Free Music Services


Quite a few free legal music services are available on the Net, where listeners can download music for their own enjoyment. But just because the music is free to download does not mean it is free to include in your podcast for distribution to the world. This is where the term podsafe comes into play. For the most part, podsafe has come to mean that the music is free to download and use on your podcast and that you do not need to get permission from the musician prior to playing the music on your show. However, it is considered proper etiquette to contact any and all musicians whose music you do play and let them know you played it.

The following sections, sorted alphabetically, discuss sites that offer podsafe music and have shown themselves to be friends of podcasting. In several of these sections, you'll see references to Creative Commons licensing. If you're not familiar with the term, you'll find a detailed discussion of this important licensing scheme in Appendix B, "Creative Commons Explained."

ccMixter.org

Launched in the summer of 2004, ccMixter.org has over 2,000 users and a few thousand music tracks from which podcasters can choose. We talked with Jon Phillips from Creative Commons about ccMixter.

TotPM: What is ccMixter?

Jon Phillips: ccMixter is a project funded by Creative Commons that tries to encourage a social community around remixing.

TotPM: Can you explain the type of music people can find at ccMixter?

Jon Phillips: Right now the primary style is electronic music, but there is also hip-hop, rock, and punk rock. It is interesting because the community is about 2,000 individuals that are fairly active, and that seems to be the underlying musical style people will find here.

The music on this site has varying levels of licensing, and you need to make sure you follow the guidelines when picking songs. If you have a podcast with any advertising, you cannot use songs labeled as NC (noncommercial), although most songs are not labeled as such. The user interface on this site is nice, and downloading music is easy. This is a great site to find background music for a promo, for an intro, for reading the news, or anywhere you want to lay down a music bed under spoken vocals.

Comfortstand.com

Launched in 2003, Comfortstand is a community-driven label where all the music is free. This site offers a wide variety of music genres to choose from, with over 600 songs available. We asked Otis Fodder, the founder of Comfortstand, a few questions with regard to podcasting:

Tip

As an example, Nate and Di (Nate and Di Show) often lay down a music bed under the listener feedback. This gives a warmer sound to the listener feedback and helps set a tone to the feedback.


TotPM: With Comfortstand is there any specific podcast license or policy for podcasters?

Otis Fodder: No licenses needed. The only policy would be that podcasters could not compile, say, a compilation on CD and sell it for profit. If a podcaster wanted to have a subscription for a podcast featuring our material, that would be perfectly okay. It is only when it enters an area of selling the music for profitfor example, a standalone track on a compilation or putting it into advertising or a film or another vehicle.

Bottom line is basically if money is going to be made off a track, then the artist would be contacted and then with the artist's permission I'm sure it would be a-okay. But in the end it is the artist's decision as the way I started the label, and the way it is currently run is that all artists have 100% creative control over their art.

TotPM: Why should podcasters come to Comfortstand?

Otis Fodder: They can play anything and everything. And the site has a page where if someone plays our music on a podcast, we will link back to the podcaster [http://www.comfortstand.com/radio.html].

TotPM: Anything else of interest about music and podcasting that you would like to add?

Otis Fodder: I'm just a big lover of music. Vinyl, cassettes, media of all sorts. And music and podcasting fit right snug into the whole landscape. I'm not one to continually upgrade however, and I still have not found the need to buy an iPod yet. I listen to podcasts and Internet radio and download music. Being a musician in a few bands, all of my own work I share on file-sharing networks and encourage others to download, and have found that in one instance, with my band The Bran Flakes, our CD sales have increased.

In regards to podcasting, I'm an incredibly strong supporter. It's the pirate radio of this centurynot that pirate radio is dead, not at all, but podcasting gives a voice to everyone and that's the way it should be.... Of course with the ability for everyone to create podcasts you have to wade through the muck to find what you really love, but you have to do that with films and books and music anyhow, so it's really no big thing.

The Links page on this site is an incredible resource if you are looking for niche sources of indie music. All music podcasters should have this Links page added to the bookmarks for their browser.

