
Online music distribution companies may not want Creative Commons music - mynjin
http://jelsonic.com/royalty-free/the-distros-dont-want-your-creative-commons-music/
======
slavik81
Licensing something as free and then going around and making backroom deals
with platform holders so it cannot freely be used is misleading and unethical.
If I use CC-BY music in a game I make, I don't want to discover after the fact
that you will insert ads in my YouTube trailer.

~~~
languagewars
I don't entirely get the OP, if it is CC-BY then I think you could add ads to
your trailer and collect money on his music. Perhaps he chose the wrong
license..

If it is CC-BY-NC then he should be able to prevent you from adding ads in
combination with his music (though youtube can't settle whether the larger
point of the video is commercial), but he doesn't have any rights to add ads
nor should youtube act as a music agent to broker deals with video producers
as he asserts at the end.

~~~
wolfgke
> If it is CC-BY-NC then he should be able to prevent you from adding ads in
> combination with his music

I would recommend anybody _not_ to license in a CC license that includes "NC"
as long it is not clearly defined what you mean by "commercial".

\- Is using the music in a private YouTube video commercial (probably not)?

\- Is using the music in a private YouTube video that, say, some 3D-Designer
rendered for a classroom project commercial?

\- Is using the music in a YouTube video that some 3D-Designer rendered for a
classroom project but with the potential of showing his skills to potential
employers commercial?

\- Is using the music in a YouTube video that some 3D-Designer rendered for
some funny private side project with the potential of showing his skills to
potential employers commercial?

\- Is using the music in a YouTube video that some 3D-Designer released for
free to show his skills to potential employers commercial?

\- Is enabling ads on such YouTube videos commercial? What if you enable ads
because you had costs?

\- Is using the music in an advertising video that is distributed only freely
commercial (rather yes)?

\- Is using the music in a commercial film commercial (clearly yes)?

If you say something is commercial if you get paid for it, what other types of
compensation makes it commercial/non-commercial: YouTube clicks, Facebook
likes, Bitcoins (when they had no value), attention for other (advertized)
videos in your YouTube channel, awareness among potential employers?

~~~
languagewars
These are all reasons not to republish -NC- material, they are no more
convincing reasons not to use it to license as the arguments against GPL3.

Maybe you have less uptake from people in the grey areas and less spread
through for profit use. Looking at OSS today, maybe that is what you want.

~~~
ghaff
Disagree. There are philosophical and practical reasons to argue against
copyleft licenses in favor of more permissive licenses. [ADDED: or vice
versa.] But there's not a lot of debate about what copyleft means (outside of
some corner cases relating to linking and interfaces).

The issue with NC isn't so much around the fact that it prohibits commercial
use--though in the views of some that makes it a non-free license and
therefore something to avoid for that reason alone--but that defining what
constitutes commercial use in the general case is essentially impossible and
very much in the eyes of the beholder.

~~~
languagewars
GPL2's single work issue may be a better example of ambiguosness, but dual
licensing w/GPL3 is complex enough to collect from commercial licensees.
Enterprises often buy the paid license because it is too hard for them to
evaluate whether they will manage compliance over time.

Such a method seems quite typical to protect ones work while sharing it with
end users and seems to be what the OP expected from using CC.

I don't like the state of NC, but the point of copyleft is harvesting the
irony that licensors get to state the terms and aren't particularly penalized
for much of anything they do wrong (their unenforceable clauses are simply
ignored). So why not take NC if you want CC with a commercial chilling effect?
You don't have to sue anyone, yet that chill is still there. A resolution in
one US court wont even change that chill much.

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voidz
My buddy Ryno - [http://rynothebearded.com/](http://rynothebearded.com/) has a
weekly podcast that focuses on music under a CC license. There are many great
tunes available free of charge, and it's very strange that music falling under
this license doesn't get more traction.

~~~
keithpeter
While we are sharing CC Music have a look at

[http://www.gardnermuseum.org/music/listen/music_library?filt...](http://www.gardnermuseum.org/music/listen/music_library?filter=composer)

if your tastes extend to classical. Classical artists have it easier as they
can release a sound recording of a particular performance under the CC licence
and then release another recording commercially. Leon Fleisher springs to
mind.

~~~
jasonkostempski
Why is that idea limited to Classical artists?

~~~
wolfgke
Because the composer/artist has to be dead for many years for the copyright to
expire (in the United states 70 years after the death; cf.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths&oldid=741251504#Table)).

