Over the last few weeks I've been spending time researching music distribution. In particular I'm interested in the legalities of sharing MP3 music files and podcasts. Fortunately the people at Creative Commons have done most of the hard work for me. They've created a group of licenses which are specifically designed to handle the sharing of digital content across the globe. They have all sorts of variations which include simply sharing MP3 files for private listening, releasing content into the public domain, and allowing your music to be used for commercial purposes while you still get the credit for it. These licenses can be applied to physical CD's too.
For the Crystal Dreams project I chose the Attribution License. This gives everyone the right to share and/or remix any episode for commercial or non-commercial purposes provided that they acknowledge me as the author. That's a perfect choice because one of the main goals of the project is to make people aware of the ambient/new age music that I've been working on.
What do I mean by sharing? That covers things like giving your friends copies of the MP3 files from the podcast, burning CD's of the podcast to give friends/family/customers, and putting copies of the files on your web site. If you wanted to include an episode in your podcast or film/video then that's covered too. You can even sell episodes on CD to your clients if you want. Maximum flexibility for YOU provided you mention ME :)
So please so go ahead and share the Crystal Dreams Podcast with everyone. Probably the easiest way to do that is to subscribe via iTunes and then use its built in CD burning functionality. If you're not happy with an iTunes generated cover then you can download the Official Crystal Dreams CD Cover from here which has all the necessary acknowledgments ready to go.
Happy "legal and guilt free" sharing.
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