The power of creative commons to get heard

SOME rights reserved.

How sweet it could be.  I had little knowledge about creative commons licensing, but I found the web, as always, to be a fine resource indeed.

You can find all the answers you need at the creative commons website.

What do I plan on doing with this?  How does this advance the cause of the mighty Starfish? Why would I want to give away some of the rights to my work? How do I convince my bandmates to go for it?

This article from the Creative Commons website illustrates an ideal situation for just about any artist or band:

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Adam Singer on CC licenses and Music Promotion

Cameron Parkins, January 23rd, 2009

Adam Singer is a musician and “social media guru” who used his expertise in both fields to find a more harmonious means of online promotion. As a relatively “unknown artist”, Singer saw little return on efforts to profit from his works as CDs and digital downloads, selling only a few copies with “mixed results”. It was at this point that Singer chose to release his music under a CC BY-NC license.

The choice was not motivated from a promotional standpoint – Singer turned to CC licensing after the “realization [he] would rather have [his] music reach more ears as the money [he] was making was worth far less than the joy of being able to share it with others” – but it spurred unintended promotional results. A recent post on TheFutureBuzz outlines the results of Singer’s choice – soon, he found his music appearing on music blogs, had people on Twitter soliciting him for original music for video, had his music featured on online web radio shows, saw a fan remix video pop-up on YouTube, and saw traffic to his MySpace page increase dramatically.

It is obvious to those who listen that Singer’s music is of high-quality, but by encouraging the free sharing and reuse of this music he was able to reach a far greater audience than he had previously. The story, heard many times before in a variety of incarnations, brings about echoes of Tim O’Reilly:

Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.

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So there you have it—at least for Adam Singer, Creative Commons licensing was a godsend.  Has anyone else had an experience with this sort of licensing?  I do believe the Starfish, in its great magnanimity, will allow the Secret Society to release at least one work with only “some rights reserved”.

Another option is to make your music “podsafe”.  There are several groups that will vouch for you, thus allowing anyone with a podcast in your genre to add you, fearlessly, to their playlist.  (you can find a list of them here.)

There are many other options to get your music out there.  And since getting heard is the first step to getting paid, you may wish to consider the value of “free” in your self promotion.