Open Source Music

By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on March 10, 2008 at 11:03 am

Pity the poor executives of the recording industry! It's a medium which owes its very existence to technology. But it's also a medium which has had its business model tortured beyond recognition by technology.

NIN

Consider the recent release of the album "Ghosts I – IV" by Nine Inch Nails (NIN). It's available in a variety of formats and price points:

All of this music has been released under the "Creative Commons" license, which is a kind of open-source license that Cory Doctorow uses to publish his novels, for example. This means you can freely reuse and remix the tracks to your heart’s content, so long as you acknowledge NIN.

All of the tracks are instrumental, there are no lyrics on the songs. The studio tracks are just begging for musicians to recycle them, and use them as a basis for their own work.

It’s like NIN has developed "Ghosts" to be analogous to an operating system kernel like Linux or Solaris. It's basic artistic technology. You can use it to build up your own derivative work or alter it at will for your own purposes. But unlike the Linux GPL license or Solaris CDDL, there is no separate "source code" which has to be "copyleft" when you create a derivative work.

NIN has basically left the mainstream record label economic system and are forging a new landscape of offerings and price points. Is open source the future of the recording industry?

Yesterday I downloaded the $5 version of the tracks. I remember back in the late 90s that NIN supplied the music for the PC first-person shooter game "Quake". It's minor-key industrial rock with arc welding buzz saw distortion and lone piano tinklings. I predict that a lot of very angsty songs will derive from these open source operating system bits.

Edited to Add: I comment more on the music itself on my personal blog, davestewart.livejournal.com

Categories: Gaming, Open Source

Comments (8)

March 10, 2008 6:14 PM PDT

Josh Bancroft (Intel)
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Brown Belt
 Love this album, and absolutely applaud NIN for taking a risk and trying a new model. It seems to be working for them!

In fact, I wasn't even that much of a fan, but I decided to pay the $5 for the full download (I got mine from AmazonMP3 since the NIN site was hammered), just to show my support. But I listened to the songs, and I love them. And now I DO consider myself a fan.

if you're in the music industry and reading this, re-read that last paragraph carefully. There are MILLIONS of people like me out there. Don't sue us. Figure out how to give what we want, and we'll happily give you money! :-)
March 11, 2008 4:55 PM PDT

pureluck
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Green Belt
 I remember Quake! In fact that is a great leaping off point. I really believe that this distribution model really lends itself to the moding community that will cultivating a) the next great game and b) the next brilliant programmer (see: John Carmack reincarnated). Bigtime kudos to NIN for leading the way. Will this model be sustainable for up-and-coming artists? Probably not. But it also may catapult them into what would otherwise be untouched media---gaming.
March 11, 2008 6:26 PM PDT


Dave Stewart		 Up and coming artists who can't get a deal with a label are forced to distribute their music open source. If one of them can achieve a hit based on the open source model, we may be looking at a whole new ballgame.
March 12, 2008 7:36 AM PDT


Rick (Vectorpedia)		 I will be very interested to see how this type of music distribution will change if any the entire music industry.
March 12, 2008 9:27 AM PDT

pureluck
Total Points:
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Green Belt
 Dave, very true. I guess it takes a bit of reshaping what an up-and-coming's goals could and maybe even should be.
March 18, 2008 5:26 PM PDT


Sharon Greenfield		 I'm part of an email list called Pho that talks about the digital world and music nonstop, and of the things I took away from a recent list conversation was the fact that NIN, actually Trent Reznor, working with an artist named Saul Williams also tried to release an album online only with the pay-what-you-like/free model. (Which was first utilized by the artist Jane Siberry and then recently done to fantastic success by Radiohead.) Anyways, this small artist Saul Williams did not have very good sales according to the numbers someone posted. So I wonder if this model is only good for artists that have already made a name for themselves, that have a cachet of sorts.
March 18, 2008 5:49 PM PDT

David Stewart (Intel)
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Black Belt
 Sharon - I remember that comment in the NY Times review of "Ghosts". Maybe the reality is that we are moving from a simple business model for music into a whole portfolio of models, dependent on the nature of the group, the music, the marketing strategy, etc. This has to make it even more challenging to run a business, but it is probably great for consumers!
December 12, 2008 3:40 PM PST


state shirt		 As a musician that has recently embraced open source music, I can offer the opinion that it can work. Even with all of my music easily available for free, I've had decent sales of my new album.

I've also seen a lot of traffic by people downloading the music for free. I'm fine with that, since I encourage the sharing of my music with others that might like it. Maybe I'm lucky enough to have some of those people come back to my site and buy something to show their support.

Or then again maybe I'm missing out on millions of dollars selling shiny plastic discs. :)

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