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For $1.99, a (legal) song to add to YouTube videos - aka Friendly Music

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

Monday, June 28, 2010
13 years ago10,148 views

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/business/media/28rumblefish.html

Also
http://twitter.com/Friendly_Music/status/16875263536

http://www.friendlymusic.com/

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

a short quote:

--clip--
...music licensing company Rumblefish is introducing a service that allows users to buy a license to a copyrighted song for $1.99. For that price, the user gets the full version of the song and can edit it as well.

The new service, Friendly Music, can be used only for noncommercial purposes...
--clip--

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

...non profit organization Creative Commons continues to help users to license thousands of copyrighted songs for $0.00. For that price, the user gets the full version of the song and can edit it as well.

One such license, Creative Commons Attribution, means the music can be used for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

DPic [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

Is friendly music compatible with CC-BY-NC? Still not free culture (http://freedomdefined.org/Definition) but still better than nothing

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

> Is friendly music compatible with CC-BY-NC?

No, the Friendly Music license is *much* more restricted.

You can only use Friendly Music if you are over 18 years old. That rules out plenty of YouTube's users.

As soon as you put Friendly Music on your video, no-one else is allowed to copy that video. You can upload your video to a user-generated-content site, but you can't give it to your friends.

You explicitly can't put videos with Friendly Music on your website if you are earning money from the ads. Actually, you are prohibited from uploading your video to your own website. You are only allowed to upload it to a user-generated-content site such as YouTube, then use their embedding code to display the video on your website.

You can only license Friendly Music if you live in certain countries (the actual countries are different for various tracks).

Friendly Music gains control over the content of your video, including this condition: "Your video ... must not involve criticism of Friendly Music, Rumblefish, UGC Network, or any of their products or services".

Oh, and if you want to use the song on several different versions of your video (remixes, mashups etc) you must pay another $1.99 fee for every such use.

When you use the Friendly Music song, you can't remix it, mash it up, speed it up, slow it down, change the pitch or key, extract samples, translate of change the lyrics, substitute other lyrics, etc etc.

You can only post *one* copy of your video online. You can't distribute your video on a DVD.

Actually, after discovering all of this, I'm surprised they didn't call the service Unfriendly Music.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

It gets worse. From their License Agreement:

"What happens if the song's owner tells Rumblefish to stop licensing the song to video creators? In the unlikely event this happens, we will cease to offer the song for inclusion in future videos, refund the amount you paid for the sync license, and you will have to stop using the song in your video."

They say this is "unlikely", but Blogoscoped readers will remember that YouTube did this when Google stopped licensing the songs that they had allowed people to put onto their videos using AudioSwap.

"YouTube Videos Being Muted" January 15, 2009
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-01-15-n77.html

Friendly Music License Agreement:
http://www.friendlymusic.com/docs/friendly-music-license-agreement.pdf

DPic [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

Looks like they've posted an official blog post and responded to a comment, we should complain there

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/06/rumblefish-launches-user-friendly-music.html?showComment=1277838164073#c1289286796956289291

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

From the blog post mentioned by DPic:
<< To be clear, many of the FriendlyMusic tracks are still available for free in Audioswap >>

So for $1.99 you may cut the song into segments in your video editing tools, whereas the Audioswap version applies the song to the whole video.

DPic [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

Haha, they didn't comma separate their tags

DPic [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

[put at-character here]roger, these two points seem to contradict:

<<Oh, and if you want to use the song on several different versions of your video (remixes, mashups etc) you must pay another $1.99 fee for every such use.

When you use the Friendly Music song, you can't remix it, mash it up, speed it up, slow it down, change the pitch or key, extract samples, translate of change the lyrics, substitute other lyrics, etc etc.>>

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

[put at-character here]Danny:

Sorry, I used the words "remix" and "mashup" in two different ways. Once to refer to your own video, and the other time to refer to the Friendly Music song.

The first paragraph refers to remixing or mashing up your own video. For example, you could have an 8-minute video, but also make a 2-minute edited "highlights" video. In that case, the Friendly Music licensing terms require you to pay two $1.99 fees, one fee for each video.

The second paragraph refers to restrictions in the Friendly Music license that prohibit you from messing with the Friendly Music song itself. For example, it would not be allowed to license two Friendly Music songs then somehow mash them up together to use as your soundtrack. All you're allowed to do is to trim the licensed song to suit your needs.

This is quite clear in the Friendly Music license, which is written to be very readable.

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