This was going to be the exception to creative commons music and a post about licensing from small recording houses. But in the past two days while talking to musician and studio manager Robby Baier at SoulTube, Robby just went ahead and posted a Non-Commercial, Attribution, Limited Use notice to the site. I verified this with the studio, and indeed, licenses to students are free (yay)-festival licenses included. When the money comes (keep believing), they would want to talk to you some more about commercial distribution and offer to even help you pick the right song for a scene. Either way, always give credit where its due.

SoulTube is home to a small, but a unqiue and beautifully-produced collection of artists. They have licensed music to commercials, TV, and films before so they are not new to the game. Check out their site, go to the “Songs For Film” section and choose the advanced search feature. You can explore from their list of artists, pick a mood, or search for specific words in the lyrics database (kudos!).

If this does not sound too good already, most of the tracks are also available in instrumental versions and you can hear the music and download it from the site directly.  Again, the only drawback is that it is a small collection, but the experience of dealing with people passionate about their music is vastly superior to any of the stock music houses or large labels.

You have labored over your film concept (the one you just came up with an hour before you had to pitch it), you have poured every emotion in your soul into the storyboards (mostly fear), and now you scurry about in the last two weeks of Winter quarter, squeezing whatever creative juices (and hard-earned cash) left in you to put out a story you can call your own into this cyberworld.

Visually, things seem to be falling into place (historically known as the crapper), and now it is time to find that perfect minor chord to send your audience weeping after they view your piece.

The musicscapes are vast and this post (in three parts) will only attempt to provide some guidance for those creating audio-visual projects to navigating the creative commons music territories (or swamps).

Read more…

As a strong believer in the Creative Commons project, I was delighted to find this lovely short video by Jesse Dylan illustrating the importance of CC.  Creative Commons has become a vital tool in creating community and maintaining dialogue online by simplifying the legalese involved in the process of sharing and reacting. As opposed to defaulting to retaining all rights, CC offers a system that is tolerant towards variable levels of participation and reaction to content. It shifts the focus from content to community served and moved by content.

Watch and enjoy.