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OpenMusicContest.org
m.eik (Germany) · 2/8/2007 20:41
The Open Music Contest (OMC) wants to raise public awareness of copyright issues in general and the benefits of CC licenses in particular.
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Category: Culture
Project end date: 31/7/2015 (2527 days to go)
Creation date: 2/8/2007 20:41
Development stage: active
city: Marburg
country: Germany
Other countries: International
Main Language: English
Number of people involved: 5
History
The Open Music Contest started in 2005 as an experimental initiative of the students union (called AStA in Germany) of the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. The idea came from M.eik Michalke who since then is responsible for its organisation, together with his collegues Christoph Scheid and Marcel Hennes. Due to the impressive results of the first OMC, the AStA decided to continue the contest in 2006 and 2007, seeing it grow rapidly each year: 35 bands joined OMC#1 and offered 5 hours of music; for OMC#2 we had 50 bands (7.5h), and for OMC#3 76 (11.5h). In 2007, the OMC#3 took place under the aegis of Lawrence Lessig, and it receives help from several other projects, mostly associated with the free software community.
We'd like to share our experiences with this growing project, and we want to encourage you to organise an OMC in your country as well -- why not make this an international event?
The concept
The contest has many interwoven layers, that is, it's not just another newcomer festival. Free music is its core component of course, but we also use music as a vehicle to get people in touch with subjects like copyright issues and CC. When we started, it was our reception that most projects in promotion of free culture primarily addressed the public by giving them works that were free already. That's important, but we felt we musn't forget those who create these works, so we wanted to address artists directly, who never thought about their rights and possibilities especially the internet could offer. But our main goal herein is to inform and help to find further information, not so much to persuade them into using this or that license. Free culture has to begin with a free choice, we think.
The second aspect is active support for those who decide to give CC licenses a chance, by promoting them through the OMC. If they thought it through carefully, they can enter the contest with up to three songs (or "sonic works", if you will) and thereby license them under a chosen CCL. After the entering period has ended, we hand all music over to a jury, which votes on every single song (on a 10-point scale, meaning the amount of how much they want this piece to appear on the sampler) and on every band over all their songs (same scale, meaning how much they want this band to play live at our concert). Apart from the music itself, this jury knows nothing about the musicians -- not even their name or where they come from. They have only the music to vote on. The jury consists of various people we invite which must have only one thing in common: they must love music. They don't have to be experts in music business or even professional musicians, and our experience is that the combined votes of a dozen different poeple who love music leads to a quite colourful, but valid mix of great stuff (you might say we simply let those decide for whom the sampler is produced in the first place).
Here we get to another aspect: we want to promote stilistic diversity. Therefore we don't simply put songs with the highest mean votes on the CD, but try to include every noticeable genre. We don't want a soundalike contest, and the less you sound like something that we've released already, the higher your chances are (if you do it convincingly).
The fourth aspect is informing the public by releasing the music. We started with 1,000 samplers in 2005, and in 2007 gave away 4,000 double CDs in a DigiPak-like packaging -- we had to make it a double CD because we felt we couldn't reject so many great material. Since it's all CC licensed music, of course all samplers can be downloaded from the contest homepage (OMC#1, OMC#2, OMC#3). By spreading the music, the idea behind all this is being communicated as well -- the OMC#3 sampler even included a 12-paged booklet explaining background, history and purpose of free culture and CCLs. At this point we broaden the perspective and show that this is actually not (only) about music. Originating from a university, there are obvious connections to the Open Access movement, which is a core motive for the AStA Marburg, so this can be seen as the fifth layer.
The artwork of each sampler, in addition, shows how CC licensed works are freely used creatively. It's always based on CCLed images found on the web, and then transformed into something new. It can be downloaded from the sampler pages as well, to print your own cover.
The sixth aspect is the real life event: a concert. The AStA Marburg organizes a huge party every semester, visited by some thousands guests. Bands are booked one way or another, so once a year in april, the stage belongs to the winners of the OMC. To make sure that the audience is big enough, in addition to the OMC bands a well known headliner is booked as well (this is also an attraction for the OMC bands, e.g. it looks good in their biography). Needless to say, these headliners must be informed about the whole idea as well... The concert plays another role in the whole concept, because it is the financial source of it all, especially the CD pressing. And again, it can be used to spread information. The CDs and concerts bring the somewhat virtual quality of free culture through the internet back into everyday real life. After you held our sampler in your hands or enjoyed those bands on stage, it's hard to argue that free culture is a nice idea but impossible.
Our role
We see our role in providing the service of organisation, and let it to participants and the public to make something out of it. We want to create opportunities. It's hard work, but it's also a lot of fun! Obviously, it's not as easy to realise as something in the virtual world, and some kind of reliable infrastructure is needed mainly for the concert part (which on our behalf is organized by the AStA). But we've proven that it's possible. If you think this is an interesting project, please get in touch with us. We'd be delighted to see the concept spread around the globe, who knows what might become of it.
What you can do
We've done this three times now. We've learned quite a lot, and we're willing to share our experiences with you. To get involved, apart from adding yourself to this node, please subscribe to our omc-international mailing list. In the end it all comes down to communication -- we have several mailing lists (for bands, jury, supporters, core team, newsletter...), and almost everything is done "the virtual way". We now hope to form small groups of people in other countries who are eager to have their own OMC. There are some requirements that must be met in order to make the event possible, though.
The hardest part might be finding someone who is involved in concert or festival organisation. You can't plan events like these over a weekend, you need a certain infrastructure and people who know what they're doing (on the other hand: no magic is involved). The team should definitely include an active musician as well -- you need the perspective of those you want to get through to. The downside of this is, if you're the musician involved, for obvious reasons you can't enter the contest yourself (I know how it feels...).
Our basic idea is not to have one big event (yet), because this seems too much trouble at this stage. Instead, we think of contests like ours in each country where a reliable team could be founded. As no-one can predict how this plan will eventually work out, no further plans have evolved yet (the "project end date" is not really a fix one). Let's see what you can contribute, and then make the best of it. It's open for discussion.
Apart from organising itself, it seems we're always short of translators. We'd like the project homepage to be available and up-to-date in many languages. To help you can help by subscribing to our translations-mailinglist. And last but not least, the public has to be informed, that is, bloggers, journalists and media moguls are asked to report on the OMC around the world. The german-french TV station arte did a pretty good job on this in june 2007, by not only featuring the contest, but consequently releasing the programme under a CCL as well.
By the way, we had a documentary team this year who filmed the concerts and also some organisational stuff. If you're into video editing, your help would be appreciated, too.
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