Guide to independent electronic music that's free on the web

What is "copyleft?" The opposite of copyright, as explained by Richard Stallman. Where copyright protects a creator's right to control copies and changes to a work, copyleft protects a user's right to copy and change a work.

A license that allows free re-use and modification of creative work so long as the derivative work remains available on the same terms. Copyleft – formally known as the “General Public License,” or GPL – was initiated by computer programmer Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. By protecting the creativity and energy of the commons from private appropriation, the GPL has made free software and open source software possible. A related set of licenses for other types of creative works has been devised by the Creative Commons.

Open Licensing explanations – creative commons

The Creative Commons License refers to the name of several copyright licenses released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a US nonprofit corporation founded in 2001 .

These licenses all grant certain baseline rights, such as the right to distribute the copyrighted work on file sharing networks. The copyright holder has the option of specifying certain extra conditions:

* Attribution (by): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only if they give you credit.
* Noncommercial (nc): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.
* No Derivative Works (nd): Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.
* Share Alike (sa): Permit others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Guide to net labels
A netlabel, also called online label, web label or mp3 label, distributes its music in digital audio formats (mainly MP3 or Ogg ) online. Netlabels often work like traditional record labels to produce and promote music projects (such as albums or compilations ). Most employ guerrilla marketing to promote their work. Few netlabels earn money for participants.

The primary difference between netlabels and record labels is that netlabels emphasize free downloads, as opposed to physical publishing (CD, vinyl or DVD ). Often, the music is released under licenses that encourage sharing, such as the Creative Commons Licenses . Artists typically retain the copyright to their own work, unlike traditional labels.

WHERE TO FIND COPYLEFT MUSIC

These record labels sponsor bands whose works are available under free-use/creative commons license. That means that if you alter their work, and release it as your own- all you have to do is allow your own work to be altered too!!

* Magnatunes (http://www.magnatunes.com/) Internet Music Without the Guilt. Magnatune, the open music record label. Electronic Music Catalog.
* Archive.org (http://www.archive.org/) They archive various internet sites, audio, and some video. Open Source Audio. Netlabels.
* Disquiet (http://actlab.tv/www.disquiet.com) Ambient/Electronica Recommended free web listening for each day of the week.
* Netlabels Catalog (http://www.netlabels.org/) The Catalog is a list, index, directory of music labels which offer you free downloads from their pages.
* Phlow Music Player (http://phlow.de/netaudio/phlow_music_player/) Within this web label audio streamer, you can choose between top 10 charts from several different "Net Audio" sites, as well as a variety of full-length mix sets. You can download their standalone for player for both Windows and Macintosh.
* Opsound: Open Sound Recordings (http://www.opsound.com/) Opsound is a record label and sound pool using an open source, copyleft model, an experiment in practical gift economics, and a laboratory for new ways of releasing music.
* Goingware: (http://www.goingware.com/tips/legal-downloads.html) Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.

Copyright laws explanation
A copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted by the government for a limited time to regulate the particular form, way or manner in which an idea or information is expressed. Copyright may subsist in a wide range of creative or artistics forms or "works," including literary works, movies, musical works, sound recordings, paintings, photographs, software, and industrial designs. Copyright is a type of intellectual property .

Copyright law only covers the particular form or manner in which ideas or information have been manifested, and is not designed or intended to cover the actual concepts, facts, styles or techniques which may be embodied in or represented by the ideas or information. This allows for appropriation, or the borrowing of ideas, between works of art within the same field.

MP3 ENCODING - These are 2 common forms of MP3 audio:

(1)- variable bit rate (VBR) encoded MP3s are generally smaller than standard MP3s of the same sound quality. And they generally sound better, especially in the high frequencies. Complex sections of the song (like those with thick bass, or a particularly sharp note from the violin) need a higher quality encoding than other more simple sections. When you choose an average bit rate for an MP3 file of 128k, parts of the song will actually sound like (and display) higher points of say 160, or 192kbps. During some of the more simple spots of the song (especially moments of complete silence, or those only with words), your MP3 will encode itself at lower quality of 32k or 64k. Your ears can't tell the difference, I promise! If you decide that even during the most-simple parts of a track, you don't want the encoding strength dipping below XXXbps, then you make that selection within the configuration screen in Audacity.

What are the major advantages of VBR encoded MP3 files?
- VBR encoded MP3s are generally smaller than standard MP3s of the same sound quality and generally sound better, especially in the high frequencies.
- Also, it's great for spoken word audio as there are often pauses and silence between sentences.
- Taken from http://www.free-codecs.com/

(2)- constant bit rate (CBR) encoding uses a consistent quality level throughout the length of the MP3 file. It is the standard default setting for most CD ripping software. While it may seem as though CBR encoding is the way to go for a solid encoding job, it's actually just a waste of space. Slower and older systems may not be capable of encoding VBR files at a high speed. If time is a huge concern for you than CBR may be viable. If you are concerned about your hard drive filling up with MP3s quickly, then VBR is for you.

OGG ENCODING Ogg Vorbis is an open-source standard which remains royalty and patent-free. That means anyone can put Ogg support in a

FLAC ENCODING is the best

CDex - CDex is an open-source solution which also offers enough advanced options for converting between formats to satisfy the serious digital music fan. It can be used for extracting audio from CDs, we asll as perform conversion functions between different audio music.

Using CDex to copy music from CD to your computer Here is a concise guide to using CDex for ripping MP3s from CDs. The screenshots are nice.

Here are some guides that will help you. Some are simple, some are more complex..

Radified Guide to Ripping CD audio & MP3 encoding: If you've ever downloaded MP3s from the original Napster [now shut down by the courts], or one of the other file-sharing services, and found that those songs sounded like crap, it's because the people who encoded those MP3s didn't know the ripping & encoding mojo you'll learn here. [No, 128-kbps is not CD-quality.]

Audacity is an open-source multitrack audio editor for Windows, Linux and Mac. Ease of use is one of Audacity's key features. It can be used to make recordings.
You can use Audacity on several different platforms including Macintosh, Windows, and Linux, as seen below.

*You should write e-mails to any record label or promotional group that may be interested in your station. Sometimes it takes a lot to impress a business enough to send you free stuff, but sometimes it doesn't! You should try and contact those who fit your station's profile, in whatever genre you choose.