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Have experimentally uploaded a track by MEME vs XAN to see how it works but at the moment it seems the link is screwed. Maybe it'll work later.

Not sure where they are going with this as it is extremely basic but I would have loved to be able to specify a Creative Commons license as I was adding the song...

ps. If you are impatient to hear my track anyway you can get Meme Vs Xan - 24 - immediately from Loca Downloads

If someone doesn't listen to all of their music the way I listen to my music, it's because they're brain-damaged.

Yeah, that's a really credible statement. As others have already opined, it depends on the music -- some is clearly meant to be played in order (Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed comes to mind), but I believe the majority of music -- commercial or independent or hobby -- is not sequence-specific or even mildly sequence-sensitive. And even some music that can be sequence-sensitive, such as live albums (or, for a Free music example, I would consider the ML EP published by Loca Records to be moderately sequence-sensitive) can be removed from its sequence without really "breaking" anything. This is even true for sequence-specific music, as popular radio airplay of various isolated tracks from the aforementioned Moody Blues album helps demonstrate.

"Those kids these days..." Yeah, whatever. I'm sure that not listening to albums from start to finish is a new thing and doesn't have any historical precedent in radio... :-/

Not quite so automated (yet), but their are quite a few very good bits of music and images. Check out opart.org and opsound.org for a rather eclectic selection. Check out Loca Records for some highly polished electronica music. subatomicglue is a great electronic band using copyleft. Finally, I have a 4 GB copyleft music archive at dxdt.org/audio/. Also see some ideas for how a p2p system could work at www.dxdt.org/exchange.html

As more and more of theses sites get tagged well w.r.t. license and contributor information, we should see some great search engines, with features like: show derivative works, show sources, etc.

Luke Stodola

I run LOCA records and I've been thinking that a wrapper that expressly indicates the copyleft properties of a song would be a superb step forward as any kind of sharing method would just check that the wrapper was in place. This could be linked to the Creative Commons licenses so that people can find out more information.

Question is the technical issue of implementation - it really would need to be an extension of the MP3 standard (or Ogg) and would have to be non-changable and able to convince a court should anyone wishing to defend their swapping need to do so.

Maybe a third-party Verisign-type music label could be the answer that holds a database of public domain tracks that 'signs' the MP3 and which can then be checked against in a database?

It's a really good article and I have to say from my own experience that I would thoroughly recommend the upgrade. Things like fast-user-switching and expose are just completely changing the way we work at loca. Especially for the Art Director who can have his usual billion windows open and still find things I need urgently by flipping them all off screen...

Stability wise I am impressed to. The only thing broken was the fact that Apple force you to place certain applications in the Application directory (rather than sub-directories below) which seems a bit stupid...

I use a lot of CD-Rs for archival purposes for music on my label, LOCA records, and my experience is that stick-on labels definitely reduce the lifespan. The CD's tend to develop a noticable click when they are played in CD-players and it becomes increasingly worse as time goes by.

Conversely since I have begun using a CD pen, although it does not look as good professionally, the CD's don't seem to be developing the same fault. Now whether this is due to the fact that the CD's have come from a different manufactuer with a more recent technology - though the older ones are also from a variety of manufacturers - I don't know.

So my advice is to steer clear of CD labels and stick to pens or stamps (which is also what we use on the label now) as these do not seem to cause the same problems.

in the meantime you can listen at DOWNLOAD LOCA MUSIC..

Cheers

Granted most people look blank or think we must be insane to do this but we are experimenting with a new business model and it is very exciting!

And as we believe in the artists and they trust us because of our licensing freedom we think in the long term the relationship can only get stronger and more artists will want to join us.

It would be cool to make the whole process Open Source.. we dabbled in LINUX before but, jesus is it complex for the average user....

Open Source music is soon very soon...

We have been submitted to Slashdot but they deigned not to bother drawing attention to our site at LOCA RECORDS but are happy for some crappy eighties band...

