Jamendo Adds Creative Commons Licensing
Jamendo has just added an online "Pro" platform for low cost commercial music synchronization licensing. Launched in 2005 as a free download site, Jamendo boasts the world's largest aggregation 200,000 Creative Commons licensed tracks from 9000 artists. Recently, the company began monetizing some of the catalog by offering lower cost background music services for restaurants, hotels and retail outlets globally.
Artists receive a portion of the payments, put since Jamendo Pro artists are not members of societies like ASCAP, PRS, BMI, SOCAN, BUMA and SACEM, Jamendo charges less than traditional music atmosphere or synch services. In fact, Jamendo views itself as challenging "long-standing national monopolies" held by these societies and establishing itself as "a leading rights management platform for
the 21st century", founder and CEO Laurent Kratz.
That may sound a bit ambitious until you learn that Jamendo is funded by Mangrove Capital, an early supporter of another disruptive service that found success – Skype.
It may be useful to know that the artist contract with Jamendo is not based on Creative commons, neither is the broadcast contract between Jamendo and the licensed user. For instance, the BY clause is not enforced so the broadcaster doesn’t have to list the names of the artists…
Also notice that the licensing fee is shared 50-50 between Jamendo and the artists. This is way more than the traditional collecting societies keep for them (SACEM is one of the most expensive at below 20%). Of course, the trouble with the traditional music business is that the producers and publishers preempt a large % of these fees…
Finally please notice that the non-profit association AIMSA has been offering the same service freely (as in free beer) for more than two years, under proper CC licensing.
… a disenchanted CC artist on Jamendo…