[cc-community] CC license for download music

Ed Pybus ed at slrecords.net
Sun Jun 1 12:29:45 EDT 2008


Hi,

Thanks for those replies - just to give a bit more info. I'm new to CC 
but am looking for away to make tracks that I've released available for 
free on-line from our website partly since they're mostly available via 
bit-torrent etc anyway and partly as a promotional tool for both the 
website and the bands involved. And i say it's better to have people 
listen to the music for free than not listen to it at all.

It is an important distinction between the 'song' and the recording. 
Usually the band have licensed a recording of a track to me (the label). 
I can then exploit those recordings (selling CDs, downloads etc) but I 
have to pay a fee to the songwriters.

So I now have the recordings which I can exploit so could license them 
under a CC license but I don't have the rights to license the song under 
a CC license since I have no rights on the song just the recordings. 
There doesn't seem to be CC license that I can use that makes this clear 
to people who are downloading the song.

Another related question is about the songwriting fee I have to pay - if 
I'm pressing a CD I need to buy a MCPS license (I'm in the UK) even if 
I'm giving the CD away for free, for downloads via a download site they 
take the MCPS fee off at source, and it's a percentage of the price 
paid. But what if I give a track away for free? There's no license I can 
buy for that and since download MCPS is a percentage of the download 
price it would appear that I wouldn't have to pay a fee, but I guess 
that's slightly outside the realms of CC

Cheers

Ed


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