No wonder new music is finding it hard to get an audience as everyone seem to be looking backwards these days...

We at LOCA Records have been experimenting with Free Licence releases since last year. But we actually release the records, so example our ML release is a 12"vinyl release that includes a copy of the Open Audio license (from EFF.org) as part of the record artwork...

The record is getting very good reviews but bizarrely no reviewer has so far picked up on the open license that we are using. It just seems to be passing everyone by.. this is very strange as you would expect *someone* to notice...

We at LOCA Records have been experimenting with Free Licence releases since last year. But we actually release the records, so example our ML release is a 12"vinyl release that includes a copy of the Open Audio license (from EFF.org) as part of the record artwork...

The record is getting very good reviews but bizarrely no reviewer has so far picked up on the open license that we are using. It just seems to be passing everyone by.. this is very strange as you would expect *someone* to notice...

The majority of buyers of music are in the young teeny market or the older back catalogue and new music is squeezed between these two camps. And hey guess what, most people into new music don't buy, my record label (LOCA) sells very small amounts of CDs and Vinyl *even though* we get emails and good press telling us how good the music is.

And we have had a donate to artists for their MP3s available for twelve months and ONLY ONE PERSON HAS DONE SO... even though we have had thousands of downloads.

Now, perhaps everyone hates the music - fair enough - but I think much more likely people can't get their head around paying for something they have already got on their walkman. That is certainly one of the main reasons I do not copy albums off people, the moment I do, no matter how good my intentions, I do not go and buy the CD. Sure if I grab an MP3 off the web I will as then the quality is poor (for instance I recently went out and got the Electric6 single Danger! High Voltage! after a download).

So what do we the tiny independent labels do about this? Well I'm truly not sure.. The market is sewn up by the majors to extents you would not believe. Generally people *do not like* buying unknown bands, and certainly not if they are not stocked in the major record stores, and lastly if they get the MP3 they seem mostly happy with that...

I would love for an alternative business model to start to emerge on the web but it seems that for all the talk its the same everywhere, the majors can advertise and buy their way into the web review sites by blitzing them with promos, they plug like crazy and they already control the external print market. Goodby heterogeneity, hello homogeneity.

This new 'scientific' method of calculating music singles is the result of laziness and shallowness by the buying public and quite frankly history will judge us that way...

But not too get too depressing, will that stop us writing music and running the label? Nah.. we love music too much..

;-)

One of the problems is that everyone moans about the homogeneity and lack of good music and then instead of going out and buying it they download MP3s fromthe web. Now that is fine *providing* you give something back to the artists and the musicians writing the stuff... sadly this is often not the way...

The majority of buyers of music are in the young teeny market or the older back catalogue and new music is squeezed between these two camps. And hey guess what, most people into new music don't buy, my record label (LOCA sells very small amounts of CDs and Vinyl *even though* we get emails and good press telling us how good the music is.

And we have had a donate to artists for their MP3s available for twelve months and ONLY ONE PERSON HAS DONE SO... even though we have had thousands of downloads.

Now, perhaps everyone hates the music - fair enough - but I think much more likely people can't get their head around paying for something they have already got on their walkman. That is certainly one of the main reasons I do not copy albums off people, the moment I do, no matter how good my intentions, I do not go and buy the CD. Sure if I grab an MP3 off the web I will as then the quality is poor (for instance I recently went out and got the Electric6 single Danger! High Voltage! after a download).

So what do we the tiny independent labels do about this? Well I'm truly not sure.. The market is sewn up by the majors to extents you would not believe. Generally people *do not like* buying unknown bands, and certainly not if they are not stocked in the major record stores, and lastly if they get the MP3 they seem mostly happy with that...

I would love for an alternative business model to start to emerge on the web but it seems that for all the talk its the same everywhere, the majors can advertise and buy their way into the web review sites by blitzing them with promos, they plug like crazy and they already control the external print market. Goodby heterogeneity, hello homogeneity.

