Throughout CC’s tenth anniversary celebrations, we’re highlighting various media platforms with CC implementation. For today, we spoke with Jamendo cofounder and managing director Pierre Gérard.

If you’re not familiar with Jamendo, it’s a community of musicians and tool for discovering new music. Unlike most other CC-enabled platforms, CC is integral to Jamendo: every songs is licensed under CC. For many songs, users can purchase commercial rights through the Jamendo PRO service.

In honor of CC10, Pierre and his team created a special #cc10 playlist of their top ten CC-licensed songs. Pierre had this to say about the playlist:

We looked back at these 8 years of existence for Jamendo; we have been blessed by the talent of so many artists that it’s hard to choose! They have made our catalog a very rich and diverse world of free music. Thanks to them, we were able to select popular songs created by artists from different parts of the world to create a playlist very diverse in terms of music genres. The most important was to choose artists that support and believe in Creative Commons, and all of these artists have promoted the concept for years.

Tell me a bit about the history of Jamendo. Was Creative Commons licensing part of your plan from the beginning?

Yes, CC licensing was in the first business model of the company. When we created Jamendo in 2004, we based our concept on free music for consumers and professional licensing, even though it took years to launch our licensing service (Jamendo PRO). Creative Commons was really the seed of Jamendo. We wanted to create a new model in the digital world where there are so many opportunities for artists to promote and share their music. We knew that some of them also have huge potential and would be able to generate revenue from their music.

Jamendo is unique among most of the media platforms we work with, in that all uploads are CC-licensed. Has that policy caused confusion among users?

Yes; we also need to evangelize and explain how CC licenses can be used. Some have been confused in the past because they were used to the “you-are-not-allowed policy” that stems from traditional copyright. The concept of CC is so much different and needs to be explained. But it’s quite easy and users understand that it is so much easier and fair.

We love hearing interesting reuse stories. Do you have any examples of tracks that got reused in surprising or amazing ways under the CC license?

We are often asked to participate in very interesting projects that are made possible by the openness of Creative Commons. We helped a Jamendo member create a compilation of CC artists in order to raise money for the victims of the tsunami in Japan. We’ve also worked with ccMixter to have our communities remix Christmas songs! Last year, we had the pleasure to see CC Spanish rock band Stormy Mondays win a contest organized by NASA and get its song “Sunrise Number 1” played in space in the Endeavour space shuttle!

What advice might you give a musician who’s unsure about sharing her work under a CC license?

There is nothing to lose and so much to gain! Music is everywhere and there is no actual way for an artist to prevent his or her music from being distributed. At the end of the day, “giving away your music for free” under a CC license creates more value in terms of fans, popularity and even money.

Where will the music industry be ten years from now? Will open licensing be the default?

It’s very likely that we see a strong growth in open licensing but I am not sure it will be the default. I like to compare open licensing with open-source software. The IT industry has seen a lot of changes since the launch of free licenses: new companies have emerged with new business models but the old ones are still there even though they’ve also had to evolve.

In 10 years, majors will still be there but they will also have learned some lessons. I am sure the place (or market share) of open licensing for music will grow with more and more artists publishing their music under CC and I hope that Jamendo will still play a big part in this new ecosystem.

Throughout CC’s tenth anniversary celebrations, we’re highlighting various media platforms with CC implementation. For today, we spoke with Jamendo cofounder and managing director Pierre Gérard.

If you’re not familiar with Jamendo, it’s a community of musicians and tool for discovering new music. Unlike most other CC-enabled platforms, CC is integral to Jamendo: every songs is licensed under CC. For many songs, users can purchase commercial rights through the Jamendo PRO service.

In honor of CC10, Pierre and his team created a special #cc10 playlist of their top ten CC-licensed songs. Pierre had this to say about the playlist:

We looked back at these 8 years of existence for Jamendo; we have been blessed by the talent of so many artists that it’s hard to choose! They have made our catalog a very rich and diverse world of free music. Thanks to them, we were able to select popular songs created by artists from different parts of the world to create a playlist very diverse in terms of music genres. The most important was to choose artists that support and believe in Creative Commons, and all of these artists have promoted the concept for years.

