River Rat Records, an independent record company based in North London, has adopted CC-licenses for all their releases based on the assumption that sharing of music should be allowed without fear of legal ramifications (as long as it stays non-commercial):

Music has never been a purely personal experience (more often it’s a shared one), but the nightmare of having to digitally and uniquely identify ourselves for permission to hear something is fast becoming reality.

Whatever happened to sharing what we enjoy? How confused children must be these days – encouraged to share sweets but incarcerated for sharing music.

Historically, rats have always been good at sharing things. Let’s face it, more people have heard of the plague than the Pogues. The casual sharing of music is a brilliantly infectious method of free marketing, and we think it’s important to spread that message, for the benefit of artists and music lovers alike.

River Rat joins an increasingly large pool of record labels that, in some part, base their business plans around CC-licensing. River Rat just celebrated their first release, Ruth Theodre’s Worm Food, which you can pick up at their website.