This new 'scientific' method of calculating music singles is the result of laziness and shallowness by the buying public and quite frankly history will judge us that way...

But not too get too depressing, will that stop us writing music and running the label? Nah.. we love music too much..

;-)

A system is needed to be able to allow users to provide feedback (and hence publicity to new music) and most importantly somehow give the artists some money for the work they produce, afterall they need to eat too.

We are a record label and have been experimenting with open media and this whole debate has influenced our music releasing model... We currently use the EFF Open Audio license to release vinyl records for dance and electronica music...

LOCA RECORDS

We are experimenting with open media at LOCARECORDS.COM but eventhough we are getting downloads we don't get payment... Maybe that will change but certainly we are getting a more supportive reponse from people who *actually* buy the record itself..

And as I have said previously, I am not anti-technological nor anti-progess, merely I believe we need to be more sensitive to issues. Rather than, wow a rocket that has a DV camera, gosh, wow, amazing. Yeah right.. amazing waste of money... hardly creative and hardly useful either...

And I have not said stop buying things. The purpose of the post was to raise a dissenting voice and say, hey, maybe this isn't all that great, is that *so* bad??

We should be buying new music from small labels and encouraging them to experiment with Open Media/Open Source releases. That way we'll have it both ways, good new music, and we can copy and re-use it however we want without worrying about cracking and hacking some god-awful crappy protection scheme.

We do we have to buy such safe multinational anodyne music??? Come on slashotters EXPERIMENT! There are so many interesting labels out there.

static

LOCA

Bearos

Tigerbeat

Anticon

To name just a few....

Pouring more money into these huge multinationals is hardly the best way to get innovative new music...

See MEME INTERVIEW

Or WARD REVIEW

Ok that's in french so maybe WARD INTERVIEW would be better? (Scroll down for English)

Or hey just visit our site

Feel free to browse and if you have ideas for how we *could* place our music on the web cheaply and easily then please please let us know!! All help credited and appreciated!

Oh and feel free to buy a nice t-shirt.. they keep us releasing... ;-)

See MEME INTERVIEW

Or WARD REVIEW

Ok that's in french so maybe WARD INTERVIEW would be better? (Scroll down for English)

Or hey just visit our site

Feel free to browse and if you have ideas for how we *could* place our music on the web cheaply and easily then please please let us know!! All help credited and appreciated!

Oh and feel free to buy a nice t-shirt.. they keep us releasing... ;-)

The multinational media corporations believe that music is a product to be squeezed of every last vestige of profit without any need to invest in new talent or to enable musicians to experiment. They do this by seeking to enforce property rights in copyright law that give them ownership of the music created by musicians in perpetuity. But they go much further in their attempts to control every derivative of the music, including samples, lyrics, melodies, rythmns and imagery. Anybody breaking their copyright is dealt with harshly and ruthlessly in the courts. When these companies have finally acheived their aims of preventing us from being able to create our own music we will live in a corporate world where we can be only consumers of music. In contrast, we at LOCA believe that creativity requires that musicians reappropriate and reinterpret music and sounds to enable them to create truly innovative music.

LOCA believes that the fight over Open Content and Open Media is a struggle over the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech, radically opening up the possibilities of media. To this end LOCA is attempting to release music under so-called copyleft, a license that enables music writers to develop music collaboratively and equitably and then release it into the public domain. Using either the Open Audio license (from EFF) or the LOCA Public License, a derivative of the GNU Public License (GPL), LOCA hopes to provide the control necessary to prevent further commercialisation of work that is released and to encourage others to do the same. We hope that musicians who contemplate using the work released in this manner will honour the license and release their work under a public license resulting in a radical rejection of the whole capitalist ethos of these multinational media corporations.

Unfortunately we don't have the resources and people only seem to buy music from the aforementioned multinationals with the huge billboard adverts... hence we will probably go under.... oh well...

