Free! Music! Contest 2011 - FreeMixter

July 1st 2011 is the starting day of this year's Free! Music! Contest, the motto is "FreeMixter". The contest run by Musikpiraten e.V. takes places the third time and has already reached some international publicity in the Creative Commons music scene. This year's focus is on enabling remixes - as the motto indicates. Therefor the remix portal ccmixter.org is embedded where artists like Mike Shinoda (Link Park), DJ Vadim and the Beastie Boys have released single tracks from their songs to enable the creatin of remixes. Beside of the publication on the Free! Music! Sampler and a live gig in germany prizes worth more than 1.000€ can be won.

As a musical patron the canadian Allison Crowe could be won. Crowe has become worldwide known for her interpretaion of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen. She releases her own work under Creative Commons at jamendo.com for years. In her function as the patron Allison Crowe makes a delicate gift to the Creative Commons remix scene: She released a acapella version and piano tracks of "Spiral". They can be downloaded in high quality at the Musikpiraten's server and be used for own Songs.

The first two years the Free! Music! Contest was more a "Shareable! Music! Contest". "Free" has been used in the sense of "free beer" instead of in "freedom". All published songs were free to be copied and shared, but commercial use and - what's even more important - creating derrivate works has not been allowed for a lot of songs. The concept worked out: More than 130 bands and artists coming from over 30 countries joined the contest and a very well balanced sampler has been produced. But has this been the right way? Does only size matter? The Musikpirat say firmly "No!". So this year the rules have been changed. Freedom rulez free beer.

2011's rules

Each band or solo artists may participate with a single song.

Songs will be published CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. This rule applies only if a song is selected to be published on the sampler and the choice which license will be taken is up to the artist. So a song can be cc-by-nc-nd-licensed and if it is selected as a winner, it will be re-licensed cc-by or cc-by-sa.

At least one audio track of the song has to be uploaded at ccmixter.org to ensure remixability. Vocals, drums, bassline, melodies - it's totally up to the artists.

If a song is based on a track found at ccmixter one of the additional tracks has to be published there.

Remixes of contest tracks uploaded at ccmixter and licensed CC-BY wil auto-participate if the are released before august 15th. The Musikpiraten aim to fill the second CD with remixes to show, why they think this grade of freedom is so important.

Registration is open until july 31st august 15th 2011.

Prizes

There will be again a double cd produced, packed to the brim with the best songs. The decision is up to a jury that is explicitly introduced to pick the best out of every genre. No matter if it's trash metal, pop of trance, the capabilities of the artists count and not the genre.

Further there are SoundCloud-Pro accounts that can be won, vouchers for musical equipment and some other gimmicks. In total the prizes will be worth more than 1.000€! Ths prizes will be raffled between all participants - the will to release the own music into the free shall be honored!

Last but not least there will be a party where some winner bands will play live. To get a rocking crowd a well known headliner will be booked. The decision which bands will win this prize has to be made with an eye looking at the budget. Travelling costs and the number of band members - if a hotel is need - must be taken in account.

Support

Sponsors are very welcome. Prizes or money - the Musikpiraten are open for any help. The association especially welomes CD patrons. Those buy 100 CDs for 250€ and distribute them the way they like. Sponsors are asked to use the contact form until 31st august 2011.

Some have already announced their support: The german Piratenpartei and the gagdet shop getdigital.de. Both are contest's partners since the first Free! Music! Contest.

All Supporters