A Creative Commons License Is The Ultimate Music Promotion Tool
January 14, 2009 
Author 
In The Future Buzz is not just a place where I help marketers, bloggers and PR professionals spread buzz online. I also help artists, photographers and creative people do the same. In fact, if you read between the lines, much of the advice I write on spreading ideas can be applied to anything you’d like to successfully share.
I don’t mention often that when I’m not blogging or helping companies achieve their goals online, in my free time I write music.
Previously I tried to sell my music on online mp3 shops and CDs – with mixed results (it’s difficult being an unknown artist). I sold a few copies – but eventually came to a realization I would rather have my music reach more ears as the money I was making was worth far less than the joy of being able to share it with others. Soon after that, I released my latest album along with a few of my older works under a creative commons license.
My goal with art shifted to purely enjoying the process, and I didn’t even worry about promoting it, I just uploaded it. And believe it or not, that’s when the real magic started to happen.
Every so often someone stumbles-upon my art through a link or a friend, and it reaches more ears. A creative commons license encourages people to share your art through BitTorrent or whatever file sharing they want – with attribution. They’re free to burn copies, listen on iPods – whatever they want. All that is required is you keep the attribution and don’t profit from it.
With all of that said, I will give a piece of piece of advice I hope you’ll listen to if you’re any kind of artist that can put their work into a digital format: put as much of out under creative commons as you can. It is the most powerful promotion tool I’ve come across in nearly a decade of making music.
If I was a completely unknown artist and trying to make a living off my art today, I would do all of the following:
- Release (at least) an album’s worth of material under creative commons license.
- Put all of it available for download on one easy page with subscription options to receive future updates and links to purchase more of my music (iTunes, Beatport, MySpace – wherever it is you’re selling it digitally).
- Send links to the page to a few music bloggers telling them what you’re doing (they will be happy to share it with their readers as music bloggers love to find new artists – they will actually be buzzed you found their music blog).
- Find people making creative videos on YouTube and offer them some original music to pair with their video.
- Share your music personally with people you interact with in social media.
- Use all of this to build a fan base of 1,000 dedicated fans…then follow Kevin Kelly’s advice on having them support my art.
- Not even think about monetizing until you have reached critical mass with awareness and demand for your music.
It is totally realistic to do all of this. It’s simple, it will get your name out there, and move you closer to the day you can create art for a living.
I am not just saying this as a marketing blogger - I actually will show you just a few quick tangible examples of how real the results can be by releasing your art under a creative commons license:
- A few weeks ago, a local South Florida blogger, Mike Fruchter, was interested in meeting me for lunch as we had been speaking on and off via Twitter, FriendFeed and email about social media and related topics and wanted to sit down to meet face to face. I had noticed Mike was interested in some artists I also liked via his lifestream on FriendFeed, so I figured I would give him one of my CDs and see what he thought. What was amazing was Mike enjoyed my music enough to share it with the infamous Louis Gray, who actually wrote about my art on his popular blog.
- My music was linked on a popular electronic music blog when I put one of my albums out under a creative commons license.
- People on Twitter have asked me to supply them with original music for their videos.
- More than 5,000 people have downloaded my creative commons albums from my server, and I encourage them to share it throughout the social web and throughout file sharing services legally. There’s no way to track how much my music has been shared peer to peer, but I do get emails every so often from random people telling me they enjoy it (which is always great to hear).
- Someone made a profile page for me on last.FM – just discovered that today, neat.
- Someone made a music video for one of my remixes where a space vixen is on the run from evil killer robots (yes, seriously).
- My music has been featured on many web radio stations which can’t play RIAA music
- Recently a blogger asked if they could use some of my music to intro their podcast (and I’m working on doing something original for them)
- 20,000+ people have visited my MySpace music page and 15,000 of them have stuck around to sample my art.
These are just some examples of how the web has been a huge enabler for my art to reach new people. For all but the last example, none of this would be possible without putting music out under a CC license. Also keep in mind, I’m not out there actively pitching myself or pushing my music, all I do is write it and upload. Imagine if I came up with ways to creatively market it – the possibilities are endless.
