Today we launched a new site, and a new contest. Check out CC Mixter to win a chance to be on the next Fine Arts Militia album featuring Chuck D, or a chance to be featured on the Creative Commons release, THE WIRED CD: Ripped. Sampled. Mashed. Shared. Sample The Beastie Boys, David Byrne, DJ Danger Mouse, and many others to win!

The Fine Art of Sampling Contest, builds off November’s release of the THE WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share., which contains sixteen tracks licensed under Creative Commons Sampling licenses. The licenses allow you to sample the tracks into your own musical creations, without legal hassle.

To demonstrate how easily songs can be sampled, mashed, and shared, we built a new site/application called CC Mixter, thanks in part to the work of veteran music mixer, Victor Stone, and WebJay creator, Lucas Gonze. CC Mixter has all the WIRED CD tracks plus loops from each song. And when you upload your own mashup, the site is able to track connections between songs, so you can quickly see everyone that used that same sample in their own work, and everyone that cut up one of the WIRED CD songs.

The site also lets you connect to other people — say for example, find me all the musicians who like jazz music, you can review tracks, and there’s a forum to post questions and comments. We’re also happy to announce we’re getting the CC Mixter software ready to release as open source software, so that anyone can build their own related community around any kind of content, be that video, fan fiction, educational materials, or whatever you want.