This is interesting news for musicians — you know how some songs are really catchy and you wonder if the hooks could be engineered to make people like the song? A company called Polyphonic HMI has created software they call “Hit Song Science” which is supposed to contain algorithms that determine if a song is…

John Buckman, creator and head of the non-evil, Creative Commons friendly music label Magnatune has started his own blog. A recent gem is the exchange his wife had with a music executive at an industry conference. Great stuff.

At the tail end of last night’s broadcast of ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, they did a short piece on music mash-ups (video only available to ABCnews premium subscribers). There’s an interview with Mitch Butler and he does a live mash-up demo of Eminem’s Without Me laid over Scott Joplin’s ragtime piano classics.…

Questions of the day: Hip-hop artists and DJs have long made a practice of inviting remixes by releasing acapella or instrumental tracks. What stops them from formalizing that invitation with, say, a CC license? Is it that the music-biz lawyers want to reserve the right to hold remixers hostage, in the event they start to…

Just a quick note to say I just downloaded your MP3 from the harvard.edu site. It’s good to know that my music was good enough to be included in your report. I enjoy fact that other people can appreciate it and use it freely in their own work. Regards, Laurie Laptop My friend Benjamen Walker…

Creative Commons’ Assistant Director, Neeru Paharia will be on a panel titled Music in the Digital Era this Thursday at the UC Davis School of Law. The panel, cosponsored by the Entertainment and Sports Law Society and California Lawyers for the Arts, will focus on the effects of digital mediums and internet downloading on the…

Creative Commons and GLOCOM release official Japanese copyright licenses for iCommons Japan, the first country-specific adaptation of the open content system. Palo Alto, USA, and Tokyo, Japan – Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a body of creative works free for copying and re-use, and GLOCOM, its Japanese affiliate, today announced the official roll…

Just a little over two weeks until South by Southwest, the wonderful tech-film-music conference in Austin, Texas, USA (my beloved hometown). If you’re in town, come check out our two panels on music (Sample, Share, or Both?) and film (Can Copyright Bring the Audience to the Director?) the morning of March 15. That night we’ll…

The source materials for both “Get Creative” and “Remix Culture” are now available. Download the .fla file for either and you can get creative and remix “Get Creative” or “Remix Culture” with ease. Quicktime versions of both movies are also now available. Now it’s easier than ever to download, display and share “Get Creative” and…

A few months ago, hip-hop artist Jay Z released what is reportedly his last album, titled The Black Album. He also released a vocals-only version, specifically for DJs to incorporate into new mixes. One of those mixes was done by DJ Dangermouse, using only samples from The Beatles’ White Album. This new mix was dubbed…