Catalysts & Connections - Evan Tobias

Creative Commons’s decision to sell CC mixter (an online remix community) might be cause for alarm, though it could also lead to a new and improved version of the site. The concept behind CC Mixter and resources it offers have important implications for music education. It provides both a space and means for legal remixing […]

I’ve been closely following recent dialogue over the legality of transferring music from a legally purchased CD to a computer. The web has been abuzz since Marc Fisher wrote in a recent article that the RIAA considers the practice of transferring music from a legally purchased CD, illegal. This information quickly spread around the […]

When I worked on a “Copyrights and Wrongs” project with my 7th grade general music students several years ago, one of the various issues we focused on was how they would choose to treat their own music in terms of rights management. We discussed various positions and potential pros and cons of copyrighting or applying […]

The grassroots campaign to save internet radio and audio streaming sites took an interesting turn the other day when many organizations that host these types of resources held a day of silence to draw focus to the change in royalties that may mean the end to these resources. This has interesting implications for music educators […]

Do you or your students ever make use of internet “radio” streaming sites? Sites like Pandora or non commercial radio stations affiliated with NPR or Pacifica for example offer wonderful teaching resources, that is if they are able to afford the recent royalty rate changes for digital streaming.
While the issues of legality and […]

The Barenaked Ladies, a popular indie band, have joined the world of musicians allowing their music to be re-mixed. Encouraging people to “Do it yourself” they include several tracks from their latest album in multitrack WAV files. There is a major difference between this particular remix project and many of the others that have […]

The BBC news website recently asked readers to submit questions and comments to music industry leaders regarding digital music issues. They then consolidated the most frequent and what they viewed as the most important questions and posed them to various leaders of the music industry, mostly from the UK. Take a look at the […]

The issue of copyright came up in class today as it does very often. While I was explaining to a 7th grade general music class how we could apply what we have been learning about pitch, tone color, harmony, melody and rhythm by creating music in FLstudio, a student who had already downloaded the demo […]