------
andrewaylett
Surely part of the problem is that content-id is a bit far-reaching for CC-
licensed content? That is, as my understanding goes: if I release music under
CC then you use that music, per its license, to make a derived work and stick
it on YT, now I get paid for (and get to stick adverts on) your fully-licensed
work! That seems a bit unfair.

So I can see that there would be benefit to a creator being able to monetise
their own works on YT, but surely there needs to be a mechanism in place to
protect legitimate licensees from an over-reaching licensing grab? And at the
moment it seems like that mechanism is just not letting people into the
monetisation system at all.

~~~
Natsu
Often the people monetizing the CC licensed stuff aren't even the real owners.
I've heard of quite a few people whose own work got monetized without their
consent.

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conatus
Huh. I run a Creative Commons record label -
[http://recordsonribs.com](http://recordsonribs.com) \- we distribute our
music through an online distributor and have never even had a hint of a
problem with it. We use CC SA-NC. This for us is a pragmatic question of
distribution, making sure the music is out there and available to people who
might want to listen, rather than an attempt to monetize. I can tell you know,
the money received from streaming services is so unbelievably low that is most
is either insulting to artists to redistribute to them or only covers
operational costs (and then barely covers them). We are talking in the pennies
here.

~~~
phyzome
Yes, the NC part is important here. I don't understand this author's complaint
-- if they released it without the NC, it is _definitely permissible_ for
other people to monetize their work, and Content ID would be inappropriate!

------
cbr
This post seems pretty confused to me. The idea is that you tell YouTube "I
own this, people can't use it without my permission, but I'm ok with it as
long as you give me a cut of the ad revenue". But with CC-licensed music you
have already given people that permission.

It sounds like the author wants to give people the right to use their music
freely anywhere but YouTube, which CC and YouTube understandably don't
support.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, on open source software that doesn't have
anything to do with YouTube.

~~~
eropple
_> But with CC-licensed music you have already given people that permission._

That's literally the opposite of true with -nc.

~~~
cbr
Let's take a specific scenario:

* Person A composes some music, releases it as CC-NC

* Person B uses that music as the background to a home video, uploads it to youtube

It seems like B is following the CC-NC license? So then A goes to YouTube and,
via Content ID, says "I own the music B used in their video, they didn't have
permission to use my music, but I'm willing to let them use it if you put ads
on their video and give me a cut".

(Again, I do work for Google, on unrelated stuff.)

~~~
eropple
Person B in that case would be following the license, yes. Person C uses it as
background music for an advertisement on YouTube in contravention of the
license. That's the problem.

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RileyJames
I was considering releasing some music under the CC SA-NC for exactly this
purpose. I want people to share it, but I don't want it expoited without
permission (which I'd gladly give, I just want to know by who).

To avoid the distribution issue, is it possible to use a CC licence for music
downloaded from your website, while using a RR licence when providing to the
distributors? (On the same song).

Any reason why the licence can't be dependent on the distribution channel?

~~~
keithpeter
Or release a _slightly_ different version over the distribution channels so
two distinct works?

~~~
RileyJames
Didn't think of that, great idea. The "Spotify mix", "YouTube mix"... A new
licence for every channel.

Could this also get around channels demanding "exclusives"

------
sfifs
Actually I think this just stems from simple economics.

Monetization under online content-ID schemes (including relatedly serving
takedowns under DCMA where required) all require the content usage rights to
unambiguously be established AND verifiable in an automated fashion. Before an
ad can be placed on a piece of content or served a DCMA takedown, the right to
do so needs to be veirfied (eg. DCMA requires "good faith effort"), or they
may get conter-sued.

With normal licenced content, that is easy to determine in an automated
fashion - audio signatures will identify the potentially infringing content &
then possibly some algorithms will check for fair-use - eg. length of the
original song used, audio quality to eg. indicate it it's a production video
or you recording your kid dancing, maybe even a human in the loop at the very
end.

With CC licensed content, every piece of potentially infriging content needs
to be human verified for usage rights & even then it may not be clear quickly.
It is too expensive to hire an army of humans - so you would not support it at
all.

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chmike
Cc is the open source of creation. I'm fascinated by the power of open source.
capitalism pushed to its extream is harmful to humanity. Just look at junk
food to convince yourself if you aren't yet. By its incremental enhancement,
it leads to exponential growth. It is slow in the start because incremental
steps are small, but it leads to a tsunami.

I believe we are on the verge to see a fundamental change in the way the
worlds economy is working. This may still take 100 years, but capitalism is
doomed because it leads to unstable economical states and it's harmful for
humanity (e.g speculation on food).

Lets keep pushing on the snowball and extend that model to other domains. I
think that scientists pioneered that model, hence the exponential scientific
progress.

