Creative Commons licenses are designed to protect your rights to your music, while allowing people copy and share it. 

Creative Commons’ Eric Steuer notes:

This year, NIN released both Ghosts I-IV and a second album, The Slip, under a CC BY-NC-SA license. Both albums were downloaded for free and shared legally millions of times by fans under the terms of this license. At the same time, NIN found great financial success in selling cool, well-crafted, limited edition physical editions of both sets. Back in March, Wiredsaid the band made $1.6 million on Ghosts I-IV in its first week of release alone.

Additionally, Radiohead’s song “House of Cards” is up for several Grammys, including Best Short Form Music Video. The video’s animation data was released under a CC BY-NC-SA license earlier this year (see previous post).

Congratulations to Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead for the nominations. Also, congratulations to all of the other artists whose work was nominated for Grammys this year, including Brian Eno, Diplo, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (AKA Gnarls Barkley), My Morning Jacket, Gilberto Gil, Peter Gabriel, Thievery Corporation, and Cornelius – all of whom have used Creative Commons licenses and/or have supported CC over the years.

Musicians like NIN are using Creative Commons licensing, and giving away their music, to actually gain more control of their careers.

It remains to be seen whether unknown artists will be able to create new careers at the scale of groups like Nine Inch Nails, though.

“It was the most intensive work I’ve ever done on anything,” Beck says. “It was like trying to fit two years of songwriting into two and a half months,” Beck says. “I know I did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night.”

The resulting album, tentatively titled Modern Guilt, is full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s British vibe. Beck’s vocals float over the music as if he’s singing along to some mystical radio station in the next room.

Each song started with Beck playing acoustic guitar over a drumbeat: If it made the cut, they’d flesh out the music, usually with Danger Mouse playing keyboard bass and Beck playing most of the other instruments.

Also, it looks like Beck may be joining a growing number of established musicians experimenting with self-released recordings:

For Beck, always eager to shake up music-industry practices, the disc marks the end of his major-label contract.

“I’ve had this deal since my early 20s,” says Beck, 37. “I don’t have any plans at the moment. It’s anybody’s guess where things are going week to week with the music business.”