Freshmeat for music

At Luxembourg's Jamendo website the complete works of the free music world are laid out before you. Jamendo is a download site for music which exclusively offers pieces under various Creative Commons licences - free and without DRM - for copying and remixing.

Magnatune: Alternative to iTunes

The Magnatune shop, on the other hand, is a label which offers an artist-friendly licensing and sales model and aspires to perform a balancing act between freedom and commercialism which at first seems complicated: listening to individual tracks and even whole CDs at good quality is free before you make a purchase. When buying albums or individual tracks, various formats like MP3, WAV, Flac, Ogg or AAC are available. Buyers can adjust the price; although a general average price is suggested, and the artist receives 50 per cent of the profit. Artists retain the rights to their work since these are not transferred to the label, which is the usual practice with the main labels. Artists are also free to license their work in other ways: Magnatune does not demand exclusive rights.

After making a purchase, users are allowed to share the DRM-free tracks with three friends. Non-commercial internet radio stations or podcasts can download and freely use free MP3 versions (128 kBit), as the licence is basically a non-commercial use Creative Commons licence. Music lovers who want more convenience can also still buy CDs. Those who want to licence the music directly - for example for advertising or film projects - can view the conditions of the track's licence and make the necessary arrangements directly on Magnatunes' web site.

Since the free licensing world has become populated with a multitude of different musicians and micro labels, blogs like GratisVibes can always be recommended.

Oldies

Music and film fans also profit when international copyrights expire, which may, however, take 70 years or more, depending on current legislation and the inheritance situation. In addition to classical music, a selection of older jazz and blues has now also become public domain and has, therefore, found its way onto the internet.

Such music can, for example, be found at Public Domain4U and at PD Info. The Choral Public Domain Library is to vocal tracks by classical composers much as the Project Gutenberg is to books. The CPDL offers several thousand pieces and translations of a large variety of composers of all eras. However, users need to remember that while the composition itself may be copyright-free when in the public domain, its rendition might not be.

Musopen: Free music, freely recorded

This problem is solved by Musopen, one of the most impressive free music projects on the internet. When a classical piece becomes freely available because its copyright has expired, this really only gives users a stack of sheet music. A truly free recording only becomes available when the piece is recorded and published under a free licence.

At Musopen, college orchestras and individual musicians do just that - a very recommendable project for every music academy wanting to present the quality of its students to the public. Musopen offers works by Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Bach, Händel, Clementi, Mozart and many other composers from a variety of eras. The collection was founded by music and economy student Aaron Dunn. His motivation is simple: "If there is music that by law now belongs to the general public, let's make sure that it is available to the public."

Wikimedia also contains a comprehensive collection of classical music available for download in Ogg/Vorbis format.

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