Miscellaneous

Neuro Net Recordings

By Cameron Parkins

Neuro Net Recordings is an online techno-music distribution project based out of Japan that houses over 80 pieces of CC BY-NC-ND licensed music at Archive.org. Founded in 1994, NNR has been pushing free and open licences in some form since before CC was even a blip of an idea and represents an interesting case study in regards to CC-licensed music distribution online. From jj1bdx:

NNR had the free online distribution policy from the beginning: NNR had the non-exclusive distibution rights of the music files in the various available formats on the Internet. It was quite similar to the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license, which means preserving the author’s credit, non-profit use only, and changes not allowed during redistribution.

[...]

In the age of iTunes and Amazon.com MP3, no professional musician can survive without distributing their music online. Streaming music radio stations like Soma FM are doing competitive business. Many people in the so-called music industry, however, still do not accept online media, and I feel quite sad about it. I’ve already been fed up with the stagnated copyright issues in Japanese music scene either. So I decided to quit distributing NNR files on my own in 2004. Fortunately, archive.org generously provides the storage space and other goodies to the free-music distributors, so I decided to put NNR and my music pieces there in 2007.

You can read more about NNR history here - it is fascinating to read about a group that has been working with new methods of distribution for so long while many in the music industry are still discussing a return to DRM.

Full post as published by Creative Commons.org on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).