If you’re reading this blog, you already know the power of creative commons, as you probably notice I use Flickr CC images frequently here (see my stunning images post for a good sample). Many of the producers of those images have literally hundreds of thousands of views for their art on Flickr, and perhaps millions when spread across the web.
Bottom line?
We hear so much about how social media can help artists – well, nearly every fan I have is from message boards/forums, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Without those things, I probably wouldn’t have any fans other than those who vaguely remember me from when I used to play gigs in college.
If you’re an independent artist or freelancer/content producer of any type, you can’t afford to miss the awesome power of setting your art free via creative commons. This is the great equalizer for democratizing art. I see the incredible potential when I witness just a few samples of what people have done with my stuff – and I’m a totally unknown artist.
When you put creative work into the magic of social media and let others use it to build upon for their own art or just share it with their readers/friends, everyone wins.
Related posts from The Future Buzz:
Social Media And Artists – A Natural Fit
21 Reasons You Should Make Art
For Music And News Industries, Power Is Now With The People
Related posts from around the web
Time For Journalists To Take A Lesson From (Smart) Musicians (Techdirt)
The best selling MP3 album of the year was free (The Long Tail)
Lawerence Lessig’s Blog on Creative Commons (his whole blog is related)
pascal bouvier replied | Jan 14, 2009 (1 comment)
great post adam. to me it is all about creating more value than you capture, either in business or personal endeavors. i know little about the music industry and indie artists. i do suspect that cc, social media and social networks are recreating distribution channels. production platforms and costs have already been revolutionized/democratized. once the distribution channels are completely rethought and used on a wide scale, i am sure new revenue models will emerge to reward artists. again great post!
lonelypond replied | Jan 14, 2009 (18 comments)
excellent letting life drive creativity blog post — I had a great time putting together an election ad parody using photos available under Creative Commons — nice to get a spark of inspiration from other people’s art
Catching The Waves replied | Jan 14, 2009 (1 comment)
It’s a remarkable paradox that free music can make money. Creative Commons licences enable musicians to have fun, get feedback and make money while retaining control over their art. Your post should be required reading for music students who are thinking of making a career out of their passion; it should also be sent to established and/or struggling musicians who need a fillip. Musicians need all the help they can get.
CC music has rejuvenated my love of music and inspired me to start my amateurish blog, Catching The Waves, and direct netaudio fans to other, much better sites that promote the burgeoning netlabel scene. I’ve heard wonderful albums, discovered fascinating musicians and explored new genres because of the generosity and foresight of CC-licensed musicians. Over the last year, I have paid for music or sent donations to musicians that would otherwise have remained unknown to me; CC music is a wonderful combination of the “long tail” theory and the aforementioned paradox.
What’s better: making music that nobody hears because records labels won’t give you a deal or releasing a free album and getting your album heard across the world? The best publicity is always word of mouth. Make it easy for people to hear your music and send it to their friends and you might start to receive a few emails from new fans – some of whom might want to flash the cash. :)
Babs replied | Jan 21, 2009 (1 comment)
Last.fm…. and if you upload music in Last.fm and join my group – http://www.last.fm/group/Central+Point%3A+where+artists+and+listeners+meet – I will add you to the radios and help get you more listeners. I encourage shameless self-promotion (not allowed elsewhere in Last.fm) so you can update us with your news as often as you like.
Mind Booster Noori replied | Jan 22, 2009 (1 comment)
Well, you don’t actually need 1000 dedicated fans – for anything, really. Do you need them for what? The reasoning behind that “magic number” is… money – you don’t need them to record an album nor release it, you don’t need them to make gigs. You need them to get money, but why wait for the 1000 number, and don’t start getting money from the beggining? There are tons of ways you can monetize a free (CC) album:
put it up on a place that will give you donations/ads revenue: reverbnation and last.fm are mandatory, if you have a “full album” in CC you should also try Jamendo
make your fans fund your next albums, via crowdfunding (in a site like SellABand or EqualDreams…)
See? You don’t need 1000 dedicated fans not a critical mass with awareness to make money. Of course, the more fans you have the more money you’ll make, so try to spread like a virus, and CC is awesome for that.
