Publish
license your musicCreative Commons helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can't do with your work. If you already have a website loaded with your own work, follow the steps below, otherwise try one of our guides to publishing your licensed work at a variety of hosting services.
Do you have your own web site?
You can choose a Creative Commons License to apply to your works:
Standard License
License your song under your terms. Our set of standard licenses will let you share music with fans while protecting your song from limits you put in place.Or, choose a prepared license for audio works:
Sampling
People can take and transform pieces of your work for any purpose other than advertising, which is prohibited. Copying and distribution of the entire work is also prohibited.
Share Music
This license is aimed at the musician that wants to spread their music on web and filesharing networks legally for fans to download and share, while protecting the music from commercial use or remixing of any kind.Need a Place to Publish your audio?
Here are some places that will host your work for free with Creative Commons licenses:
Features
Featured artists, tools, and works
Ottmar Liebert
Nov 2005 Ottmar Liebert composes, performs and records music in a Nouveau Flamenco style, which mixes elements of flamenco with jazz, bossa nova, and other genres. Seven of his albums have gone platinum and two other albums gold; he has also been nominated for a Grammy. Ottmar provides some of his music under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus license.
Fading Ways
Mar 2005 We recently spoke to Neil Leyton, a musician and a founder/director of Fading Ways, about the label's background and its experience of applying Creative Commons' licenses to its music.
Magnatune
Jan 2005 Magnatune provides "Internet music without the guilt." Based in Berkeley, California, Magnatune is a record label with a 21st Century business model, offering consumers a unique mix of free and paid music. One of the first for-profit companies to adopt Creative Commons' copyright licenses into its strategy, Magnatune has amassed both an impressive buzz and a large artist roster. We recently spoke with Magnatune founder and CEO John Buckman about the music company's progress and plans, and how going "some rights reserved" can boost the bottom line.
DJ Spooky and Roger McGuinn interviews
Sept 2004 Creative Commons speaks with two prominent artist-musicians whose work demonstrates the value of the public domain in inspiring new creative content. DJ Spooky creates new works by remixing content he finds in the public domain. Roger McGuinn performs traditional folk songs from the public domain and releases the new recordings under a CC license.
Wall Street Journal on the Sampling Licenses
Jan 2004 For some people, the future of copyright law is here, and it looks a lot like Gilberto Gil. The Brazilian singer-songwriter plans to release a groundbreaking CD this winter, which will include three of his biggest hits from the 1970s. It isn't the content of the disc that makes it so novel, though — it's the copyright notice that will accompany it.
People Like Us/Vicki Bennett
Sept 2003 It starts with an unsettling assortment of pops and fizzes, then introduces an acoustic guitar sample under a sweet, vaguely familiar melody. By the time the rousing German chorus breaks in, you don't know whether to feel mildly disturbed, smile serenely, or burst out laughing. In her ten solo albums and regular live performances (including Creative Commons' launch party), Bennett has made this sort of odd juxtaposition her signature.
Oyez' Jerry Goldman
Jun 2003 Jerry Goldman is determined to archive every recorded oral argument and bench statement in the Supreme Court since 1955, when the Court began to tape-record its public proceedings. Goldman, a professor of political science at Northwestern, founded the OYEZ Project in 1989 "to create and share a complete and authoritative archive of Supreme Court audio."
Opsound's Sal Randolph
Mar 2003 Meet Sal Randolph, the New York-based artist behind Opsound, a new online record label that has adopted the concepts of open source and copyleft and adapted them to music production. Opsound invites musicians to contribute sounds to a "sound pool" licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.
Independent Musicians
Jan 2003 These unsigned musicians have embraced the Internet, thorns and all. We caught up with them to talk about their thoughts on how tough it is to make it in music today, what they love about using the Internet to get their music out, what worries them, and how they plan to use Creative Commons licences for their work.
