Hey there,

There are actually some pretty cool aspects to a CC license.  It's meant to be a more modern (i.e. Commons Deed and Machine Readable layers) and flexible licensing mechanism.

There are I think 6 versions of the license ranging in restrictiveness.  Some versions let people remix your music but not use commercially, some let people do anything they want as long as they credit you, and the most restrictive says people can download and share your music but not change or use commercially.

I think the main goal of the CC license is to a) provide a DRMless licensing model, and b) have variations that fit a variety of usage models.

For instance if you want to encourage remixes of your material, there are several options.  You can say go with CC BY-NC-SA which lets people remix, tweak, build on your music non-commercially and anything they create with your material has to credit you and has to be released with the same CC BY-NC-SA license.  Or you can throw the doors open with CC BY which lets people do anything they want with your material, even commercially, they just have to give you credit for your original work.

The most restrictive is CC BY-NC-ND which basically says people may download and share your music as long as you are given credit and that's all.  No remixing, no commercial use.  It's basically the same as all rights reserved - except that it allows that people are going to share music with their friends and kind of "de-criminalizes" that behavior.  

It's pretty interesting stuff and worth looking into, especially if you think you might like to have others remix, mashup, or cover your material.  Here is the link to the CC site:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Cheers!

Daniel

Hey John, 

No worries!  I love a good, multisided discussion!  I've been thinking about CC for a couple of years and still don't know quite where I stand.  On one hand, I feel an alternative system is good, and a needed rejection of the stupid way the heavies in the music industry have handled themselves over the last decade.  But, I'm not exactly sure of the best way to apply CC licensing either - although I know that there are many artists that use it.

Though the licenses themselves are built on top of copyright, idea behind CC is based on the Open Source model for software - which I am pretty familiar with.  Generally speaking, with OS software people develop an application and allow other people to use it for free, change it if they want to, or build it into their own app - as long as they attribute the parts they used from other OS projects.  Most OS software projects make money by some combination of: getting underwritten (by IBM for example), selling support, asking for donations, or by having a version with enhanced features that is a paid upgrade.

To my mind it's that last bit that has the most obvious application to music.  So you might have a model where you choose a CC license allowing people download, distribute for personal use, maybe remix or whatever, and maybe you even give your tracks away - but you sell an enhanced version.  Maybe bundled remixes and higher quality formats like flac, or a vinyl LP with a t-shirt or art or exclusive videos or limited edition signed art, or whatever else you can think of.

I also think that part of the philosophy behind CC is just acknowledging that people share music regardless of how it's licensed, and that this is a good thing in the big picture.  So CC says at a minimum sure, pass it around, make mixes, in short do what people have always done.  If an artist wants to grant more rights than that, they can do so with quite a bit of control.

Nothing about CC says you have to give your stuff away.  Nothing stops the artist from going ahead and selling the same basic unit.  When you think about it, how many people are going to go to itunes to buy your latest record and then stop and say "oh I should check if this is CC licensed and go find a free version somewhere."  Probably not many.  Conversely, if somebody decides he's going to send his buddy a zip file of your record it's probably not too likely he'll go check to see if it's CC licensed and then feel guilty and not hook up his friend when he finds out it's not.

Extending that to the method of direct marketing we're using here, again, if you're giving away a track or two to compel people to sign up for your list, are they really going to go check the license and then feel cheated when they discover it's CC licensed?  And if they have a friend who they think might like it too, are they really going to say "there's this tune I think you'll dig but I can't give it to you until you sign up on this mailing list"?  Nah, their just going to send their friend the track.  If the friend really does like it, they'll probably go check you out on their own anyway.  You could even build for this contingency by making your offer a bit more compelling over the long term.  Something like a random track from your catalog every couple months.  That way, even if somebody already has one or two of your tracks from a friend who is on your list, they'll be enticed to sign up anyway.  Then you can hit the list with your enhanced offerings.  

Winding up this long winded screed... does any of that make it worthwhile to choose CC over the old way?  Who knows?  Some people think so obviously.  I'm admittedly playing a bit of devils advocate here since I've never chosen to CC any of my meager offerings.  I can see using some of the non-commercial use remix versions because that opens the door for creative fans.  But I think I would want anybody wanting to use it in a commercial way to negotiate a separate license specifically for that.

Just more thoughts and talking out loud. 😉

Daniel