For all you electronic-influenced DJs out there, crate diggin’ just got easier.

Beatport, one of the Web’s foremost electronic music download/blog sites, launched on Tuesday it’s own wiki (an online, collaborative information database), BeatWiki, exclusively for electronic music. With more than 72,000 artist pages and 7,000 record label pages that can be searched, edited and blogged on by users, the database provides an simple solution for electronic DJs on the lookout for fresh tracks.

I’m not a huge fan of electronic music myself (although its influence has inevitably permeated into the genres I that listen to), but this site has an outrageously cool (and simple) concept. Sure, it runs off the basic idea of Wikipedia, but there’s more.

Continue Reading

Creative Commons has released their newest license, the CC Zero license, which allows you to waive copyright and related rights to your work. According to their public domain dedication page, this means that your work, if associated with the license, could be “freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, or built upon by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.”

While this may seem unusable in music terms, there already exist many rich communities of musicians (check out Tryad) who remix each other’s work, and freely contribute to databases of samples and music. The launch of this license might finally give origin to a Wikipedia-like repository of music, which anyone can access and take advantage of, making music, and thus culture, available to anyone on the planet.

Continue Reading

Rock Band Wii gets its own music store, how Warner Music killed Facebook music, and Wikipedia gets ready for a digital media explosion, all in today’s Round Up!

• Ars Technica reports that Harmonix and Nintendo will be finally opening the music store for the Wii version of Rock Band 2. There are now 30 songs available online, ranging from The Police to The Offspring, and more songs will be added consistently every week. This means a big step for Nintendo in moneymaking power, or wait, maybe not. [ars technica]
• Facebook has been trying to seal an agreement with the four major labels to provide a free streaming service on their web site. The Washington Post says Universal, Sony BMG and EMI agreed to a deal, but Warner Music held out, and ruined it for everybody. [Washington Post]
• Wikipedia is upgrading their servers and storage to allow for larger photos and videos to be uploaded. Slashdot describes that Wikipedia will up their media storage from 2TB to 48TB and the limit on file uploads from 20MB to 100MB. This will make 2-hour long, high-quality videos possible on the free encyclopedia, so start uploading! [Slashdot]

Wikipedia administrators noticed a sudden surge in edits on December 4th from content filters of at least 6 major UK Internet Services. As of Sunday morning, British web surfers were unable to view the encyclopedia’s article on the mid-1970′s Scorpions album Virgin Killer. The album’s cover art was flagged as ‘child pornography’ by the Internet Watch Foundation, which is funded by the EU and the UK government, and has the support of many ISPs and online institutions in the UK.

Continue Reading