Category: .

The comments on my license on my own music post turned into a lively conversation about Creative Commons licensing.

Mike Linksvayer commented that the Share-Alike license, which requires a downloader or remixer to themself allow redistribution and remixing, allows inclusion of a SA work into a collective work which is not as a whole also under a Share-Alike license. For example, my releases on this blog could be incorporated into commercial CDs and forbid redistribution or remixing of the CD as a whole. This is important because the requirement that reusers are bound by the same commitment as the original creator is the main defensive feature of this license.

And gurdonark had this to say about the Share-Alike license:

While most CC licenses seem to me relatively straightforward and issue-free, the [Share-Alike] designation and its accompanying license gives me the most pause about whether it will require a court to interpret how its intricacies work.

I agree with gurdonark that there is a lot of complexity lurking under the surface of the SA license, but I feel confident that it strikes the best balance between promoting my creations and defending me from exploitation. So what if my track on a compilation CD is the only one under the same license? This helps me and hurts the others; I profit at their expense by using this license.

People With Ideas blog (from the Cruxy guys) on my videoblog soundtrack post:

Writing and recording music for podcasts and videoblogs is an emerging opportunity for musicians that can generate publicity, reach new audiences, and, down the road, opportunity for revenue from royalties, sponsorships, and advertising.

With Cruxy, anyone can release their works for sale under a Creative Commons license to allow others to re-use them in a legal, fair, and managed way. The creator always maintains control of the media and the specifics of how and when it can be used, while still allowing for their own creativity to grow and live beyond just the original work. Its all about “being involved in the thread”, as Lucas put it.

1 Bit Audio Player : A JavaScript-inserted Flash MP3 player for WordPress blogs and other websites

1 Bit Audio Player is a very simple and lightweight Adobe Flash MP3 player with automatic JavaScript insertion. It’s main purpose is to act as a quick in-page preview for audio files you link to from your website or blog.

The player can be easily installed as a WordPress plugin or used stand-alone in any website. Small audio players will than automatically appear next to any MP3s you link to.

This is a variation on the del.icio.us PlayTagger in concept but not code, with the new feature that you can exlcude some MP3 links from 1 Bit by setting the ‘include only class’ or ‘exclude class’ options to CSS classes that you have set on your tags.

Design Observer: writings about design & culture

Are JPEGs the New Album Covers?

Black to Comm “Levitation/Astoria.” 7” Lathe-Cut Picture Disc, design by Marc Richter and Renate Nikolaus. Dekorder Records.

Over the past few months I’ve been researching a book about current record cover art. Besides hunting down examples of stimulating music graphics, I’ve also been looking for digital alternatives to the traditional album cover.

The person who posted about Play Twitter in a language I couldn’t identify — it turned out to be Persian (the language of Iran), rather than Arabic — stopped back in the comments on my Audio afspelen in Twitter post and left this note:

hi.i am persian blogger & twitterer!! and now jaiku-er !! your blog is very beauty and in my mind it,s very similar to tumblr.com

list of iranian twitter : twitter.com/mhmazidi
list of iranian jaiku-er! :mhmazidi.jaiku.com

I have created a Greasemonkey-based version of Play Twitter which will run automatically.  This frees you from having to invoke a bookmarklet.  It works on Jaiku as well as Twitter.

To use it, see the documentation on the Play Twitter home page.

Erno Hannink has done an excellent overview of Play Twitter in Dutch, much better than my original.

Audio afspelen in Twitter – Play Twitter at Enthousiasmeren:

Play Twitter is een handig hulpmiddel waarmee je eenvoudig mp3 files direct kunt afspelen in Twitter.

As a follow-up, he has tested out Play Twitter at the Twitter clone Jaiku and confirmed that it works fine.

Courtesy of the trackbacks on my blog entry, I know that there also exists a blog entry on Play Twitter in either Persian or Arabic. Sorry, I don’t have the chops to say which.