… and probably never will, is that people aren’t only willing to pay for music, they even donate for music which is given away for free.
Musicians like Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead showed us that fans do pay for music even if the could get it legally for free. NIN for example released The Slip under Creative Commons, so everyone could (and still can) download it for free from their website and legally share it with friends. If someday NIN won’t provide it any longer by themselves, it would even be legal for me to upload the album so that people can keep downloading it. At least if I don’t do it commercially. How they got money out of the free album you’re asking? Well, NIN did the same before with Ghosts I-IV where the prices are still on the website. You could buy a CD for $10, a deluxe edition for $75 or a ultra-deluxe limited package with vinyl for $300 of which there were 2.500 numbered copies. Guess what, these 2.500 packages sold out in only three days. So this makes $750,000. There were 2.500 people willing to pay $300 for music they could have downloaded for free. Amazing, isn’t it?
But what’s really amazing is the College Fund Professor Kliq started about a weeks or two ago. He has been releasing music under Creative Commons licenses for several years, downloadable for free from his website, Jamendo, SoundCloud and I mentioned him two times before. Now he’s at his last semester at Columbia College Chicago and can’t pay for it. So he started the college fund where everyone can donate via PayPal. By now he has collected $1,570.03 of the $5.000 he needs.
So what? Still thinking people don’t want to give money for music? Really? Go buy yourself a strait jacket! đ
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Professor Kliq â Ode To Charles from the album “Guns Blazin’” (2007) released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.
About two weeks ago I got an email from Jon Spriggs, the man behind CCHits.net. It’s a website promoting Creative Commons licensed music and podcasts. Once a CC song is submitted, users can vote for it resulting in a chart of currently popular Creative Commons music.
As it turns out, someone submitted my piano piece “One Almost Perfect Night” to CCHits.net. I’m not quite sure how the submission process works. Maybe it’s by recommodation, because Jon asked me for CC songs I like. I told him about “Flachback Forward” by Strobotone, which is really awesome.
Anyway, thanks to the person who submitted my song! I’m very honored.
If you’d like to vote for “One Almost Perfect Night”, please do so on this page.
What do you need to compose a piano piece in only one night? Inspiration. No more and no less.
Do you know these moments, when something really unexpected happens which raises hope deep inside of you? That you finally know how your life will go on? That you finally found what your heart was longing for, for such a long time? And then again those moments when the tiny seed of hope is killed by a little incident. You realize that nothing is as it seems and you’re asking yourself: “What if things were different?” But things aren’t different. The search doesn’t end there. It doesn’t end then. And you sense that life is a roller coaster of emotions, good and bad, pleasant and painful, and that you’ve probably just passed the second hill.
I’m still working on the first Lorino album. Unfortunately, I’ve got to study very hard at the moment and don’t have as much time for music as I’d like to have. But there was this one week which gave me the inspiration I needed to compose this new piano piece. Here it is: “What If”. Enjoy.
Download MP3: Lorino â What If
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He is my favorite Creative Commons musician. Not only because he’s constantly putting cool stuff out there for free. But he seems to be a really nice guy, who’s just as crazy about music as anyone can be. As far as I know Professor Kliq is based in Chicago, where he’s studying music.
A few hours ago he published a video on YouTube thanking everyone who voted for him in the Jamendo Awards:
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There are several albums he published on the web under a Creative Commons license. My favorite is “Guns Blazin’” with the awesome track “Ode To Charles“:
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The best track not appearing on one of his albums is “Crystals“:
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So if you like his music, too, maybe you’d give him your vote an Jamendo. You need to have a Jamendo account to vote: Jamendo Awards 2011
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It’s finally done. After almost two years I’ve got a new release for you. It’s a piano peace, which will be part of the forthcoming Lorino album I’m currently working on.
As the title might suggest it’s a slow piece. I wrote it when I was in a melancholic mood, remembering people who I spent plenty of happy time with but for one reason or another don’t anymore. You’ll probably like it most when you’re in a similar mood, lost in thought, remembering old times and old friends.
Download MP3: Lorino â Melancholy
Links
For the last few months I’ve been heavily working on my project Lorino. I’m planing to release a CC licensed album with about twelve piano pieces on it. The composition is almost done and I’m going to focus on the post production during the next weeks. But don’t expect it to be finished before August. I’ve got lots of other stuff to do at the moment and can’t focus on music as much as I would like to.
At least on song will be released in advance of the album. It is called âMelancholyâ and the music notation is already done. This weekend I was looking for a picture which I could use as a cover. I’ve been using CC licensed images as a basis for the covers for some time and I think it’s better to reuse great material of someone else than to try to make something more or less acceptable out of my own pictures.
The picture you can see above and which I’m going to use as a cover for âMelancholyâ is âIt’s Christmas! No, it’s a stoplight! No, it’s rain!â by Jack Mayer and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
It seems to be worth looking at 23 SECONDS releases from time to time. In my last post I wrote about Emerald Park. Another very cool record I found on 23 SECONDS is Henrik JosĂ©’s “The Little Things EP“. He makes soft electronic atmospheric music which I really like. The EP contains an intro track and four great songs. You can download and share it for free.
This is my favorite:
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It’s been a while. I’m currently writing my master’s thesis and don’t have much time to look for new music or even concentrate on making it.
But yesterday I skimmed through my feeds of netlabel releases and found something very cool. Emerald Park. The guys are from Malmö, Sweden. The album “For Tomorrow” was originally released by afmusic in 2008 as free download and on CD. The CD seems to be only available in Sweden and Germany. But it’s definitely worth the 4,99 EUR at Amazon.de!
About a year ago the album was re-published by the netlabel 23 SECONDS under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license, meaning that you canâamong other thingsâdownload and share it for free. The 2010 Edition includes two bonus tracks making it a total of 14 wonderful songs.
This is my favorite from the album:
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Only six weeks ago Emerald Park released a new single on afmusic. I really like it too. Sadly it’s not free, but you can have a listen to it on the band’s MySpace page. Links for buying can be found on the here.
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