I’m a site owner and I know there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Hypothetically… if I was the brains behind ccMixter I could imagine paying a few hundred dollars for hosting and bandwidth for a year or two. Maybe a little more if I had a lot of spare cash and a love of music (well the second is a given…).

But what’s the long term plan/business model?

If you don’t mind me asking, that is :-)

ccMixter and the open source code base it runs on (ccHost) is sponsored by Creative Commons a copyright activist not-for-profit. From the ccHost wiki:

"The goal of this project is to spread media content that is licensed under Creative Commons throughout the web in much the same way that weblogs spread CC licensed text. ccHost is web-based infrastructure that may be used to host and allow for commenting, remixing, and distribution globally. The more installations of ccHost and its variations, the more content there will be available for enjoyment and artistic re-use in a sane and legal setting."

VS

Quote: ccMixter and the open source code base it runs on (ccHost) is sponsored by Creative Commons a copyright activist not-for-profit. From the ccHost wiki:

"The goal of this project is to spread media content that is licensed under Creative Commons throughout the web in much the same way that weblogs spread CC licensed text. ccHost is web-based infrastructure that may be used to host and allow for commenting, remixing, and distribution globally. The more installations of ccHost and its variations, the more content there will be available for enjoyment and artistic re-use in a sane and legal setting."

VS

and that is why we love ccmixter! happy valentines day.
we are all making ART here, simply because of this unique approach to sharing the love. my personal views here may vary slightly from others on this site when it comes to sampling, but the CC addresses some really interesting issues.

peace.

Quote: my personal views here may vary slightly from others on this site when it comes to sampling

perhaps less variation than you think ;)

Is this to say that the long-term "business goal" is to keep things pretty much the same? I sort-of hope so. Since ccMixter is a branch of the non-profit Creative Commons, it seems to me there wouldn’t be any future plans for cut-throat mergers and aquisitions, just growth of the amount of flexibly-licensed "content" (I hate that word!!) it features. But it’s not a "free lunch"…I believe even well-intentioned people have been so conditioned to think sharing creative works equals "piracy" that the concept behind ccMixter gets lost on them. They can donate to the Creative Commons if it eases their guilt, though that’s not why I do it! ;)