Pearl Jam Releases Video Under Creative Commons

minitrue writes "Pearl Jam released their first music video in quite a while under a Creative Commons license allowing anyone to "legally copy, distribute and share the clip" for noncommercial purposes. Creative Commons thinks this may be the first video produced by a major label ever to be CC-licensed. So although the file is only available as a free download via Google Video through May 24, fans can continue sharing it online themselves in perpetuity."

Kudos to Pearl Jam

These are guys who've been in the arena trying to fight unfairness with Ticketmaster and the bigger Music Houses. While they might not be everyones flavour musically, they are definately on of the bands trying to break molds with how their music is distributed. Maybe this is a little bittersweet, but damn good to see someone trying to get paid without ripping half the world off.

Re:Kudos to Pearl Jam -- DRM free downloads

Another cool thing the band does is sell all their concerts via download in either MP3 ($9.99) or FLAC ($14.99); in the previous Canadian tour the downloads were often available within 24 hours of the show, now they're a couple days later. These shows are soundboard quality (pretty much the best you can hope for in a "bootleg") and completely DRM. The band is even cool about people trading shows; they've stated in the past they don't expect the average fan to buy every show -- just get a couple, like the ones you go to, and trade with your friends. In the 2000 tour, they were selling actual CD's of their shows for near cost (9.99 for a double CD), I don't believe the band themselves made a profit from the sale. This was in order to stop the ridiculous prices their old bootlegs went for on eBay despite that fact that you can get almost any show for free by just asking on alt.music.pearl-jam.

Re:IT'S OFFICIAL

I don't think a band that debuts at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 chart is "an over-the-hill burnout band, trying desperate internet publicity stunts in order to stay relevant."

Considering Tool was at #1 that same week, I would say Pearl Jam is still quite relevant. Will they sell as many albums as quickly as they did with Ten or Vs.? Maybe not, but they have gone Platinum on every album they have released. IIRC.

This might sound stupid, but....

why wouldn't a band want people to share their videos? I could understand if they were a primary source of revenue for the band, but as far as I know they're not. These days it's not like someone's going to go to thr trouble of ripping the audio out of a video stream to obtain an illegal copy of the song (since there are other [bittorrent.net], easier [bearshare.com] ways to do that), so all in all it's just free publicity.

Re:This might sound stupid, but....

If the artists actually cared about getting their music out, they wouldn't mind people sharing videos or even the albums. The reason why the record labels care is because they're too shortsighted and greedy. Most record execs just can't stand the notion of people enjoying the content for free. It doesn't matter that this creates more buzz, more fans, more sales in the long run--it's the principles. It's just like people who complain about hand-outs being given to the less fortunate (I mean, are you really jealous of people who get hand-outs because they actually need them?). They're the kind of people who worry more about welfare going to a few freeloaders than taking comfort in the fact that it also helps millions of single mothers and dispossessed families keep food on the table.

It's irrational stinginess that serves no purpose, but is just ingrained in prevailing industry attitudes. So most labels don't put out music videos for free because they want everyone to buy the DVD if they actually want to watch the music video. They don't see that a music video played on millions of people's computers has the same marketing value as one played on millions of television sets on MTV or VH1. There's really nothing wrong with selling music videos on DVDs, but it is in the best interest of the musicians and the label to also provide the content for free.

It has nothing to do with fear of people extracting the audio layer from the music videos. That's just ridiculous. What Pearl Jam is doing is definitely appreciated by a lot of fans, and it isn't being done by most mainstream musicians so I don't get why people are accusing them of just pulling a "publicity stunt". Just because it's in their best interest doesn't mean it's a publicity stunt. This is actually good for the fans as well, and it might encourage others to follow suit.

Sentiments like yours only hinder the adoption of these rational approaches to content distribution. I work for an indie record label, and I'm always trying to convince my boss that it makes sense to allow people to share music and to be more genrous with the content. But it really undermines these efforts when people like you react so cynically whenever a label starts thinking more progressively than others.

Why can't you simply accept that Pearl Jam is trying to do something nice for the fans?--which in turn also benefits the artist, which has always been the case. It's not good enough that they're derogating from conventions in a way that benefits the fans, but they must hurt themselves in the process for it to not be labelled as simply a "publicity stunt"?