Tell me a bit about the history of Jamendo. Was Creative Commons licensing part of your plan from the beginning?

Yes, CC licensing was in the first business model of the company. When we created Jamendo in 2004, we based our concept on free music for consumers and professional licensing, even though it took years to launch our licensing service (Jamendo PRO). Creative Commons was really the seed of Jamendo. We wanted to create a new model in the digital world where there are so many opportunities for artists to promote and share their music. We knew that some of them also have huge potential and would be able to generate revenue from their music.

Jamendo is unique among most of the media platforms we work with, in that all uploads are CC-licensed. Has that policy caused confusion among users?

Yes; we also need to evangelize and explain how CC licenses can be used. Some have been confused in the past because they were used to the “you-are-not-allowed policy” that stems from traditional copyright. The concept of CC is so much different and needs to be explained. But it’s quite easy and users understand that it is so much easier and fair.

We love hearing interesting reuse stories. Do you have any examples of tracks that got reused in surprising or amazing ways under the CC license?

We are often asked to participate in very interesting projects that are made possible by the openness of Creative Commons. We helped a Jamendo member create a compilation of CC artists in order to raise money for the victims of the tsunami in Japan. We’ve also worked with ccMixter to have our communities remix Christmas songs! Last year, we had the pleasure to see CC Spanish rock band Stormy Mondays win a contest organized by NASA and get its song “Sunrise Number 1” played in space in the Endeavour space shuttle!

What advice might you give a musician who’s unsure about sharing her work under a CC license?

There is nothing to lose and so much to gain! Music is everywhere and there is no actual way for an artist to prevent his or her music from being distributed. At the end of the day, “giving away your music for free” under a CC license creates more value in terms of fans, popularity and even money.

Where will the music industry be ten years from now? Will open licensing be the default?

It’s very likely that we see a strong growth in open licensing but I am sure it will be the default. I like to compare open licensing with open-source software. The IT industry has seen a lot of changes since the launch of free licenses: new companies have emerged with new business models but the old ones are still there even though they’ve also had to evolve.

In 10 years, majors will still be there but they will also have learned some lessons. I am sure the place (or market share) of open licensing for music will grow with more and more artists publishing their music under CC and I hope that Jamendo will still play a big part in this new ecosystem.

Guest blog post by Teresa Nobre, Legal Project Lead at Creative Commons Portugal

One of the opportunities for Creative Commons to continue its rapid evolution is more collaboration between the various affiliates. In September, representatives of CC’s affiliates in 17 different European countries attended a regional meeting and discussed, among other things, Creative Commons’ 10th birthday. Most of the affiliates were already planning activities and events in their own countries; nevertheless, we felt that it was important to find a way to celebrate this important date as a regional network. Since the majority of the affiliates are volunteers, we cannot commit ourselves to carry out as many common actions as we would like. With other priorities in both the national and regional agendas, this activity could not require much planning and execution. The idea of creating a mixtape with Creative Commons–licensed music from around Europe – where each affiliate just had to suggest one or two tracks from her own country – seemed, therefore, a good option and got the general agreement of all those present at the meeting.

Back to our home countries, we relied on the network mailing list to get everyone involved. We did not nominate an official project lead and we did not establish any requirements other than the music being the affiliate’s preferred CC-licensed music. We could have decided to use the mixtape to promote just music licensed with one of CC’s free culture licenses (CC BY and CC BY-SA), but we wanted to get as many affiliates involved as possible and we knew that adding such limitation would only make searching for work more difficult. After all, only a very few of us work in the music industry (the others are lawyers, open content advisors, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, engineers, etc.) and not all of us are familiar with our national CC-licensed music.

Some affiliates went on asking for suggestions to their local communities and some even did contests to find their national CC-licensed music that would make into the compilation. Not all the European affiliates were able to get involved in the project, but those involved were really motivated and even found time to send contributions in respect to other European countries. In total, 16 affiliates worked together, devoting much more time than they initially thought they had available, to make this mixtape happen.

