Announcing the Free Music Archive Dave Mandl

The Free Music Archive is a social music website built around a curated library of free, legal audio. It's spearheaded by WFMU, but the freeform radio station is just one of several major curators collaborating on this project. WFMU is joined by fellow radio stations like KEXP (Seattle), webcasters like DUBLAB (Los Angeles), netlabels (Comfort Stand), venues (ISSUE Project Room), and amazing online collectives like CASH Music.

Inspired by Creative Commons and the open source software movement, the FMA provides a legal and technological framework for curators, artists, and listeners to harness the potential of music sharing. Every artist page will have a bio and links to the artist's home page for users to learn more about the music they discover via the Free Music Archive. We also seek to compensate artists directly. Artist, album, and song profiles will contain links to buy the full album from the artist and/or label’s preferred vendor(s). Users can also “tip” an artist if they like what they hear, sending a donation directly to the artists’ PayPal account. Artist profiles include tour dates, encouraging users to step away from the glowing computer screen and see some real live music.

While the Free Music Archive is free and open to anyone regardless of registration or other requirements, written and audio content is curated, and permission to upload/edit content is granted on an invitation basis.

The Free Music Archive is made possible by a grant from the New York State Music Fund. The NYSMF was established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors with settlements from Eliot Spitzer's investigations into the practice of “payola” or “pay for play” by major recording and broadcasting companies.

More info: http://freemusicarchive.org/about