complete press contact list for creative commons

[Eric Steuer <eric AT creativecommons.org>]

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Attachment: cc_owl_pr.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Creative Commons and Owl Multimedia Introduce the World’s First “True  
Music Search Engine”

10,444 Tracks Available Under Creative Commons License Searchable by  
Sound Via Collections From Magnatune and ccMixter

San Francisco, CA, USA and New York, NY, USA — December 6, 1006

Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that provides flexible  
copyright licenses for authors and artists, and Owl Multimedia Inc.,  
a leading music search technology firm, today announced the launch of  
Owl Music Search, a revolutionary music search engine that enables  
Internet users to discover new music using sound similarity instead  
of traditional text-based queries. The first-of-its-kind music search  
engine is the initial offering of a collaborative alliance forged  
between the two companies to develop and deliver a range of  
innovative music services to the Creative Commons community and the  
Internet at large.

The search engine, developed by Owl Multimedia, whose tagline is  
“finding music through music™,” enables music lovers to discover  
thousands of tracks released under Creative Commons licenses by  
comparing the sounds of songs they own with the sounds of thousands  
of new songs. It is available on Creative Commons’ website by  
visiting http://search.creativecommons.org.

Owl Multimedia and Creative Commons share the vision that the open  
exchange of musical works is integral to the creative process and to  
the growth of culture itself. By enabling search without text, the  
companies hope to increase access to music outside of the mainstream  
and facilitate the legal sharing and reuse of music.

“Our aim is not only to increase the sum of raw source material  
online, but also to make access to that material cheaper and easier,”  
said Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons founder and CEO. “We hope that  
the ease of use introduced by Owl Music Search will further reduce  
barriers to creativity. Owl’s innovations in music search and  
discovery make them the logical choice for us to work with to realize  
this vision.”

There are currently over 300,000 tracks by independent and emerging  
artists that are released under Creative Commons licenses and hosted  
on sites like Magnatune, a “try before you buy” digital music store;  
ccMixter, a music remixing community; Jamendo, a free and legal music  
sharing community; and others. Owl Music Search aims to provide  
access to all of these tracks while eliminating the need to know what  
or who you’re looking for.

“Over the past decade, search engines like Google and Yahoo! changed  
the way people interacted with text-based information, but these  
systems have barely scratched the surface of what is possible in the  
music space,” said Frank Geshwind, CTO of Owl Multimedia. “This  
collaboration represents a giant leap forward for music search and  
discovery.”

While most existing Internet music search engines rely on text-based  
associations to generate results, Owl Music Search looks “inside the  
music” to extract hundreds of acoustic features and create a digital  
description which can then be matched against other descriptions,  
providing a higher degree of accuracy and granularity in its results.

Geshwind continued, “Our technology paired with Creative Commons’  
commitment to the open sharing of creative works will bring greater  
opportunity to artists whether they are looking to distribute and  
share their work or looking to remix, reuse, and build upon the work  
of others.”

Owl’s intuitive search interface makes discovering music as simple as  
opening a file. Using the site’s browser-based application, which  
includes a built-in media player, a user can open a song, pinpoint a  
region of interest, and then search for tracks containing similar  
sounds. Owl’s search engine uses sophisticated acoustic analysis,  
audio description and similarity algorithms to create and compare  
digital descriptions of thousands of tracks, and return similar  
sounding songs.

The results returned to the browser can be further refined by the  
user, using filters on other attributes such as artist, album, genre,  
year, and Creative Commons license. Users can preview the results,  
get additional information about them, and optionally purchase or  
download copies of the tracks. The site also offers community-based  
features, such as tagging, which help train the company’s comparison  
algorithms.

“Music is an international language, but the language used to  
describe music is not. It is much simpler to search for and discover  
music with music than by recalling and typing complex search terms,”  
said Todd Carter, CEO and co-founder of Owl Multimedia. Owl Music  
Search is the first major innovation in the world of music search  
since the advent of the search engine. Web searches will no longer  
have to rely on text that may or may not be attached to a given song  
file.

“Owl Music Search will change the way consumers look for music  
online, enabling the next-generation of online music. Owl Music  
Search truly allows consumers to hear a great variety of music that  
matches their musical tastes,” added Carter.

About Owl Multimedia

Owl Multimedia, Inc. is a privately held company and was founded in  
2005. Owl's mission is to build the world’s largest online index of  
music and other content and make this information available to anyone  
with an Internet connection. Owl’s automated “finding music through  
music™” search technology helps people obtain nearly instant access  
to music from this vast online index. Owl's main office is located  
419 Lafayette St. 2nd floor New York, NY 10003. For general  
information, visit http://www.owlmm.com.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001,  
that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works— 
whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licences  
provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors,  
artists, and educators that build upon the "all rights reserved"  
concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights  
reserved" approach. It is sustained by the generous support of  
various organizations including the John D. and Catherine T.  
MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation, and  
the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public. For  
general information, visit http://creativecommons.org.

Contact

David Furfero
Creative Director, Owl Multimedia
press AT owlmm.com

Eric Steuer
Creative Director, Creative Commons
eric AT creativecommons.org

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit