Creative Commons Explained

A brief introduction
The Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation dedicated to finding alternatives to rigid copyright, with the intention of creating a legal framework that allows sharing of information.
The Creative Commons provides artists with several Creative Commons licenses to use when they publish their works. The idea is that artists can choose what rights to grant or retain on their creations.
In contrast, copyright is rigid and not flexible, giving artists no such freedom.


What type of Creative Commons license does BeatPick.com use?
BeatPick chooses to use the Attribution-NonCommercial- Sharealike 2.5.

Why does BeatPick.com use this type of Creative Commons license?
We help people use your music for their non commercial projects for free. Again it improves your chances of getting noticed and earn a living with your music. We have seen a few non commercial projects become successes in terms of popularity and critique: a good example is our artist Tobor Experimentcollaborating with Hfr-lab for an audio/video installation at the onedotzero festival. Another of our artists, Autobam, recently collaborated with visual artist Quayola and went on to win the MTVbloom contest. Another interactive artist used our music as a background on a video for an installation he created: the video topped 400,000 profile views on youtube and has our name and the name of the musician associated with it. This video launched as non commercial and became commercial afterwards as British Airways was involved.

It helps us promote your music with podcasters, web radios and music reviewing blogs.

Are there any famous artists releasing music under the Creative Commons?
World famous artists such as Beasty Boys, Chuck D, Byrne, Gilberto Gil and Spoon have shown they appreciate and support the Creative Commons by participating in the release of 750,000 copies of a Wired CD. And as Britt Daniel, front man of Spoon, put it: It appeals to me that somebody could possibly take a song and use parts of it to make it into something else.... It is just creatively interesting to me.... And I do think that eventually the reins that record labels currently hold will be cut. That does not mean there should not be record labels, but I do think that artists should own their own recordings.