NZ Music Month - Where's All the CC Kiwi Music At?

NZMM is over for another year. I managed to promote 37 CC-licensed kiwi music releases on the Fediverse, 38 if you count the one that ended up being posted a couple of minutes into June, and 39 if you count this year's Turnbull Mixtape. These releases covered 35 different music acts, across a diverse range of genres (no ukelele bands yet!).

Originally, I was worried that I'd be scraping the barrel to get to 31 (one for each day in May). In the end, I ran out of May long before I ran out of releases to promote, mainly thanks to the Turnbull librarians and their mixtapes from the last couple of years. Thanks Turnbull folks!

A couple of thoughts on CC ANZ engagement with kiw musicians going forward. Firstly, there's definitely enough music acts using CC licenses to put on some amazing promotional/ fundraising concerts for next year's NZMM. Maybe even a CC music festival, or a touring roadshow! This would be a great chance to raise awareness of CC licensing among musicians and their audiences, and creative communities generally.

Secondly, it would be great to contact as many of these artists as possible about their CC use, and how they feel its worked for them (or not). Trying to interview all of them before next NZMM would be an average of about one a week, which would be a huge ask, so it might be good to aim to get a handful of interviews across a set of categories. Some of the obvious categories are;
* always use CC
* only used CC for one release
* used to use CC then stopped for newer releases
* started using CC after numerous ARR releases.

Another distinction I noticed was digital downloads offered gratis with no obvious way to pay/ donate, downloads on a 'pay what you want' basis, and downloads with a fixed price, just like a physical record. Some may have even used multiple styles across different web platforms (eg fixed price on BandCamp, free streaming/ download on SoundCloud). Again, it would be interesting to find out what motivated musicians' choices here, how they feel it worked out for them, and whether they intend to experiment with a different approach in future.

A couple of questions about the archiving of kiwi music. Firstly, focusing on CC music, do any NZ GLAM institutions have a program to make permanent archives of kiwi CC music? I notice a lot of the kiwi CC music I found in May is on potentially ephemeral platforms. For example, Archive.org has static copies of BandCamp pages but the music doesn't play, at least not on my browser. A search for that same release in Archive's general collection comes up empty. Older Jamendo releases seem to be in the Archive collection, not sure about newer ones. The Free Music Archive has some kiwi CC music (1, 2, 3), but its collection is far from complete.

The second question is about archiving of kiwi music in general. Is there any quick way (eg a website) I can check that relevant NZ GLAM institutions already have physical copies of kiwi music releases that I've collected? I doubt I'm the only music collector around my age (30s/40s) who has official copies of kiwi music releases on cassette or CD, some of which were independent/ DIY releases that may have only been sold at shows. I tend to make digital copies for actual everyday listening because it's more convenient, so I'm really only keeping the the originals for archival purposes and I'd be happy to pass them on to professional archivists.

Most of the releases I have physical copies of are more than 5 years old at this point, and it would hard to argue that their commercial value would be damaged by being archived online under a CC license. In cases where I bought the copies from artists I know, I'd be happy to contact them and see how they feel about putting them under a CC license.

These may be of particular interest to @victorialeachman , @cathyaronson , @richardwhite
@teara , @helenvarleyjamieso , @allisonbrown

I understand that DigitalNZ has something in the pipeline with relation to music. As I understand it there are some quite complex organisation components in that pipeline that mean it's quite slow moving but likely to be excellent and comphrensive when complete.

cheers
stuart

Kia ora @strypey ,

Wandering into this thread late, but I can confirm that the National Library of New Zealand (which includes the Turnbull) has a programme to make a permanent archive of all New Zealand music, and we particularly like CC music! We already collect CC music from Bandcamp for the National Digital Heritage Archive. If you come across NZ CC music you think we should have, you can always email [email protected] to let us know to go out and get it.
(Unfortunately at the moment some of the CC music we have already collected is suppressed from our public facing catalogue, but we are still looking after it and will be making it available again in due course.)

NLNZ could be interested in further conversations about taking on some of your physical collections for our heritage music collections, although you would have to be very wary of passing on physical copies and retaining your format-shifted digital copies for your own use. Definitely let us know if you convince more artists to release their works to the Commons!

Ngā mihi,
Amy Joseph
Legal Deposit Librarian, NLNZ

Thanks heaps for this info @amyjoseph . In the end I deposited my collection with the Hocken Library. Almost none of it is specifically relevant to Otago, so if you contact them and they now have items you don't, perhaps a transfer or permanent loan can be arranged?

Returning to CC-licensed NZ music, it would be great to see a complete archive of this in one place, either on Te Puna Matauranga website, or on Archive.org (why not both!). Since even the most restrictive CC license allows verbatim copying for non-commercial purposes, I don't see any legal barriers to this (although IANAL). On the topic of filling gaps in your digital collection, keep an keep a weather eye on the P2P Foundation page mentioned above, particularly during May ;)

BTW it would be great if CC ANZ could host its own instance of MediaWiki, so records like this could be kept under the creativecommons.org.nz domain. As always, happy to help make this happen @mandyhenk1

I note that NZ Music Month has rolled around again. I'll do the same thing as last year (see earlier comments), but I'll aim to post an album on the fediverse (and Twitter) every day in May. Are there any other CC events planned for NZMM? If not, is anyone keen to get the ball rolling on planning stuff for next year?

Hope everyone had a great NZ Music Month. As I mentioned, I was planning to promote #CC music from #NZ like I did last year, but due to technical difficulties (eg Quitter.se going dark), this didn't happen. I've got some more ambitious idea for next year, which I'll post about here when I have time to flesh them out.