Hey Hypothetical Viewers, during the makes of my last video I had to inquire about the in-game soundtrack on KSP. Don’t know if you noticed but they’re mostly sped up, ye, I’ll be turning music off on my next recording.
Anyway, on this quest I’ve found about Kevin Macleod, composer for most songs (if not all) on KSP. And turns out This dude achieved an amazing goal, by composing hundreds of songs and making them all royalty-free1.
That’s right, he makes all his songs freely available for download and use on other works with a ‘Creative Commons’ License2.
Which means anyone can use it in any sort of works as long as they credit correct attribution to the original author. If for some reason they can’t credit, he also can provide the works on a different license, that you can pay for.
Here is a quote on his philosophy, answering the question “Why do you allow people to use your music and don’t charge for it?”:3
There are many reasons. The cost for me to share music is low, and the benefits are high. There are a lot of schools with no money, and plenty of film makers who want to have music – but can’t afford to clear copyrights from the existing systems that are set up. I believe that copyright is badly broken , so I chose a license that allows me to to give away the rights I wish to surrender. We really have no hope of overturning the existing copyright situation, but we can and are creating an alternate body of works that are able to compete with them. In time, I hope that Creative Commons (and similar alternatives to standard copyright) will be common and successful enough to be the dominant choice for artists’ new creative works. If you hold tightly to your creative works, they become impossible to share. If your art isn’t experienced by people, it serves no purpose in society.
That is spot on with opinions of creative copyrights and such, being an open-source lover as well.
I can’t imagine how much society in general, would benefit culturally and in terms of media quality, by having a more open, less possessive view on how personal creations should be shared.
Kevin Macleod’s works have already been used in hundreds of works, from famous youtubers like The Fine Bros, to big budget movie like Hugo. Just recently a proposed documentary on Kickstarter reached its goal, called “Royalty Free: The Music of Kevin Macleod”4, the documentary covers the work of no other than Kevin Macleod himself, interviewing famous web people who used it, other composers and of course, Macleod him self.
While is project seems interesting, I definitely want to watch it. Its not really clear whether it will partly prize the subject composer, or even if it will follow the subject’s example sharing its own work on a more open license.
But all of this together reminded me of a great multi-part creative project called “Everything is a remix”5.
Awesome and very worthy of a small portion of your time, I highly recommend it. Basically, it gives perspective on how everything is in some way or another influenced or evolved from something else, and as such, should not be claimed and limited so restrictively.
All of this, a sort of movement against the copyright lock down happening, threatening to choke the world wide web’s creative and shareable potential. Specially noted on Youtube, how its automatic detection of musical works ended up laying claims on every sort of creator. What is most troublesome, is that the actual creators aren’t even aware, instead, these are mostly copyright holders, companies and the such, taking a big sized bite at the average youtuber’s income.6
Finally I leave you guys with my recommendation of links to check upon7. I’m still sorting out a few things on my KSP install, but it should be back playing in a short time.
Thanks for reading, I hope you go open-source as well, and do tell how you like it. Cheers
Gfurst 
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