lawrence Lessig.

We’re happy to report that the show was a smashing success. It was a sold out event, with people lined up outside offering to buy tickets for $100 a pop. The show itself was incredibly fun, creative, and invigorating — Girl Talk rocked out behind his laptop, mashing together what seemed like thousands of sounds. Diplo played rapid-fire mixes of Brazilian hip-hop and American dance music while a VJ executed a live video set. Peeping Tom capped off the night with a blend of funk, metal, hip-hop, and pop. Great stuff all around. It was amazing to see so many people come out to support CC — and to see them dance and celebrate to the sounds of remix.

Thanks very, very much to Melanie Cornwell of Wired for making the concert possible. Also thanks to Sascha Lewis and Lynnel Herrera of Flavorpill, the helpful staff at Irving Plaza, the artists, and our friends at Free Culture for helping to make this a wonderful night.

Girl Talk rocks out behind his laptop. Photo by Flickr user jm3, licensed under CC BY-SA.

10/13: CC Salon in New York f/ Marisa Olson, Paul Slocum of Tree Wave, and more!

Eric Steuer, October 6th, 2006

New Yorkers: Please join us for our very first CC Salon New York City on Friday, October 13, from 8-10pm at Nublu, 62 Ave. C (between 4th Street and 5th Street). Nublu is a great East Village music spot where the Brazilian Girls first started jamming. Note: Since Nublu is a bar, CC Salon is only open to people who are 21 and older.

October’s line-up:

• Marisa Olson
  Marisa Olson’s performance-based work revolves around the shared histories of popular music, cinema, and sound recording technologies. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates internet art, videos, audio recordings, drawings, and installations in tandem with live performance, to make statements about life, communication, and the voice in contemporary digital culture. these works are often infused with mixed metaphors about the relations between talent, fame, and failure. Marisa studied art at Goldsmiths College, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric and Film Studies at UC Berkeley. Her work has most recently been presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, New Langton Arts, the Art Gallery of Knoxville, Side Cinema-UK, and the New York and Chicago Underground Film Festivals. She’s also Editor & Curator at Rhizome.org, an organization celebrating its 10th anniversary of supporting the new media community. While Wired has called her both funny and humorous, the New York Times has called her “anything but stupid.”
• Paul Slocum of Tree Wave
  Paul Slocum is a musician and new media artist living in Dallas. Computers and computer culture are often the medium and subject of his work. Some of his projects are The Dot Matrix Synth, an 80’s dot matrix printer with re-programmed firmware to transform it into a sort of musical instrument, The Century Callback Project, a phone number that calls you back 8 times in a century, and The Time-Lapse Homepage, a video made with HTML. He is also half of the band Tree Wave that makes music and video with obsolete assembly-language-programmed computer and video game gear. Some of Paul’s performances and exhibitions include Transitio MX (Mexico City), The New Museum of Contemporary Art (NY), Deitch Projects (NY), Le Confort Moderne (France), README 2005 (Denmark), The Liverpool Biennial, Eyebeam (NY), and Fluxfactory (NY).
• More to be announced!

About CC Salon: CC Salon is a free, casual monthly get-together focused on conversation, presentations, and performances from people or groups who are developing projects that relate to open content and/or software. Please invite your friends, colleagues, and anyone you know who might be interested in drinks and discussion. There are now CC Salons happening in San Francisco, Toronto, Berlin, Beijing, Warsaw, Seoul, Johannesburg, and now New York.

Thanks to Fred Benenson for putting this together!

No Comments »

Evolution Control Committee added to line-up of Oct 11 CC Salon SF

Eric Steuer, October 5th, 2006

We’re pleased to announce that the Evolution Control Committee will provide the music for the CC Salon / Fundraising Campaign Launch Party taking place in San Francisco next Wednesday, October 11 (check out our Upcoming.org page for time, place, and all of the other details. ECC is one of the key players in the development of mash-ups — you can read more about their work at Wikipedia.

Future of Music Policy Summit starts today in Montreal

Eric Steuer, October 5th, 2006

Our friends at the Future of Music Coalition have been producing a cool conference called the Future of Music Policy Summit since 2001. This year’s summit started today — and Creative Commons is a proud sponsor of the event. Check out the terrific program, featuring a presentation by David Byrne entitled Record Companies: Who Needs Them? and a panel called In Perfect Harmony: International Copyright Issues. Guaranteed to be interesting!

Open Music Comes of Age

Victor Stone, October 5th, 2006

In December of 2003 Magnatune recording artist Lisa Debendictis released an album called Fruitless under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license with an original composition and performance called “Brilliant Day” (stream here).

In March of 2004 John at Magnatune was encouraging me to get in touch with artists on the label to remix and Lisa was gracious enough to let me re-record her solo vocals to “Brilliant Day” so I could use as source material for remixing for what became Chronic Dreams.

In November of 2004 at the launch of Creative Common’s remix community site ccMixter it was a no-brainer to release the a cappella under a Attribution-NonCommercial license. The a cappella track has since become one of the most remixed tracks on the site.

In July of 2005, a remix, also under Attribution-NonCommercial, was posted by ccMixter star Pat Chilla the Beat Gorilla called “Brilliant Daze (days are confused)” that, as of this writing, is one of the few tracks on the site with a perfect 5.0 rating.

