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Publish ccMixter-Music (e.g. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube ...)

floatzero
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permalink   Wed, Jan 26, 2022 @ 6:46 AM
Hi there,

i have been registered at ccMixter for a relatively long time and have created and published a small number of remixes here. Over time, however, I have refrained from doing so - and the reason for this is the completely opaque legal situation regarding the use of the material published here and the complete lack of legally secure how-tos.

Let’s start:

1. I remixed the song “Sunrise” by “Shannon Hurley” when there was a contest here. At that time Shannon was not very popular. To me, a remix contest implies the consent of the original artist to have third parties edit and change his work. In the meantime, the stems have disappeared from the platform here and the remixes created fill storage space on some storages without ever reaching a wider public. Meanwhile Shannon is comparatively popular and it’s almost impossible for me as a hobby musician to keep track of which rights I need and from whom I get them if I want to publish my remix of her song - and it’s not about depriving her of royalties (you can configure split-pay).

2. I remixed two pellas of “Snowflake” (This Winter, Miracles) and acquired the extended licenses. I’ve been wanting to release the songs for a long time - however, I’m having a hard time with this as well. I’m happy to share the revenue with Snowflake, ccMixter and ArtisTech Medie - but I don’t know from the abstract license document if I’m allowed to publish the tracks on platforms like Spotify, YouTube & Co. and especially not how to publish them 100% legally secure (esp. which credits belong to whom - this is namely only clear regarding vocals and music - but not regarding producer & co.)

Wouldn’t it be a worthwhile goal to a) open a legally secure way for all members of ccMixter to license their material and b) publish legally secure instructions for at least the most important aggregators like TuneCore, DistroKid, RepostNetwork etc., so that these annoying takedowns become rarer and also “non-professionals” are enabled to publish their works and above all to give the participants a fair share in a possible success?

That must be possible. But no matter where you search and ask, you get only gibberish and reference to lawyers & Co. - yes my goodness: Why not a crowdfunding campaign to create such a How-To and the licensing conditions for ccMixter, which all must accept, so that a legally secure music of Stems and Pellas is possible…

Or does all this already exist and I’m just too stupid to find it?
Apoxode
admin
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permalink   Thu, Jan 27, 2022 @ 7:53 AM
Hi floatzero,

Thank you for the taking the time to reach out to us about the license issues you’re dealing with. I suspect that there are hundreds of people (if not more) with similar questions that don’t reach out, so we can’t help them.

I must preface this response by saying I’m not a lawyer, and nothing more than a ccMixter enthusiast (not an admin or any kind of authority), so what I say is mostly conjecture tempered with experience.

You’re asking some important fundamental questions about Creative Commons in general as it concerns streaming services that monetize user generated content. There is no quick answer to them, but it is essential to continue this discussion as it is crucial to understanding how to protect IP created with CC material. In other words, there’s a lot to talk about.

First, in my research of CC-BY licenses through the Creative Commons website, I found that the license someone claims for their work is still valid even if they delete it from the source — they can’t undo it once it’s distributed as long as it was a valid license to begin with. As far as Shannon Hurley’s “Sunrise” goes, I don’t know what the license was, but this can be determined from the metadata if an mp3 was downloaded directly, as opposed to in a zip. ccMixter adds all that info when it’s submitted but only in separated mp3s. If you follow the terms of the license, you can distribute them, and in some cases, make money off of them if the license gives you permission.

Second, the extended license (ccPlus) you’re talking about with Snowflake is separate from Creative Commons and ccMixter, and it all depends on what the extended license allows. Without knowing what you got to know for sure, it most likely means you can make money off of it without having to share royalties, and at least be able to distribute it. Snowflake herself is the person to ask since she owns ArtIsTech Media.

Third, it is most likely good you hesitated to publish your work, since you can register it with the Copyright Office - as long as you list the source material in the Exceptions part of the form, you will have even more protection when you want to make money off of it.

The big question, I think, has to do with take-downs since the whole point to ccMixter is to collaborate and take our work outside to at least get noticed. Fortunately, I haven’t run into take-downs myself (yet) but I have heard enough about them to be worried. It is important to note that when the tables are turned, they are the only way to protect you when it comes to Creative Commons material, because otherwise you have a ton of people saying the IP is theirs, even your stuff. I know this first-hand because I have been part of the team that researches where stuff is stolen from and how the licenses are disrespected to prepare a take-down on places like iTunes and Amazon.

The Achilles’ heel of Creative Commons is getting distribution sites not affiliated with CC to understand what licenses certain content has before issuing a take-down, as well as individuals who most likely don’t know the difference between CC-BY and CC-BY-NC. Like if I make a song with someone’s vocals that are CC-BY, and someone else uses those vocals, I can’t have their song taken down, but there are people that do that anyways. So if YouTube would just reach out to someone before giving them a take-down and find out where they got their vocals or backing track, then they could see it’s okay for more than one person to use it.

With regards to your goal, one possible solution I thought of is to have the option here of requesting a registration of original content with all of the streaming platforms before it gets distributed and remixed. It would require a moderator reviewing it and sourcing everything from the vocals to every last bit of sound so that they could say unequivocally that it’s legitimate before getting that next level of protection. If I’m not mistaken, there are soundbots on places like YouTube that compare archived material with submitted material to make it easier to spot infringement, so having something cleared in advance would stop that right away.

