While I’ve hung up collecting Amazing Stories of Openness I never tire of coming across inspiring acts of it– as Nancy White had said in one of the first of these videos, “Openness is an attitude.”
This week I participated in the online Open Texas 2024 conference. In a town hall session we were spun out into breakout rooms to share ideas on what a big dream for the future of openness might look like (much was collected in a padlet, mine is there credited to “Artistic Kangaroo”).
As breakout rooms go it was actually more interesting to meet others there, such as Michael. He introduced himself as someone with 30 years of experience in the music recording industry, relatively new to teaching this, and not knowing anything about open education. The group pitched in on the elements, but he admitted the challenge in the music field as so much is tied up onto intellectual property of creative works.
I wished I had not found this link I got later in an email by the Good Dr Glu (inside joke), Gardner Campbell, and NPR story “How a catchy tune became the soundtrack to TikTok’s silliest videos” — which does not get to the key for me, but either click or listen to the 5 minute segment.
The jump for me is that musician who had written this catchy tune ten years ago was a name I knew very well, Kevin MacLeod. I’m dismayed that NPR did not even link to his site, I know it from memory as https://incompetech.com/. I’ve made use of and recommended it for a long time (it was a go to recommendation for my DS106 students working on audio/video projects that needed themed music tracks that were also openly licensed). And I do recall from the early days when MacLeod had his own crafted open license, that later was changed to Creative Commons.
Then Creative Commons came along, standardizing royalty-free rights. While some composers and industry people argue that such sharing undermines composers’ ability to make a living, MacLeod says he just wants his work out in the world.
“I just want my stuff to be heard,” explains MacLeod. “You know, you gotta make it as easy as possible.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/24/g-s1-23951/monkeys-spinning-youtube-tiktok-viral-social-media-music
He subtly drops in that while he gives away music that he “earns a six figure income.”
Michael, wherever you are in Texas, I hope that link finds you.
Kevin MacLeod is a true success and be inspired story to the spirit and act of being open. It’s quite easy to do. Heck I just used MacLeod’s track Pleasant Porridge for intro music to my lightning talk video for the 2024 Open Education Conference. I’d much rather find and reuse openly licensed music made by a person than click generating some synthetic gunk that I can’t credit.
But indeed, the Monkey Spinning Monkeys story is Amazing.
Featured Image: My own photo 2014/265/158 Free as in 45s flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) modifued with added the CC BY licensed version of the Creative Commons logo and in the front of the box a screenshot of the incompetech.com web site