;-(

The multinational media corporations believe that music is a product to be squeezed of every last vestige of profit without any need to invest in new talent or to enable musicians to experiment. They do this by seeking to enforce property rights in copyright law that give them ownership of the music created by musicians in perpetuity. But they go much further in their attempts to control every derivative of the music, including samples, lyrics, melodies, rythmns and imagery. Anybody breaking their copyright is dealt with harshly and ruthlessly in the courts. When these companies have finally acheived their aims of preventing us from being able to create our own music we will live in a corporate world where we can be only consumers of music. In contrast, we at LOCA believe that creativity requires that musicians reappropriate and reinterpret music and sounds to enable them to create truly innovative music.

LOCA believes that the fight over Open Content and Open Media is a struggle over the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech, radically opening up the possibilities of media. To this end LOCA is attempting to release music under so-called copyleft, a license that enables music writers to develop music collaboratively and equitably and then release it into the public domain. Using either the Open Audio license (from EFF) or the LOCA Public License, a derivative of the GNU Public License (GPL), LOCA hopes to provide the control necessary to prevent further commercialisation of work that is released and to encourage others to do the same. We hope that musicians who contemplate using the work released in this manner will honour the license and release their work under a public license resulting in a radical rejection of the whole capitalist ethos of these multinational media corporations.

Unfortunately we don't have the resources and people only seem to buy music from the aforementioned multinationals with the huge billboard adverts... hence we will probably go under.... oh well...

;-(

The multinational media corporations believe that music is a product to be squeezed of every last vestige of profit without any need to invest in new talent or to enable musicians to experiment. They do this by seeking to enforce property rights in copyright law that give them ownership of the music created by musicians in perpetuity. But they go much further in their attempts to control every derivative of the music, including samples, lyrics, melodies, rythmns and imagery. Anybody breaking their copyright is dealt with harshly and ruthlessly in the courts. When these companies have finally acheived their aims of preventing us from being able to create our own music we will live in a corporate world where we can be only consumers of music. In contrast, we at LOCA believe that creativity requires that musicians reappropriate and reinterpret music and sounds to enable them to create truly innovative music.

LOCA believes that the fight over Open Content and Open Media is a struggle over the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech, radically opening up the possibilities of media. To this end LOCA is attempting to release music under so-called copyleft, a license that enables music writers to develop music collaboratively and equitably and then release it into the public domain. Using either the Open Audio license (from EFF) or the LOCA Public License, a derivative of the GNU Public License (GPL), LOCA hopes to provide the control necessary to prevent further commercialisation of work that is released and to encourage others to do the same. We hope that musicians who contemplate using the work released in this manner will honour the license and release their work under a public license resulting in a radical rejection of the whole capitalist ethos of these multinational media corporations.

Unfortunately we don't have the resources and people only seem to buy music from the aforementioned multinationals with the huge billboard adverts... hence we will probably go under.... oh well...

;-(

The multinational media corporations believe that music is a product to be squeezed of every last vestige of profit without any need to invest in new talent or to enable musicians to experiment. They do this by seeking to enforce property rights in copyright law that give them ownership of the music created by musicians in perpetuity. But they go much further in their attempts to control every derivative of the music, including samples, lyrics, melodies, rythmns and imagery. Anybody breaking their copyright is dealt with harshly and ruthlessly in the courts. When these companies have finally acheived their aims of preventing us from being able to create our own music we will live in a corporate world where we can be only consumers of music. In contrast, we at LOCA believe that creativity requires that musicians reappropriate and reinterpret music and sounds to enable them to create truly innovative music.

LOCA believes that the fight over Open Content and Open Media is a struggle over the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech, radically opening up the possibilities of media. To this end LOCA is attempting to release music under so-called copyleft, a license that enables music writers to develop music collaboratively and equitably and then release it into the public domain. Using either the Open Audio license (from EFF) or the LOCA Public License, a derivative of the GNU Public License (GPL), LOCA hopes to provide the control necessary to prevent further commercialisation of work that is released and to encourage others to do the same. We hope that musicians who contemplate using the work released in this manner will honour the license and release their work under a public license resulting in a radical rejection of the whole capitalist ethos of these multinational media corporations.