One year later, in July of 2006 Pat’s myspace page, Lisa’s website and user registration at ccMixter were starting to flood with questions and praise for Lisa and Pat. It seems the “Brilliant Daze” remix was picked up by a teenage girl making videos in her bedroom, lamenting her restrictive parents and gushing over her boyfriend not as background music, but as the basis for a music video. In accordance with the Attribution clause of the license the video posted to YouTube was accompanied with full credits and links to Pat at ccMixter and Lisa’s web site (click on ‘more’) and a large percent of the 100,000s of viewers were moved to follow up.

It is now over 450,000 views later and though it has since been revealed as a viral marketing campaign, one thing that the lonelygirl15 phenomenon does prove, once and for all, is that by opening up music, allowing everybody to share and musicians to derive and collaborate the result will touch a huge audience.

Is CC licensed music viable? Half a million downloads can’t be wrong.

Recently the inventors of lonelygirl15, in accordance with the NonCommercial clause of the license have been in touch with the musicians to work out payments for use of the work in a commercial setting. Congratulations to Pat and Lisa.

Red Hat interviews Jamendo’s Laurent Kratz

Eric Steuer, October 4th, 2006

Red Hat Magazine has posted a good interview with Laurent Kratz, CEO and co-founder of Jamendo, a large (and rapidly growing!) site for Creative Commons-licensed music. In the interview, Kratz discusses his company’s business model and how artists can use openness to expand their audience and make money. Read on … and look out for another interview with Kratz coming soon (conducted by yours truly) at creativecommons.org as part of our Featured Commoners series of articles.

Secret Mixter Revealed

Victor Stone, October 4th, 2006

ccMixter member PorchCat took it upon himself to create a series of events at ccMixter called “Secret Mixter” in which participants pull names out of virtual hat and are assigned to create a remix feature that artist. On a prearranged day everybody uploads their “secret remixes.” The upload day for the third installation “SecretMixter III: Splice Madness” was yesterday and entries have already been picked up by davi roque de souza’s online mix-tape site músicalivre as “ccMixTape 007“. PorchCat has threatened to hold more Secret Mixters in the near future, watch the ccMixter forums for word.

Will SecretMixter ever become an “official” ccMixter event? Considering I am not eligible to participate in any “official” ccMixter remixing contest or event (something I wish I would have thought of before joining the ccMixter project) the short answer is: not if I have anything to say about it.

10/11: CC Salon SF & Fundraising Campaign Launch Party f/ David Pescovitz, Micki Krimmel, Ryan Junell

Eric Steuer, October 3rd, 2006

Please join us for CC Salon / Creative Commons Fundraising Campaign Launch Party on Wednesday, October 11, from 6-9pm (don’t worry if you’re late; there will be stuff happening all night) at Shine , (1337 Mission Street between 9th and 10th Streets). Shine has free wi-fi and a super cool Flickr photo booth. Note: Since Shine is a bar, CC Salon is only open to people who are 21 and older.

October’s line-up:

• David Pescovitz of MAKE and Boing Boing.
  David is MAKE’s editor-at-large and co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing. He is also a research affiliate with the Institute for the Future and writer-in-residence at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering. Pescovitz is co-author of the book Reality Check, based on his long-running technology forecasting column in Wired where he is still a frequent contributor. His writing also has appeared in Scientific American, Salon, the New York Times, Popular Science, and IEEE Spectrum, among other publications.
• Micki Krimmel of Revver.
  Micki is the Director of Community at Revver, an online video-sharing platform that rewards content-creators by giving them a stake in the profits. It’s her job to keep the Revver community happy and to spread the open media message. Micki used to work at Participant Productions, a film company with a mission to effect social change. She led the company in building an online activist community at participate.net, where film-lovers and activists can come together to make a difference. Micki is also nearing her one year anniversary as a contributor to Worldchanging.com, where she writes about global film, new tools for production and distribution and the democratization of the filmmaking process.
• Ryan Junell of Webzine, Sagan, SLOMO Video, and more.
  Ryan has created music videos for bands such as Spoon, The Soft Pink Truth, The Natural History, Lesser, and Sagan. He directed a short documentary about John Kerry on the campaign trail in 2003. In 2004, he created an experimental documentary video installation about the Republican National Convention in New York. Ryan is founder and curator of the SLOMO Video Festival, featuring 100 one minute slow motion short films by 85 filmmakers and video artists. Ryan is also an organizer of Webzine, an event celebrating the art of independent online publishing. Ryan is currently at work on his third animation for Creative Commons.
• CC Fundraising Campaign
  Also, this CC Salon marks the beginning of Creative Commons’ annual fundraising campaign, so don’t hesitate to bring your checkbook (or PayPal login info — we’ll have laptops on hand) to show your support for the work we do. This is your chance to donate a few bucks and be the first person on your block to get the brand new CC t-shirt design (which is super awesome). Donating to CC helps support the development of tools that help enable a participatory culture.

About CC Salon:
CC Salon is a free, casual monthly get-together focused on conversation, presentations, and performances from people or groups who are developing projects that relate to open content and/or software. Please invite your friends, colleagues, and anyone you know who might be interested in drinks and discussion. There are now CC Salons happening in San Francisco, Toronto, Berlin, Beijing, Warsaw, Seoul, Johannesburg, and coming soon in New York.

Track this event on Upcoming.org