I think people like you are a bit too jaded and don't really understand or appreciate what the music sharing movement is about. Artists and record labels don't have an obligation to take losses just so you can enjoy the music they produce, however, there are practices that are mutually beneficial. Just because the artists/labels stand to benefit from the content they produce doesn't mean that they're evil or something. So stop ragging on the good guys in the industry who are actually embracing free content and music sharing.

Harvey Danger

If you're looking for other Slashdot advertized "free" music, check out Harvey Danger [harveydanger.com] who had an article about them here last year. Their album is distributed via Bit Torrent.

Re:Harvey Danger

Almost every album on the planet is distributed via BitTorrent. Some less legally than others, I suppose, but they're still there.

Won't somebody think of the lost sales?

By releasing this for free I'm sure they would be missing out on some lost sales, maybe the RIAA will sue them.

well now

It's an interesting move, though in a way it feels a bit like they're jumping on the bandwagon. Of course, the bandwagon can always use some big names on it, right? The quality of the file is pretty nice, beats the usual tiny mpeg smattered with MTV and various other station logos, especially in the day of dumb animated logos and advertisments.

Free Commercials?

It's amazing to me that virtually all music videos for singles, which are essentially commercials for albums, aren't under a similar license, and that that hasn't been the status quo for some time. Of course, legalities aside, I guess it has been the status quo....

Brilliant!

This is genius! If the concept of a video is to promote your album, why not make it free to distribute? I mean MTV isn't going to play it unless your target audience are preteens. And even then they'll only show 30 seconds of it with somebody saying something stupid like "OMG! Ponies!" in the background.

Great pre-sleep video

Thanks! That was EXACTLY what I was looking to watch JUST before hitting the sack at night :(

Thanks slashdot for giving me nightmares

Good old Pearl Jam eh?

Aren't they just a nice bunch of guys...

Actual License?

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 You are free: * to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work Under the following conditions:

by Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
nc Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
nd No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

* For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
* Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

Excellent I can now reenact the entire video, if I do it faithfully. Thanks You Mr. Vedder.

No seriously, baby steps, right.

Ahhh!! My ears!!

Did you LISTEN to that monstrosity, or just watch it with the volume muted? Surely Eddie V could have invested in an auto-tune plugin for his sequencer, at least...

Re:Ahhh!! My ears!!

I disagree wholeheartedly. That unfamiliar, not-exactly-in-tune-to-the-cent pitch you hear from Eddie's voice (and at some point throughout the song, from every other harmonic instrument, as well), is something missing in today's soulless and sterile music enviornment. Call it "blue notes" (actually bluer "regions" around notes), emotion, angst, feeling; even call it "out of tune," if you want. I'll take it every day over whichever plastic, overcompressed "prostitute with a thug posse"s the labels (albeit, the same bastard labels) give us as options. Auto-Tune (and the like) do have their uses, but this is NOT one of them. There are other places to go if that's the sound you prefer.

no MTV

Pearl Jam is also pretty opposed to the MTV way of music video, they only had 2 music videos on MTV their entire career.

Re:no MTV

That's Todd McFarlane, of Spawn and Spiderman comics fame. Seth MacFarlane is the Family Guy/American Dad dude.

That definitely would have made for quite a different video.

J

This is great and all...

... but I don't think they took into account the fact that RMS doesn't like the Creative Commons [linuxp2p.com]. My guess is fans will avoid the video in droves for that reason alone.

lumping them together

I know some people don't like RMS, but he nailed this one for sure. Just look at the Slashdot headline for this article "Pearl Jam Releases Video Under Creative Commons"... lumping them all together just as RMS suggested people would. "Creative Commons" without describing the varient doesn't mean anything at all, yet that is the message the headline gives and a real problem with the suite of CC licenses. Certainly, people can specifiy which CC license you are talking about (as the body text of the slashdot article does), but it's still overly confusing.

Consider the analogous slashdot heading "Company Releases Program Under GPL" -- the GPL is a title that unlike CC has a specific meaning, if it's GPL you know what to expect whether you like that license or not. The problem with CC is really worse than the similarily vaguely defined label "open source" because some of the CC licenses are really quite restrictive.