Unfortunately we don't have the resources and people only seem to buy music from the aforementioned multinationals with the huge billboard adverts... hence we will probably go under.... oh well...

;-(

I think it is interesting that the success or otherwise of musicians and music in general is now measured in CD sales, playlists and MTV airplay. I think this is a great shame considering what music can be, and indeed ought to be. These great custodians of the income of the record labels (who incidentally themselves make no music, they merely package and sell it) shows how crazy the whole discussion has gotten. Can we please remember the lowly musician?

Fundamentally musicans make music because they love music. They don't do it for the fame, for the limo or the huge paycheck (though I grant some do). Musicians make music because they are crazy about music.

I believe that the Internet has the potential for us to rediscover musicians who make music, music for themselves, their friends, their local community but most of all music for people to listen to and enjoy. Musicians with a passion for the music in itself. But this potential is being criminalised as the labels and their cronies see their massive revenues slipping away. Lets face facts record labels are the most conservative, non-innovative and staid organisations known to man. They *buy* talent in, and most of all they buy it cheaply, often through one-sided contracts, usually underpaying by substantial amounts - you only have to look at the countless court cases surrounding record contracts.

Musicans need to innovate and need people to listen to their music, and the normalising effects of the record industry merely serve to homogenise and standardise music into need easily digestable packages. This is the problem - the record labels have gotten bigger than the musicians and consequently they now try to mass-produce them. This is a pathetic attempt to continue to cash in on their cash-cows and suppress innovation and creativity.

I hope people will continue to experiment with downloading and trying out new music, and yeah hopefully some method will be developed to help musicians get paid when you want to buy it. But the record labels have grown fat and lazy and have become part of the problem.

I believe Open Music initiatives (like Creative Commons, EFF, LOCA public license etc) are the way forward to get exciting new sounds and musical movements underway. I look forward to seeing what musicians the world over can create in this new medium.

I would be very interested in hearing what Janis thinks of these Open Music licenses.

David

locarecords.com

Whatever storage, processing, memory you have you can never have enough. I used to write tracks that fitted on floppy disks (from the sampler and computer). Now they don't fit on CD-R anymore and I even give DVD-R a run for its money sometimes.

Basically as you realise you can so something (ie use a whole 48Mb track to record just the hihat say) you push it more. I think that is a good thing as it means less compromise on silly techy issues and better sounding music.

Computers are at last getting big enough to handle things without the pathetic error of not enough disk storage to perform that operation.

I say roll-on the 1 Terrabyte DVD!!!

(Well so long as the write rates go up, DVD-Rx2 is a little on the slow side)

locarecords.com

The future lies not with the majors. Lets face it they are clueless, conservative and have absolutely no idea about innovation, whether in music or technology.

Many of the smaller labels are now experimenting with Open Media licenses as this allows them not only to release music without all the IP problems that the legal system has created but more importantly if the band are into it they are for the music, rather than the huge cheque. The can only be good for music.

We at LOCA and others are committed to releasing music that you can rip onto anything you like. Sure try it first and if you like it hopefully you'll buy a CD (or maybe a download if its cheap enough).

Trying to strangle innovation will fail. And result in staid music and no exciting new sounds. So try to support indie labels and give majors a wide berth.

Locarecords.com

Seems a bit useless to me. Much cooler if it projected onto the glasses so that you could get a cool 3-d image to supplement our normal vision. Who would need television or monitors then?

Also combined with the cool no-hands eye typing (see http://www.economist.com) that would be a wicked HCI system.