~~~
hueving
It seems you are implying that food which people like to eat (junk food)
wouldn't be created in an 'open source' economy. Why?

~~~
holri
Because in an open source environment the quality of the product is not
defined by its commercial success but rather by the fun to create and share
it. Therefore it is more in line with its intrinsic quality.

~~~
icebraining
_Therefore it is more in line with its intrinsic quality._

What is this intrinsic quality, and why does it correlate better with the fun
during creation than with the decision by people to buy it?

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's just "quality", and while it may be difficult to say whether it
correlates better with the fun during creation than with sellability, the
important thing is that quality doesn't correlated with sellability very much.
There are _way_ too many other inputs that influence whether or not people
will buy something - like marketing, economies of scale and access to
distribution.

(Though I'm pretty sure that this hypothetical Open Source McDonald's would
exist. It, and other fast food joints, solve a legitimate consumer problem -
getting hot and actually tasty food quickly.)

------
tribby
bandcamp is great for CC-licensing music. great for everything else, too, but
that's a digression.

[https://creativecommons.org/2009/01/21/bandcamp-
integrates-c...](https://creativecommons.org/2009/01/21/bandcamp-integrates-
cc-licenses/)

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tehwebguy
I kind of hope YouTube gets mad and tells those distros to eat shit.

Aside from rights management do these "distros" do ANYTHING anymore? And they
are too lazy to do any rights management work that YouTube isn't performing
semi- or fully-automatically?

YouTube should not allow them to simply be gate keepers.

~~~
makomk
I expect YouTube is the one imposing these requirements on the distributors.
Licensing your content under the Creative Commons, then going around and
telling YouTube that anyone who uses it is infringing your copyright and they
need to pay you to keep it up is dishonest and damaging to the YouYube
ecosystem as a whole.

------
lucaspiller
As someone who isn't at all familiar with music distribution, is YouTube
really the best way for indie artists to distribute, and monetise, their
music? The audio quality seems a lot lower compared to Spotify, and I don't
really want to waste bandwidth on a video just to listen to music while I'm
working. On the other hand I've noticed some mainstream music is blocked for
me on Spotify, but available on YouTube.

~~~
clarry
I don't know about monetization, but for distribution, youtube has a huge
audience. A lot of people just listen to music on youtube because it's free
and accessible. So I think it's fair to say you can have great reach on
youtube. At the same time, I don't know about discoverability; if you're a
small artist (nobody heard of you), your video is going to have very few
views, and it's unlikely to be recommended for random people listening to
popular music. I don't know if other services fare any better in this regard
though.

Bandwidth isn't a consideration for most people as long as _it just works_ ,
and quality is good enough.

~~~
ifdefdebug
bandwidth is not a problem as long as your vid is just a still image

~~~
zo1
Additionally, if you use youtube-dl[1], you can oftentimes simply download the
audio component of the video without ever touching the video.

The only problem with music on youtube is the variability of the quality and
the ability to find good-quality versions of the songs you want.

[1] [https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl)

------
shams93
Cc its really pretty nuanced you can have tunes you give away for free for
people to enjoy but a commercial company would have to license it to use it in
their film. I think CC Music is the future, not these crummy middle men
services. Think about it, if you band is able to get shows where you have a
$4,000 minimum per night off of "giving away" your music then you've won
without having to sell a single song.

~~~
a3_nm
Note that your first sentence does not apply to all Creative Commons licenses,
only to the ones with the NC clause.

~~~
ghaff
>only to the ones with the NC clause

Which have significant problems. One of the smartest aspects of modern open
source software licenses that's allowed them to become really widespread is
that there's very little restriction by usage (e.g. only for educational use).

There have been attempts to better define NC in the context of Creative
Commons probably going back a decade. But, in addition to the fact that it
makes it a non-free license under OSI guidelines, it's really hard. The
problem is that you either create hard and fast rules based on non-profits
under US tax code or whatever (which allows some very large and potentially
controversial orgs to use non-commercially) or you make essentially all non-
trivial uses commercial. (Amazon referral links on your blog? Commercial.)

My personal belief is that CC should just eliminate ND and NC. ND prohibits
remixing which was one of the rallying points around CC in the first place.
And NC is essentially a feel good license that lets you be warm and fuzzy
about contributing to the commons--while trying to make sure no one can make
money from your work.