The resulting mixtape showcases the talent of 20 artists from 20 European countries: Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The tracks are from genres as diverse as electronic, folk, classic, drum & bass, rock, ska and tango, and they sound awesome together (despite the fact that they were compiled by a non-musician lawyer!). Give it a listen! It is available for download under various Creative Commons licenses at Free Music Archive, SoundCloud, and the Internet Archive. The album artwork is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Guest blog post by Teresa Nobre, Legal Project Lead at Creative Commons Portugal

One of the opportunities for Creative Commons to continue its rapid evolution is more collaboration between the various affiliates. In September, representatives of CC’s affiliates in 17 different European countries attended a regional meeting and discussed, among other things, Creative Commons’ 10th birthday. Most of the affiliates were already planning activities and events in their own countries; nevertheless, we felt that it was important to find a way to celebrate this important date as a regional network. Since the majority of the affiliates are volunteers, we cannot commit ourselves to carry out as many common actions as we would like. With other priorities in both the national and regional agendas, this activity could not require much planning and execution. The idea of creating a mixtape with Creative Commons–licensed music from around Europe – where each affiliate just had to suggest one or two tracks from her own country – seemed, therefore, a good option and got the general agreement of all those present at the meeting.

Back to our home countries, we relied on the network mailing list to get everyone involved. We did not nominate an official project lead and we did not establish any requirements other than the music being the affiliate’s preferred CC-licensed music. We could have decided to use the mixtape to promote just music licensed with one of CC’s free culture licenses (CC BY and CC BY-SA), but we wanted to get as many affiliates involved as possible and we knew that adding such limitation would only make searching for work more difficult. After all, only a very few of us work in the music industry (the others are lawyers, open content advisors, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, engineers, etc.) and not all of us are familiar with our national CC-licensed music.

Some affiliates went on asking for suggestions to their local communities and some even did contests to find their national CC-licensed music that would make into the compilation. Not all the European affiliates were able to get involved in the project, but those involved were really motivated and even found time to send contributions in respect to other European countries. In total, 16 affiliates worked together, devoting much more time than they initially thought they had available, to make this mixtape happen.

The resulting mixtape showcases the talent of 20 artists from 20 European countries: Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The tracks are from genres as diverse as electronic, folk, classic, drum & bass, rock, ska and tango, and they sound awesome together (despite the fact that they were compiled by a non-musician lawyer!). Give it a listen! It is available for download under various Creative Commons licenses at Free Music Archive, SoundCloud, and the Internet Archive. The album artwork is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

CC Happy Birthday CC10 / @saidRmdhani

On day 7 of our CC10 celebrations we have an exciting announcement: the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) has announced a 3.5 million dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a new program to help adult English language learners improve their language skills — Integrated Digital English Acceleration (I-DEA). Importantly, all online learning modules developed for I-DEA will be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution license — the most liberal of our licences, allowing all teachers around the country and the world to reuse, remix and reinterpret them.

In honor of this announcement, we focus on education for today’s CC10 featured platform and resource. We take a look at Open content licensing for educators, one of the many courses provided by Wikieducator, a community-developed resource of free elearning content – created by the public, for the public. The Open content licensing for educators course, an initiative of the OER Foundation, has been running all this week, training educators both how to make full use of the wealth of educational resources now available for free download under CC and other open licenses, and how to share their own materials with others.

We also celebrate a milestone by another great community-created platform, as Wikicommons hits 15 million files, just in time for CC10. Wikicommons is one of the world’s oldest and largest resources of CC licensing and public domain media, from photos to videos to sound files. It’s the source of all the media you find on Wikipedia, and its files are used extensively by cultural and educational institutions to share and create open education resources. Check out our post on this great achievement to see two videos by our friends at WikiAfrica, explaining how and why a cultural institution might want to share their resources on Wikicommons.

Finally – everyone should take a moment to appreciate the fabulous CC10 poster above by @saidRmdhani. It was produced by attendees to our Arab World Regional Meeting, which has been running all this week in Cairo, and finishes up today. Congratulations to all the attendees, and we can’t wait to hear more about your workshops.