VJ Heaven

Summer days and evenings for a lot of us are a perfect time for buying new records, listening to new mixes, exploring new sounds and samples and production techniques. And yes, while pundits worry about the failing value of music, I personally manage to stock up on free downloads and wind up overspending my budget on records, too. It’s good to be an enthusiast.

Here’s just the latest of what’s hit my inbox, for your enjoyment.

Moby recalls the 90s in his “old-school rave mix” for our friends over at XLR8R. It’s good, clean fun, a musical beach book perfect for a retro-tinged, rave-recalling holiday weekend here in the US.

Percussion Lab is a source of endless, fantastic musical mixes, so it’s hard to know whether to begin. For an Atlanta-style take on what summer is about, Sorted prepares an electro/club-style mix. Concept Audio’s Scafolder goes on a headier, ambient-er journey called “Rain Man,” tinged with pianos and Idhren and Lusine textures – good stuff, as well. And if it’s techno you want, that’s covered, too. Check out the full set lineup on Percussion Lab’s immaculately-designed site.

If certain shirtless werewolfs are starting to make you feel like you need to hit the gym, there’s good news. After Australia decided to hike fitness class music licensing by a whopping 1500%, the good folks at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog prepared a nicely-curated set of Creative Commons-licensed, indie music from Dan Deacon to Mochipet. It’s nice listening, too, perhaps as much of a cure to bad music allergies at the gym as it is bad licensing policy.

Speaking of the Free Music Archive, if you’re in the mood for something a little synthy and dreamy, there’s an excellent mix by Tori y Moi live on dublab.

From Spain, various sonic goodies. Want to catch up on what you missed at SONAR? BBC has a graphical, clickable map of all the artists. Need a little dancefloor-friendly techno, and want it from a high-quality netlabel founder? Thomas Raukamp notes the latest work from Madrid-based Dessben and his Offaudio netlabel, and celebrates their move to SoundCloud.

Downloads for Producers

So, that’s some good poolside barbecue and workout fodder for you… but what if you’re looking for tracks to inspire your producer side? (Working on tracks can be a great way to cool off.)

Ambienteer, whose excellent work I covered last month, has been experimenting with contact mics. Learn about how he made music with an electric toothbrush and plastic wrap and hear the results:
Ambienteer blog

Explore some nice new ambient and minimal tracks from East Peoria, USA-based John Koch-Northrup.

SoundCloud has become a hive of free and Creative Commons-licensed samples, from musical tidbits to hardware and software. You could use it to grab new content and decide whether you really need ElecTribe on an iPad, all at the same time. (Make friends! Grab samples!)

SoundCloud themselves have a nice guide to what’s out there – a badly-needed reference, given that SoundCloud has become so busy, it can be downright overwhelming to the uninitiated.
Sample time! [SoundCloud blog]

Via groups and users, there are full, oddball sample collections, like this pool:

Sample Collections / Instruments / Loops

And there are artists like the wonderful Tim Exile, who live samples his crowds at his shows and uses SoundCloud to gather snippets from fans in advance of gigs. I think it’s my favorite set of this post; have a listen to some of his interactive, sample-generated work:

2006 – Tim Exile’s Nuisance Gabbaret Lounge by timexile

What are you listening to / sampling this weekend? Let us know in comments.

And since far be it from me to be accused of saying all music wants to be free, I hope to follow up soon with albums worth buying this summer. Nominations open … now.

Have a great weekend, and happy 4th of July, USA. (Hey, England’s over it, too — the Queen is visiting my neighborhood this week, celebrating the long history of the English here in NYC, and the great ties between our countries.)

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An ASCAP fundraising letter revealed last week that the American performing rights organization is invoking fears of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Creative Commons in order to raise money. ASCAP appears to be repeating, now in the more heated language of fundraising, arguments it has had with the Creative Commons license in the past. For its part, Creative Commons insists most of its licenses don’t preclude performing rights bodies like ASCAP from collecting funds.

In the letter, sent on behalf of their Legislative Fund for the Arts, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) argues to its members that that these organizations undermine the value of music:

Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote “Copyleft” in order to undermine our “Copyright.” They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth in these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.

This is why your help now is vital. We fear that our opponents are influencing Congress against the interests of music creators. If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services. We all know what will happen next: the music will dry up, and the ultimate loser will be the music consumer.

Attacks on Creative Commons by ASCAP are nothing new. The organization argued in a 2007 essay (and subsequent report) that elements of the license, which is applied to copyrighted works, meant “artists should give up all or some of their rights.” As noted in a rebuttal by Creative Commons’ Laurence Lessig, some of those claims were incorrect. Among other items, ASCAP said that the “licenses ask creators to waive the ability to collect royalties,” which isn’t true of the non-commercial CC licenses.

The claims in the fundraising letter were more bluntly inaccurate. Creative Commons’ licenses are all built on copyright, and as non-exclusive licenses, they do not in any way prevent artists from being paid for music. They don’t even, as the organization observed three years ago, preclude ASCAP license collection – at least not on works licensed with the non-commercial provision.

Creative Commons licenses do reserve fewer rights for the creator, by definition. All the licenses currently in use include provisions to allow works to be freely distributed via peer-to-peer file services, and depending on the license chosen, may open up other possibilities for use and remixing. But nowhere does the letter acknowledge that an artist must choose to license their work; unlike Copyright, CC licenses are not automatic, nor is the CC organization advocating that they should be. Creative Commons spokespeople have previously told CDM that they aren’t even suggesting that CC licenses are the right choice for everyone in every circumstance. As advocates of their own license, on the other hand, they have explicitly said that their hope is that the license will help artists make money, not that all music “should be free.”

The blog ZeroPaid covered the initial controversy and criticized ASCAP’s take on Creative Commons as an attack on creator choice:

Creative Commons is a middle-of-the-road approach when it comes to copyright and enables creators to tell consumers, in plain language, what they can and cannot do with their content. In short, it’s an option for artists. Any attack on Creative Commons is an attack on an artists right to choose what they feel is appropriate for their chosen distribution channel.

ASCAP Declares War on Free Culture

Creative Commons responded on the same site:
Creative Commons Responds to ASCAP

Additional coverage:
ASCAP Claiming That Creative Commons Must Be Stopped; Apparently They Don’t Actually Believe In Artist Freedom [Techdirt]

ArtsJournal blog Mind the Gap observes that the fictional characters on Glee are in conflict with current US Copyright Law, and expresses surprise that the black-and-white claims of ASCAP’s fundraising letter would target the EFF, Creative Commons, and Public Knowledge. He asks if any card-carrying, royalty check-cashing ASCAP members would share how they feel, and they do – largely to express frustration with ASCAP.
The Right Balance on Copying [Mind the Gap]

ASCAP membership dues can go toward advocacy; only the ASCAP Foundation is a 501c3 charitable organization; the latter supports education and talent development. I’m curious, then, what royalty-check cashing ASCAP members think of these issues, as well.

Thanks to Jason Phoenix for the tip, and incidentally to my friend Mike Rugnetta, whom I was surprised to see pop up in the stories. (Internet: population, one dozen?)

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