Virtual Newsletter about Software Freedom

November 26, 2024

Freedom in the Musical World
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Last article, I talked about how non-free content is (sometimes) okay,
but only without Digital Restrictions Management.
I went over the topic of music.
In this article, I want to talk more about freedom and music.

Musicians want money, don't they?
Well, by freeing your music, you can't make money.

Or can you?

I was reading about selling free software,
and I saw something. (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee)

So, I was thinking,
why couldn't artists just use a CC BY (or CC BY SA) license and still sell the music?

Sure, it will be shared, but there will be credits.
If there is a mention, then the artist would gain popularity!
But with non-free music, you cannot share the songs, so less people will know about you.
How come artists make non-free music then?

For example, NCS. NCS is a library of songs that you can use without permission,
kind of like CC BY ND/NC but with a little more restrictions.
NCS is one of my favorite libraries. Most of my music in my playlist is from NCS.

On the other side, is NewGrounds. Newgrounds has many levels of copyright,
even just plain old fair use,
but none are as permissive as NCS. Please don't use Newgrounds, it's a haven for non-free content.

Anyway, free music will be a thing sooner or later.
NCS walked, so freedom could run.

- NexusSfan

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Copyright (c) 2024 NexusSfan
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
A copy of the license is included at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
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