[LAU] place to share and give away music?

Matthew Smith matt at smiffytech.com
Mon Nov 3 17:42:42 EST 2008


Quoth Roberto Gordo Saez at 2008-11-04 08:38...

> If you really want to avoid that others make money with it, then you
> want the "NonCommercial" option. AFAIK this would also forbid all
> other commercial usages (like placing your music in a blog that
> has google ads).

I can fully understand why people automatically say "no commercial."  I 
think that it's an ingrained reaction that comes from an ancient 
business culture that everything that we make must be sold, not given 
away; this is because we just can't comprehend that there is any way we 
could make money otherwise.

Giving things away but not wanting commercial use comes down to this: 
not wanting someone else to make money when we are not.

However, there is a new business culture arising - especially in regards 
to software - where we don't charge for things, nor do we prevent others 
from doing so.  So how do we still make money?  We do so by selling 
services.  I'll give you this piece of software for free, then you can 
pay me $5000 a year to look after it for you.

I'm not entirely sure how this would work in the music industry, but 
that's how it works with software.  I see no reason why something 
similar couldn't work with music.

The one thing that is constant with the "giving things away" business 
model - irrespective of what we are giving away is this:  publicity.

Attribution is the key to the whole thing.  Whilst we may not receive a 
cent/penny/centi-euro when someone else packages and sells on our 
music/software/etc., what we ARE getting is exposure.  The more people 
that get to see/hear/etc what we have done, the greater the chance that 
people will start saying "this is great, we want more of this!"  And 
that's when - we hope - they will come to us and we will have an 
opportunity to sell them something.  That something may be a contract to 
customise our piece of software, it may be a record deal.

If, however, we have placed restrictive licensing terms (like no 
commercial) on our work, it may be passed over by those who could 
otherwise give our careers a boost, never see the light of day, and 
never make us any money anyway.

Hope this makes sense!

Cheers

M

-- 
Matthew Smith
Smiffytech - Technology Consulting & Web Application Development
Business: http://www.smiffytech.com/
Personal: http://www.smiffysplace.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/smiffy



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