Can There Be Open Source Music?

Lemeowski writes "Cygnus Solutions co-founder Michael Tiemann takes an in-depth look at whether music can truly ever be open source. Leaning on his personal experiences of trying to convince the market that a company that provided commercial support for free software could be successful, Tiemann argues that similar to how 'the future of software was actually waiting for the fuller participation of users ... so, too, is the future of the art of music.' In his essay, Tiemann makes a case for open source music, from licensing for quality recordings to sheet music with notes from the original composer in an easy-to-reuse format, and he offers ways to get involved in making music open source." Apropos open source music, reader rDouglass adds a link to the Open Goldberg Variations project, last mentioned on Slashdot in 2012.

Comments

Don't steal instruments from MOD files.

[Rod Beauvex]

Make your own. :D

Yes, but

[Russ1642]

You'll only hear the cool intro, without the bass line because that's still in development, and only the first two verses are written. There should be some updates by the end of the year but we're not promising anything. The drum track is done with crappy open-source drum software but we're totally gonna get someone to record it for real as soon as we scrape together $50 to pay a drooler, I mean drummer. If you complain about the missing parts you'll just get yelled at for not making it yourself by teaching yourself to play the guitar.

Re:Yes, but

[asylumx]

This all true, but I still can't resist the ability to take crappy country songs and fork them into acid rock...

Re:Yes.

[oodaloop]

It has been around for approximately forever.

...rounded up to the nearest whole eternity.

Re:Of course there can.

[fustakrakich]

Anything that slows the distribution of Sonny Bono's music can't be all bad...