Thursday, June 9, 2005

More From Ottmar Liebert on Licensing New License. I discovered Creative Commons a couple of years ago. At the time the albums on my SSRI-label were manufactured and distributed by Higher Octave Music/EMI - In the Arms of Love (2002) and The Santa Fe Sessions (2003) - and I was not able to use a CC-license. In 2004 I switched the manufacturing and distribution of new SSRI albums to 33rd Street Records and discovered that 33rd Street president Morty Wiggins is a supporter of Creative Commons. Recently I read a wonderful book called Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama. And while it is my favorite book on Zen practice, it was the title that especially engaged me. You see, I think as a society, a country, even a world, we seem to be making a tight fist right now. We keep looking for greater security. We buy cars that look like tanks. We extend copyright to last much longer than the average lifetime. Safety and security seem to be the main concern. We are willing to give up freedoms, as long as we are assured that we are going to be safer without those freedoms. It seems to me that making our music available with a CC Sampling+/1.0 license means we are opening our hands. The fist turns into an open hand. A gesture. Meaningless perhaps, in view of all that is happening in the world right now, but the biggest gesture we as artists can give. So, without further ado, we are now happy to announce that all of the music released by SSRI in the form of CDs or downloaded from SSRI's Listening Lounge will as of now be governed by the Sampling+/1.0 license from Creative Commons. All new product will show the Sampling+/1.0 logo. This license will also be in effect retro-actively for all CDs of Ottmar Liebert's La Semana and Jon Gagan's Transit purchased in the past. The Sampling+/1.0 license cannot be applied to any songs purchased through the iTunes store or any other web-download store. It can also not be applied to any album that was released prior to 2004. Here are the features of the Sampling+/1.0 license: Customers are free: - to sample, mash-up, or otherwise creatively transform this work for commercial or noncommercial purposes - to perform, display, and distribute copies of this whole work for noncommercial purposes, e.g. file-sharing or noncommercial webcasting Under the following conditions: - they must give the original author credit - they may not use this work to advertise or promote anything but the work they created from it - for any reuse or distribution, they must make clear to others the license terms of this work By (Ottmar). [Ottmar Liebert] 9:18:37 PM

Ottmar Liebert News - Listening Lounge New Listening Lounge. The SSRI Music Downloads Store, called Listening Lounge will enable web visitors to browse an extensive collection of downloadable music for instant credit card purchase. The pricing scheme will be similar to that of the iTunes music store - $1 for a single song, $10 for a whole album, but our customers will have the opportunity to download music at much higher quality, even uncompressed. In addition to that all of our music files will be without DRM or copy-protection. When purchasing certain albums, customers will have the option of downloading a PDF for printing out accompanying liner notes and/or CD jewel case art. While the store's initial offerings will be limited to music from SSRI's catalog, i.e. Ottmar Liebert and Jon Gagan, the site will be designed so that other artists can be represented as well. The Listening Lounge will also offer an extensive catalog of Live recordings of Ottmar Liebert + Luna Negra concerts. Features: - All music available from the Listening Lounge will be sold with a Sampling+/1.0 license from Creative Commons. That means customers are free: - to sample, mash-up, or otherwise creatively transform this work for commercial (!) or noncommercial purposes - to perform, display, and distribute copies of this whole work for noncommercial purposes, e.g. file-sharing or noncommercial webcasting/podcasting Under the following conditions: - they must give the original author credit - they may not use this work to advertise or promote anything but the work they created from it - for any reuse or distribution, they must make clear to others the license terms of this work We are also asking every person who creates new works using samples/loops/sections of our music to log their use at http://ottmarliebert.com/samplelog. We are sharing our music, and we would love to hear the results. - Visitors can browse the collection, listen to previews of songs, and add songs or albums to the shopping cart before logging in. Music collection can be browsed by album, artist, genre, release date, or song title. - When viewing an album, album art is displayed as well as a link for downloading a PDF for making your own CD liner notes / back. - Visitors can add individual songs to their shopping cart for $1 each, or whole albums for the album price of $10. - Once songs or albums have been purchased they are included in the registrant's music library (downloads) page for at least six months. All songs can be downloaded as 128, 192, 256, or 320 kbps MP3s. Some songs will also have the option to be downloaded as a raw 16-bit 44khz AIFF. We have never seen a store like this, offering high quality and DRM-free files in conjunction with a CC Sampling license. This is the kind of store we ourselves would love... so we are building it for you. We hope to go online in July. Watch this space for further announcements. By (Ottmar). [Ottmar Liebert] 9:10:14 PM

Fresh Air White Stripes on Terry Gross' Fresh Air. Listen to Meg and Jack get interviewed by Terry Gross, NPR style. [donewaiting.com :: music commentary] 9:04:46 PM

Lulop2 Lulop2: internet news gathering platform. Lulop is a brokerage for professional videos, for sale to TV networks. Lulop2 is its "Internet news gathering" platform. Lulop2 hosts 2500 video titles. For anyone dreaming about creating a marketplace for the exchange of online video footage, it's worth a close look. [Television Archiving] [Cinema Minima: Personal Digital Cinema. News service for movie makers] 7:09:40 PM

Stickers Liebe GGK [6]. Stickers. By the late Manfred Schwarzer. [The Cartoonist] 6:59:42 PM