Garageband.com

Garageband.com is the granddaddy of independent music for podcasters. When podcasting first started, the number-one place where podcasters went for independent music, hands down, was Garageband.com (see Figure 8.2). No one else was even close.

Figure 8.2. Garageband.com is now offering production services for podcasters


Garageband still has one of the largest offerings of independent music on the Internet and has been rolling out new services and features that are podcast friendly. Here are a couple questions we asked Ali Partovi, the CEO of Garageband.com:

TotPM: Roughly how many songs are available on Garageband.com?

Ali Partovi: There are actually different rights levels depending on what the musicians choose to allow when they put their song up. So from a podcasting standpoint, not every song is available for podcasting.

Essentially we give the musician control over how their music can be redistributed. Some opt for Creative Commons, which is perhaps the most permissive license; it essentially says you can not only download my music for free but you can redistribute it, and that is essentially available for anyone to podcast and redistribute.

At the other end of the spectrum some people say, "No downloads at all." They only want their song available for streaming, and that is really not available for podcasting by anybody unless someone gets special consent directly from the musician.

The middle, which is where the bulk of our catalog is, is licensed for unlimited downloads off of Garageband's servers, but not going as far as Creative Commons. And so you couldn't just take that song and stick it into your podcast, unless your podcast is hosted on Garageband's servers. And in fact the bulk of the music falls into that category, and that is why we thought it makes sense to host podcasts on our servers....

Now that you can host your podcasts on Garageband, you do not need to go through that extra step of asking for permission and waiting to see if the musician responds.

TotPM: What advice would you like to offer to someone looking at starting a music podcast?

Ali Partovi: Remember to keep your content as honest and real as possible. I think listeners are increasingly aware when something is not real, when it is censored, produced, and/or sort of feels like it's not the honest real truth. I think that some of the most successful broadcasters in traditional media, people like Howard Stern or Oprah, have gotten there because of being as honest and true to themselves as possible. I encourage you to just do what is honest and sincere, and you will find some audience. Better to do that than to sell out and try to guess what people want to hear.

One of the biggest issues with Garageband.com, according to almost every podcaster we talked to, is that you need to contact most of the artists to get permission to include their music on your podcast. You will need to plan accordingly. Do not assume that you will be able to spend Saturday morning cruising the site for new music and then include those songs when you record Saturday afternoon.

Magnatune.com

Magnatune.com is not a music network; rather, it is an independent online record label that is very pro-Internet and pro-podcasting. The company was started in 2003, and now over 250 artists and over 500 albums (totaling more than 5,000 songs) are available to choose from. Magnatune has a no-cost podcast license for both noncommercial and commercial podcasts, and even has a podcaster account where you can download high-quality versions of the songs for your podcast at no cost. Magnatune wants to have its music played on podcasts and goes out of its way to help podcasters. We talked to John Buckman, CEO of Magnatune, about his company.

TotPM: Can you describe what Magnatune is?

John Buckman: Magnatune is an attempt to do a record label that actually gets the Internet. Which means Internet community; it means some sort of open-source focus; it means enabling radio and podcasts and remixes. It also means actually paying artists. None of these things exist in any other record company today. So that, in essence, is what it is.

TotPM: How much of the music on Magnatune can podcasters use on their shows?

John Buckman: We make all our music available with a Creative Commons license so that people can make all sorts of interesting uses of it. For example, remixesand a lot of podcasters feature really interesting remixesthrough ccMixter. And I see podcasts as kind of part of the remix community; you are just repurposing the music in new creative ways. Sometimes talk shows, sometimes music shows, sometimes hybrids.

When it comes to record labels, these guys get podcasting. They understand podcasting and the potential to use it to promote music. They treat podcasters with respect and want to partner with you to help promote the music they have on their site.

Opsound.org

This site is a project of artist Sal Randolph. Musicians are invited to submit their work to the Opsound site using a "copyleft" license from Creative Commons. Podcasters are free to download, remix, and add the music to their podcasts as they see fit. The site has been up since 2004 and has a large collection of artists covering almost every genre you can think of. This is a great site to find something out of the ordinary, even as measured in the world of independent music. Here are some comments from our conversation with Sal Randolph:

TotPM: What is Opsound's policy for podcasters using the music on your site?