I do understand what the people behind CC are trying to do, and I respect that. I just wish that they had put more effort into promoting the use of individual specific licenses instead of the CC 'brand'. GNU does this well, they have GPL, GFDL, LGPL as their own separate brand instead of just calling it a "GNU license" which doesn't convey the specificness those different concepts represent.

It may not be perfect, but it's a good move.

In essence, video clips are just advertising, and based on that, this move would not qualify too much on the revolutionary side of things. But, if you think about it as a political statement, it's a very good thing to do in dark times like these. Think about how many folks are going to see such a license for the first time on their lifes. Think about all the fan-kids out there with garage bands that will start seeing open licenses as something cool. Think about how many media droids are going to need to educate themselves on the "open" movement to be able to write a comment on that. Of course, none of this could happen, but how can we know?

This is a great move in my opinion.

I think this is a fantastic move by Pearl Jam. This means that if an honest person who is not out to make a profit can simply share a song with friends without violating the law and risk persecution. More musicians and artists need to utilize this method! I don't listen to a lot of music myself, but hate the fact that so many innocent people are being needlessly persecuted when they were not after one dime of profit. Go Pearl Jam!

only available until May 24th?

I don't get it. Why is it only available on Google until May 24th? What's preventing us from re-uploading it permanently to Google Video?

Video only avaliable till May 24th...

I wonder if it's the same video that Much Music up here in Canada showed a few days ago. It's a good example of releasing work that could possible rip the artist off (these people need to get paid for their hard work right?!? I mean someone needs to pay the video director who charges too much for work that any band could do).

They sold their tickets by zip code

Pearl Jam just played a show here in Santa Barbara a few weeks ago. To be fair to the people living around there, they sold their tickets disciminating by zip codes on credit cards. If you didn't have a zip code that fell within their accepted proximity to where they played (santa barbara bowl) you would not be able to buy a ticket. A band that supports the cause and does things that make a lot of sense. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Pearl Jam because of this. Oh, they also make incredibly good music.

Mirror

Here is a copy of the videos [131.96.244.7] on a school server. Cheers.

DRM

Are you guys nuts?! This is a Sony BMG release; by exploiting a vulnerability in the handling of each video frame, simply playing this video in any format installs a rootkit :O

Hah. Some license.

It's this license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ [creativecommons.org] the 'selfish unfree license with no permissions'.

You cannot derive the work, nor can you use it commercially. Bang go freedoms 0 1 and 2. The work is still copyrighted, like a photograph licensed online, our only freedom is to look at it.

'Redistribution' doesn't mean anything online. Redistribution of a mars bar or a patented camera would mean building the product yourself using the original design. With anything digital rather than physical redistribution can't exist. Everything is a copy, there is no 'master', copies are made whenever you view content on the web, as the same data is send over the internet protocol. There's no difference between 'view' and 'download', whether the data is saved to your home, your cache, or even not stored except in RAM. You are being 'given' the identical digital data. It's ridiculous to suppose that once you posess this data you cannot share it, and that the first server still controls the data because it perceives itself different. This is like writing a book, but not selling it and insisting everyone but come round your house to read the typeset.

Videos are of course avaliable to view for free a million places on the webs so certainly redistribution == distribution. Take a 30 meg quicktime video you can download. http://www.chrismilk.com/audioslave/ [chrismilk.com] Now if you send that file to your friend or if they download it from that same site, how can you distinguish?

The internet was creating to freely and openly share data, why are we trying to close it back up? If you want to hold your work forever, DO NOT UPLOAD IT. So Pearl Jam, this is nothing but an empty publicity stunt. And Creative Commons, if someone unticks all the boxes 'allow commerical use', 'allow deriatives', if you really have principles, then display a message, 'the license you have chosen is "enforced copyright" you IP-fascist'.

Good Old Pearl Jam, totally expected move, however

CC'd music video is pretty pointless. If you have noticed while you were watching the PJ's "Life Wasted" video, there are other Sony BMG Entertainment music videos you can watch as well. Yes, the video file can be freely distributed, but it's like distributing guitar tabs under CC license. It's just not going to make much sense for fans and average music lovers. If PJ wanted to make change, release their composed music under CC, not mp3 or music video. Effects will be same, but it makes stronger statement than "Pearl Jam release their unpopular music video LIFE WASTED under Creative Common License".

whelp, i'm out

i'm gonna go buy some pearl jam cds, t-shirts and concert tickets. bbl.

