Free Music from Moby

Moby has released some of his music for free (as in free beer) on his website, or on a special site www. mobygratis.com.  Here's the man imself explaining it...

He actually first did this months ago (here he is promoting it in an older, slightly rougher, self made Youtube clip) but is still promoting it. The sign up is a little fiddly and he has a few stipulations (one one on "no violence" is a little weirds from the man who remixed the James Bond theme and gave music to Heat and the Bourne Trilogy) but I guess he means real acts of violence rather than fictional fight scenes.

No charge as long as the film is non-commercial/independent/not-for-profit, and you'll ave to buy the rights should your film ever actually make any money. These generally seem to be odd pieces of musical noodling (no he's not giving away "Natural Blues") and unfinished bits of tracks. I guess this s an atonement of sorts for letting the entire Play album be licensed to advertisers. But still, it's good of him and part of a growing trend for musicians to allow fans access to their music (see also Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails giving away re-mixable versions of their music).

Free music?

One big issue for no-budget film production is music. The usual habit is to simply pick your own favourite tracks and copyright be damned. It's ethically dubious, as well as illegal, and limits distribution and exhibition opportunities. It's also creatively rather lazy.

There are two options:o ne is the growing movement of Creative Commons. This is music (as well as software, video, literary works, photographs, etc) that is release with a licence similar in concept to the BSD or GNU licenses that open source software is released under. It offers a range of licensing options the work. For example you may be able to distribute the work as long as you credit the author, or as long as the work is not for profit. Be careful, because some licenses demand (just like open source software licenses) that if you use the work you are compelled to offer your work under a similar licence - i.e. you must make your work freely available for others to use and transform in their own work (as long as THEY in turn release that work under the same license. So there are restrictions and you should be very careful that the license is going to work for you. (for example you may make a film that gets picked up for distribution, under an exclusive license that is incompatible with creative commons, and you're back to square one)

Then there is public domain music. Laws differ from country to country. In the UK country it generally means music by a composer more than 70 years dead, and if its recorded, a recording more than 50 years old. However there are people releasing music directly into the public domain, such as on the site www.musopen.com. They have a growing archive of music where the copyrights on compositions have lapsed, but are new, and often good quality recordings, by volunteers who have voluntarily relinquished their rights to the music. It is therefore truly free music., You don't have to pay for it and you're not limited. The original performers have no say or control over how you use the music and how you profit from it, they're not entitled to any royalties or even a credit, (though they do ask for a credit out of courtesy, and you'd have to be a total wanker not to give it to them).

It seems to good to be true. There's no real downside, though one should point out that the quality of (the recordings and performances) varies, much of it is excellent but there's the odd cough or chair scraping in some of the live recordings. It's also limited to pre-Twentieth Century or early Twentieth century classical music.

Also, a small caveat in the US constitution mean that any work produced by an American government agency is also in the public domain. So for example your scathing documentary on the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq could be scored with a performance of an American Air Force band performing Gustav Holst's "Mars" from The Planet Suite!