Sal Randolph: All Opsound music is offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (except a few pieces which are placed in the public domain). This means anyone is free to copy, share, and even make commercial use of the music as long as, 1) the original artist is given attribution, and 2) any derivative works are released under the identical license.

I recommend reading the actual text of the license and consulting the Creative Commons website for a fuller understanding [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/legalcode].

I believe most podcast uses would be considered "collective works" under the licensing definition, rather than "derivative works," in which case the only requirement would be to identify the music's author, and provide a link to their site and to the license information.

I'm not a lawyer, and can't give you or your readers any specific legal advice! But in general I'd consider all the music on Opsound quite "podcast safe." It is certainly the intent of the participants that the music be freely downloaded, shared, and broadcast.

TotPM: Do podcasters need to contact the artists before playing their music on their podcast? Or do they simply download, add to the show, and then give proper credit and links?

Sal Randolph: It's the latter! That's exactly what's so cool about the Creative Commons licensesthe whole point is not having to ask!

Of course, artists love to know when their music is being used, and telling the artist might allow them to promote the podcast among their own friends and fans, but it's strictly voluntary.

The music on this site is a little different from what other podcasters are playing. If you are looking for an "art" feel for your podcast, this is the site for you. You have to love a site whose genres include Abstract, Avant Garde, and Psychogeography. This site even has individual RSS feeds for each genre so as new songs are made available, they are delivered right to you.

Music.podshow.com (The Podsafe Music Network)

The Podsafe Music Network (PMN) was built from the ground up to connect podcasters and independent musicians. Although PMN is part of Podshow, its heart and soul is really C.C. Chapman from the Accident Hash podcast. C.C. truly cares about making it easier for podcasters to have access to podsafe music. And his passion is greatly responsible for the rapid success of this site (see Figure 8.3).

Figure 8.3. The Podsafe Music Network is the new go to site for music for podcasts


PMN was launched in July of 2005, and just 8 months later the site had over 15,000 songs available for download and over 5,000 podcasters using the service. We talked to C.C. Chapman about PMN.

TotPM: Can you explain what the Podsafe Music Network is? And what is its goal?

C.C. Chapman: PMN is the one-stop shop for podsafe music. The goal is that an artist can come in and submit their music to one site, and by submitting they have a terms of agreement that they have to sign off on that says by uploading this song or however many songs they want, any podcaster has their permission to podcast this song. And on the flip side, podcasters can come in and register, and they know that every single song and every single artist on this website they don't have to get permission for because it has already been granted.

The biggest problem with doing a music podcast or any podcast that you want to include music in legally, is just the back and forth email game... educating the artist what a podcast is, getting the permission to play the music on the podcast, and it is a back and forth game.... So now we are just making it easy that you go and you register, whether you are an artist or a podcaster, and you hook up instantly.

PMN offers a quick and easy way to find a wide variety of podsafe music to play on your podcast. Almost every genre of music you can think of is represented, and it is easy to preview the music on the site while you are searching for new songs to use.

Others

The sites we've listed so far are by no means the only places to find independent music on the Net. In this section, we've included a small alphabetized list of some other sites for you to check out. Some of these sites are very good, others are not exactly podsafe, and some make it difficult to locate new music. But overall they offer some unique music as well as a chance for you to learn about new artists. Remember, even though you cannot use the music directly from some of these sites, you can still contact the artists directly and ask for their permission to play their music in your podcast.

  • Acme Noise (www.acmenoise.com)

  • AMP (library.musicpodcasting.org)

  • CD baby (www.cdbaby.com)

  • Electronical (www.electronical.org)

  • Indie Heaven (www.indieheaven.com)

  • Intuitive Music (www.intuitivemusic.com)

  • Lost Frog (www.lostfrog.net)

  • MySpace (www.myspace.com)

  • Ninja Tune (www.ninjatune.net)

  • Pure Volume (www.purevolume.com)

  • Sound Click (www.soundclick.com)




Tricks of the Podcasting Masters
Tricks of the Podcasting Masters
ISBN: 0789735741
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 162

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