The most frustrating part, in my opinion, is that Creative Commons seemed to be a solution to the craziness of the music industry at the time, before YouTube and streaming came to town.

Thanks for taking the time to read my response. I hope you respond and keep this discussion going as it is vital that we all figure out how to protect our stuff before people give up en masse.

Kind regards,
Apoxode
 
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permalink   floatzero Thu, Jan 27, 2022 @ 8:49 AM
Quote: Apoxode
You’re asking some important fundamental questions about Creative Commons in general as it concerns streaming services that monetize user generated content. There is no quick answer to them, but it is essential to continue this discussion as it is crucial to understanding how to protect IP created with CC material. In other words, there’s a lot to talk about.


Hi,

thank you for your reply and the points you elaborated on. For my part, there is no doubt whatsoever that artists deserve both recognition through proper attribution and, at least in my opinion, a share in the potential success of a work commensurate with their contribution. That is only fair.

Unfortunately, the music business is extremely complicated and the legal situation even more so. At the same time, there is little active help - even from aggregators. For example, RepostNetwork (my new aggregator, after I got quite annoyed with DistroKid) offers quite extensive options to name the individual contributors to a work and to make a split-pay. But how to fill that out concretely in practice then to satisfy everyone…. That is such a big black box. Hobbyists have a particularly hard time, since they usually can’t simply consult a legal department or otherwise have staff to sort out these complex details. Even if you really mean well, you can get a lot wrong.

Hmm… Maybe it would even be something if at some point ccMixter enters into a cooperation with an aggregator and then you can publish directly via ccMixter - and in a way that all parties are satisfied. But maybe I’m imagining it too easy….

In fact, it’s worth to look further into the topic. Because in the end it’s about a lot. If you have to make a living from your work, you have an existential interest that someone doesn’t simply acquire your work, monetize it and you are left out in the cold - on the other hand, hobbyists (like me) simply enjoy not only hoarding their music on their own computer or at best on ccMixter or Soundcloud, but also making it available to a wider audience via Spotify and iTunes… And then, unfortunately, that’s always monetization - there’s no alternative to that with these platforms.

And then there is the ideal of the “Creative Commons”, which I appreciate very much - but which unfortunately also makes things more complicated on the other side (at least today).

Let’s try to bring this to a simple formula - maybe this is also a starting point for solution attempts. Maybe we all think too complicated and maybe the problem lies elsewhere - in my opinion, you have already circled this quite well with your explanations about YouTube…

You can perhaps grasp the core problem like this:

The worldwide distribution channels don’t know or ignore the concept of a non-commercial release of creative works. Consequently, the best approach would be a dialogue with the major platform operators to make non-commercial distribution channels available.

In extreme cases, this could mean that certain works on Spotify, iTunes & Co. cannot generate any revenue at all and cannot be subjected to direct or indirect commercial use in any other way. That sounds quite ambitious - but it seems to me to be the best approach.

Kind regards,

Floatzero
 
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permalink   Apoxode Thu, Feb 3, 2022 @ 7:12 AM
Hi again, Floatzero

I was hoping that other users would join in the discussion, and didn’t want to immediately respond as it would take your name away from the forums overview.

I am stymied as far as how a system could be developed that protects Creative Commons licenses on not only YouTube and all present-day streaming services, but on any new ways of listening/purchasing music that will be developed in the future. Another aspect that needs to be addressed is physical media and how the terms of a license can be fulfilled when something is taken off line — best practices rely heavily on hyperlinks and internet access. Speaking of which, what happens when dead links are encountered either because of people deleting their material or if hosting sites go down? — All the material used in a remix tree is no longer attributed if the information can’t be accessed.

I respect your philosophy of splitting profits with artists that use CC-BY, but I want to clarify something: Are you saying that if you remixed someone who released their material under CC-BY and your remix was successful, that you would independently reach out to them in order to pay them what you thought was a fair share?

I have always thought there is an enormous opportunity for aspiring law firms to take up Creative Commons license enforcement, but I’m not sure where the money would come from, since it would maybe have to be pro bono. Lawyers know how to get the attention of streaming services and online sellers!

Kind regards,
Apoxode
 
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permalink   floatzero Thu, Feb 3, 2022 @ 8:03 AM
Hi again, Apoxode,

I don’t think that I as a remixer can objectively decide how much a fair contribution of contributors has to be. However, it is important to me that those artists who contribute to a shared success also get their share of the fruits of that success, if that is currently the only way to release works outside of the rather small CC ecosystem.

Simply thought, there would have to be a way for artists to state the conditions already when providing their material and/or it would have to be possible to make proposals to them in a very low-threshold way, which they can accept, respond with a counter-proposal or reject.

The problem I see here is that this approach is rather far away from the idea of CC licenses and tends more towards a “trading place”.

Moreover, this would only be a crutch to compensate for the lack of “compatibility” of the business models in the music and streaming industry. In my view, it would be better to create non-commercial distribution channels or to find ways to implement non-commercial releases on the major platforms.

Regardless of all this, it would already be a start if for every CC release the artist had to specify exactly how the attribution should be done - so that it can be taken over error-free and exactly as the artist has in mind. Currently ccMixter is unfortunately (largely) unusable in this respect. This is even more true if an artist uses works of other artists again - there arise dependency trees that are difficult or impossible to handle legally (at least for hobbyists without a PhD in media law).

Kind regards,

Floatzero