LOCA

We are currently experimenting with an OpenMedia policy in our record label to try to break more musicians and also to let the music be free. No idea how it will go but would really appreciate support and comment from Slashdotters...

locarecords.com

O'Reilly displays a naive and weak understanding of the relationship between the technical and political spheres in modern society. He seems to believe that the Open Source Movement would be better off leaving the sphere of politics well alone. And unfortunately this policy of burying your head in the sand is one which seems endemic across the Open Source Movement, the majority of which seem to think that if they leave politics alone, politics will return the favour.

All I can suggest is that you read your history. Politics is in the habit of listening to those with the deepest pockets and this time it will not be any different. Multinational copyright owners, proprietory software companies and the Entertainment Industies have a lot riding on the tightening of control of intellectual property and they are not likely to just roll over and accept the dangers of Open Source to their control technologies (ie DeCSS et al).

You really need to think very carefully about what is actually happening here, we are not just looking at purely technical solutions to technical problems. Unfortunately life just ain't that simple. We are looking at big dollar signs seeking to maximise revenue through the enforcement of copyright and patent control assisted by law and technology. And in doing so they are threatening our freedom to use information because if they own it, you can't use it. Or at least not if you can't pay for it.

The foundations of our democratic states are built on the freedom of information to quote, reuse, critique and debate in a public sphere free from the control of private interests. Public goods need to be worked out in an arena where deliberation can be carried out and ideas freely exchanged.

The beauty of the Open Source movement is its commitment to open exchange, as Lessig terms it a cultural commons, where nobody owns or controls these public goods. Not just code, everything, literature, music, writings, speeches, essays, paintings all these things need to be reused and re-interpreted for our culture to remain vibrant and innovative.

Laws are there to protect and demark boundaries, and the state is there to enforce them. Crucially the decisions as to which Laws we should have are should be debated by all of us, that *includes* the Open Source movement. Without having a voice (whether radical or otherwise) no-one to hear what we have to say.

So I say more politicisation of the Open Source Movement, let it wake up and realise that its very existence requires that it move into politics and start contesting issues that it doesn't agree with. The Open Source movement needs to grow up and realise nobody else will hold its hand.

If that requires Law to protect Open Source from the very real threats that corporate interests make to it then SO BE IT. But these decisions and subsequent laws should be enacted after deliberation and debate with all sides putting their case in an open and democratic way, and it is up to us to put the strongest case forward for the Open Source movement.

David
http://www.locarecords.com

Re: Geek Activism

I was moved to reply to your recent article on Geek Activism on CNET due to what I consider to be the dangerous political naivety of the piece. Advocating that people should step back from challenging the political and legal system in favour of computer programming is the most ignorant and ineffectual suggestion I can possibly imagine. Allowing the decisions of others to be made without debate or contestation in a political arena results in poor decisions being made, unrepresentative political systems and at worst the danger of a minority imposing their views on the rest of us. Do you really believe that people programming at computer keyboards can change the world? That is the simplistic utopian belief that technology can somehow free us without recourse to the political system. I would suggest you look carefully at the recent case of the prosecution of the Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen for his role in creating DeCSS software (and under the pressure of the US government no less), see digitalagora.com for more info.

Black Civil Rights activists, the Women's movement, Anti-war protesters, and even geeks have to actually get up (and well away from the computer keyboard) to force change and fight for a more equitable political system. I agree that email on its own may be ineffectual, but creating lobbying websites, educating people and writing to political leaders, lobbying companies, newspapers and magazines all contribute to a debate that can have profound effect on the decisions of politicians.

The ability of individuals to obtain and read facts free from licenses, coercive copyright restrictions, corporate censorship (maintained by the use of copyright law) and other attempts to control information, reduces people's ability to obtain information and make up their own mind. The space where people can read and communicate with others, which includes the Internet but is not limited to it, is a public sphere, a space of public deliberation, it is vital to the maintenance of a modern democratic state and this is being slowly eroded.

We should be encouraging people to take part in this political debate to set policy with regard to technology and fight to widen access to information and indeed to technology itself.

Regards

David Berry david@locarecords.com

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