I’ve been doing that with my musical project, and it’s working great for me.
radionowhere replied | Jan 22, 2009 (1 comment)
Adam, thanks for taking the time to let us know how CC licensing has helped you promote your music – in such clear and concise terms. So many Music 2.0 evangelists are passionate about CC and social media, but not real strong on details and specifics. Your post reads almost like a to-do list- very helpful!
Finally, for anyone who’s not already familiar with him, Jonathan Coulton is a case study on leveraging CC licensed music to create a viable music career. Use the Google to check him out.
Marjan Lang replied | Jan 22, 2009 (1 comment)
Jamendo is a great way to expose your music under CC. However, artists need to figure out that point where they’ve given away enough free music to create a large enough following that they can actually start making some money. This is where they should be utilizing their social networks, and incorporating such Web 2.0 tools like Audiolife to finally monetize off their hard work.
Dan-O replied | Jun 4, 2009 (1 comment)
I offer all my music royalty free, for free under creative commons too. I simply can not believe the massive amount of exposure, particularly on YouTube videos that this has given me. Like you, nobody knew about my music before.
Adam Singer replied | Jun 4, 2009 (597 comments)
@Dan-0 – that’s fantastic, yes the web is truly awesome for artists large and small.
Marvin Kanarek replied | Aug 28, 2009 (1 comment)
Hey Adam, interesting article. I have actually started “bittorrenting” my work lately,to get the “word” out there and have offered free downloads on my site with one that I affixed a CC license to. Out of curiosity,what type of license did you affix to your album? Is there a way to affix a single CC license to an entire album?……..great blog you have here, it’s now on my favourites menu.
all the best…peace for ’09 and beyond
Sean Woodward replied | Oct 1, 2009 (1 comment)
Great article with useful detail. I realised a trilogy of CC albums (as Gothick) following in the footsteps (and huge shadow) of Trent Reznor. It’s been a very positive experience. I was very interested in your experience of involving amateur video makers as I have a December deadline looming for a track which requires a video for a compilation DVD release – if you (or your readers) could offer any info for finding video makers I would be grateful.
P.S go grab my free albums via gothick.co.UK
Greg Surges replied | Oct 2, 2009 (1 comment)
I use a lot of open-source software in the creation of my music, and the CC licenses just fit well with that ethic. It’s a great way to get your music out there, my recent releases have had over 1300 downloads and been linked to by places as diverse as Hungary and Bolivia, as well as the Duke University Libraries.
Since When Are Bloggers Not Writers? replied | Jan 26, 2010 (22 comments)
[...] this is a great thing! As an artist, the web has enabled my music to reach tens of thousands of people I would never have been able to reach otherwise. I [...]
Individuals Are Running Circles Around Your Brand replied | Jan 29, 2010 (22 comments)
[...] build a following for yourself by giving out music free. A creative commons license is the ultimate music promotion tool. Where major labels fear filesharing, put it to your advantage to build subscribers and create [...]
Pete Smith replied | Jan 31, 2010 (1 comment)
Most of our tracks are released under a creative commons license.
We are an independent record label not a big bad corporation out to sue you for file sharing, we WANT you to spread our music around.
With such an overcrowded market place giving away your music is essential in my opinion. The biggest problem for emerging indie artists today is obscurity, not piracy. To find out more listen to The Antiqcool Podcast .
http://antiqcool.podbean.com/2010/01/22/the-antiqcool-podcast-episode-1-how-can-you-be-a-part-of-our-success/
Dale Baldwin replied | Feb 10, 2010 (1 comment)
I started my own Creative Commons based webstore and community recently. I started building it 6 months ago and have essentially gone live this week. I have been surprised already at the fact that people are willing to pay for creative commons music and not just download it. I don’t think the market for buying music is going away but combining free content with paid content at prices below that of the major digital download stores does go along way to starting a community as well as generating revenue for artists.