Not remixable

It's too bad it carries the "No Derivative" attribute of the CC license. If it didn't, the fans could have had fun remixing it. :) Note, I'm not saying they should have; kudos to them for using the CC at all. I'm just saying it would have been fun.

I usually call it quits after ten

Perhaps they should have too.

Easy d/l here

Click, and IE downloads the 30MB avi.

http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0 &secureurl=xAAAAG7ggqAHSiJjpW0D3w4aYTVhnhtRNWE0MyR Qp3IfM-QsTnyzS0dRlbfae86pQtrE1wOrbSl7BmSH_X_BAlb78 vC9fjLxPt2AHDTSokN1k7ib2kpFEu4S9Q_kC4CUEvc7fPWWaBw 0rETrmBu47bPdhRRTaHnU93AS8x73Z4eGsnfVldzC-kzpNmmvC vpocpMTYQpMa9q_-IcVurUwp78s8xThPXmu39sjQO1yUBd3R7n GxOnoREcG6JoX52IdoEb7otKqUM_OHQ_9Oc9quH2UOng&sigh= yF8ayjd7jARMlavDi4KhYp8y3MQ&begin=0&len=237269&doc id=6187666924357770983docid:6187666924357770983 [google.com]

free until

"Music video for "Life Wasted" by Pearl Jam. New release of latest Pearl Jam video. Free until 5/24/2006. Musical Category: Pop
The license for this video is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ [creativecommons.org]"

Free until? Is this DRMd? What good is creativecommons if there is DRM?

And how do I import this into video editing software? WTF is "GVI" format?

While it says Sony BMG....

Pearl Jam has actually moved away from Sony. Their latest album was released independently, and their label contract has run its course and finished. They may have worked with Sony (their former label) to make the video, but they now own their content, and I'm sure that's why they were able to get it shared under the CC license. If they were still actually with Sony, no way this would have happened, since the band I'm sure has wanted to do things like this for ages.

also check out first free creative commons porn...

....

at digg.com

http://digg.com/movies/first_free_porno_released_o n_inet_under_creative_commons_license [digg.com]
http://digg.com/movies/first_free_porno_released_o n_inet_under_creative_commons_license [digg.com]

Props to PJ

Apparently the world contains a Lars and an anti-Lars. ^_^

Did anyone else see a robot?

Just watched the video and about 3 minutes, 35 seconds into it there appears to be a very short clip of ghengis or one of the 6 legged MIT robots walking up something with a red lit background. It's in silhouette so I can't be sure. Anyone else see that?

Re:Publicity stunt

>That's just a publicity stunt, even worse: they release it under this license, but still only give it free "until May 24-th". Does that make sense? No, it doesn't make any sense.

It does makes sense. They're saying "we're going to distribute it ourselves up to 2006-05-24, let others distribute it after that, P2P, Torrent or otherwise."

If they start suing people after 2005-06-24, then it's a legal stunt to try and crush these types of licenses.

Re:Publicity stunt

"Chubaca" ??? Who or what in the hell is that? If you meant CHEWBACCA from STAR WARS, may I have your nerd membership card back? We have several Star Wars nerds on standby to beat you inefectually with foam light sabers.

Re:Publicity stunt

You can download it in an avi format from Google's page [google.com] by clicking "Download" on the right side of the page.

And forgive me, as I'm using a Mac, but I was able to open it in QuickTime, and I could easily edit it and export it to a different format.

Re:Publicity stunt

Stunt by who?

Google? The band? The label?

Since Google probably paid for the "exclusive" I'd say Google.

Re:Publicity stunt

Waaah, publicity stunt. It's free! Enjoy it and don't whine about it.

Yea it's free, until May 24-th (they you gotta look it up on bittorents or youtube).
And yea enjoy it, in all its compress Flash video 320x240 uneditable low bitrate glory.

Gosh that's so pathetic. I'd rather watch MTV (even if the logo "takes half the screen" , my ass).

Re:Bettermen

So sales are the most accurate mesurement of quality? Who knew that Kelly Clarkson and the Black Eyed Peas were so awesome?

