With Creative Commons, at least ad-free sites know that they’re absolutely on the right side of the law, because they can easily read their rights from the human readable version of the licence.

You can also use Creative Commons to allow commercial usage – it’s up to the copyright owner.

So with Creative Commons, copyright holders can be more explicit about the usage they’re happy with, and if they decide to prohibit commercial usage (as is normal), licences can be obtained through the usual channels (MCPS/PPL etc).

Here at River Rat Records (shameless plug) we’re kinda smug about setting some trends.. nice to see Robin sticking to his guns about CC, and hopefully others will join in too.

It’s perhaps worth adding – using Creative Commons licences doesn’t necessarily mean you have to publish your work on free download sites like Jamendo. You can choose to do that, if you’re interested in reaching some people that probably would never have bought the record anyway.. but Creative Commons doesn’t necessarily equal free (of cost) music.

James.