What is free music?
Free music is the attempt to transfer the principles of to new areas: first of all musical compositions, including lyrics, secondly music recordings, and thirdly music videos. There are two ways how to answer what free music is –
- a) with a clear definition based on legal issues, and
- b) by naming things typical of the free software culture.
Contents
Definition
The term is closely based on the GNU Free Software Definition (short: FSD) and the Debian Free Software Guidelines (short: DFSG). The initiative freedomdefined.org has generalized the concept of free software to be applied to all areas and speaks of “free cultural goods”.
- Examples of free software include well known software products such as GNU/Linux, Apache, MySQL, Gimp, and Firefox.
- Examples of free cultural goods include cultural enrichments like Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap.
In this sense, free music is music that everybody has the right
- to use for any purpose,
- to study,
- to improve, and
- to pass around.
Implementation
Under the copyright laws, the author of a work owns the “exclusive rights” to a work. Basicly, this means that only he is allowed to copy, distribute, perform and change the work. This makes the music non-free for other people. However, there are two ways in which music can still be free:
- a) by not being “protected” anymore, or
- b) if the copyright holder gives permission to everybody.
Public Domain
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License
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Differentiation
A musical work is not free music, if the license does not allow changes to it, because by definition, everybody is allowed to improve free music and to change it for his needs. Music is also not free, if its license does not allow commercial use, as such a restriction would prevent the music from being used for any purpose. If a license only partially fulfills all the requirements, works under it are called “semi-free music”.
If a piece of music is neither in the Public Domain nor under a free or semi-free music license, it is completely non-free.
Attention must be given to make sure that all the songs on this wiki get proper licensing information attached to them. It should become clear to other users, why this particular work is free – under what license it is or which year the author died. Pieces with no such indication and pieces under Creative Commons Non-Commercial (NC) or No-derivative (ND) or other semi-free or non-free licenses will be deleted.