Re:Hmm

It could be two things

1)The realize that they already have enough money and now are just trying to let people listen to some music they make.

2)The record companies gets the feeling that the band/artist/whatever is likely to do this in the future. That's when the career ends.

Oh, and another thing. Pearl Jam's career really isn't dead. They're currently on tour [pearljam.com]. It looks like they even have double bookings for some stadium sized venues. As in they sold out a stadium... twice. That's pretty good for a "dead" band that is getting very little radio support on the tour.

Re:they used to be scammers iirc

There was no scam involved. Pearl Jam, especially Eddie Vedder, love Vinyl. They are of the age that grew up listening to REAL albums, and they still love the sound of vinyl. That is the sentiment behind their song Spin The Black Circle. They released their albums in limited quantity on vinyl as well as CD for the fans who share their love of that particular format.

They also send out Christmas singles to members of the Ten Club (fan club). These are on vinyl as well.

Re:Hmm

The artist formerly known as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince", but now called Prince again?

LK

Re:Hmm

I don't think you'll see any young rising stars embracing free distribution licenses with their content on the internet.

True, I have seen very few bands embrace free disitribution licenses, but I doubt most artists are even aware that these licenses exist. What I have seen is bands explicity stated that they don't mind their work being shared freely.
The first example that comes to mind is Wilco [wired.com]. Given, they're not young, but they never had much success on the charts until recently. After they produced an album [pitchforkmedia.com] that was deemed too 'experimental', they were dropped from their label.
Instead of giving up, they put an mp3 stream of the whole album on their site and openly embraced file sharing. The album started to get a lot of buzz. Soon enough an independent label agreed to release the record, despite the fact that "hundreds of thousands" of people had already downloaded it (at least according to singer Jeff Tweedy in the Wired interview).
The album was critically acclaimed and became their greatest commercial success to date, reaching #13 [wikipedia.org] on the Billboard charts. Their next album sold even better, reaching the top ten [wikipedia.org].

Another example - Sufjan Stevens [mtv.com], who actually is a "young rising star", recently said in an interview [pitchforkmedia.com]

[My music is] definitely not public domain. I have a publisher and I make money from the publishing of the songs. That's a big part of an income, so I'm not going to pretend that I'm that socialistic about my music. But I'm not so possessive about it that I would sue anyone who misused it. If someone were to sample my work, I would have a hard time seeking payment for that. I don't even have a problem with people illegally downloading that stuff.[emphasis mine]

Not everyone giving away their music is over the hill - and some of them are still making a living making music.

Re:Publicity stunt

Google videos actually are MPEG-4, but you're right - the Creative Commons license that they chose forbids derivative works, unfortunately.

Re:Publicity stunt

get a clue, asshole

Shit, AC, after I've read this extremely informative and useful post of yours I got a clue and now I live a better, more meaningful life.

Re:Bettermen

"Another band that releases shit for the sake of money just because they can"

What is that supposed to mean?

They produced a music video, as musicians sometimes do.
They released it under a Creative Commons license, which is rare.
This allows people to do rare things with a mainstream artist's creative content, like download it/enjoy it/distribute it for free.
Most artists would have prohibited the above mentioned activities in their license.
Thus, what Pearl Jam has done is interesting news for most of us, and it would benefit fans if other artists followed Pearl Jam's lead.

So what is there for you to possibly complain about? That they haven't sold many CDs at your store? What does that have to do with anything?

Do you have a coherent point to make, or did you just want to post incoherent ramblings?

Re:Did Trent Reznor direct that thing?

Kind of reminds me of "Head like a hole" with all the hollow head and color-shifted imagery.

Re:And they are on Sony's label too...

Actually they're not under Sony label anymore. Their contract expired with their previous album (Riot Act) and signed with "J Records". Apparently they have a deal with Sony to handle worldwide distribution, but that's all.

Re:Hmm

Because all "new" artists that get promoted have a contract with their music studio/distributor that makes the iron maiden [wikipedia.org] look positively roomy, spacious and comfortable.

This isn't going against the RIAA

Offering a music video for free, that is essentially already free, is not taking a stand against the RIAA.

Wake me up when they offer their next album under CC licensing.