Difference between revisions of "Case Studies/Pig Head Skin"
(→Overview) |
|||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{Case Study | {{Case Study | ||
|Description=Yueh-hsin Chu is an independent musician/producer in Taiwan, and leads the band Jesus Rocks! The band released an album of the same name in October 2004 under a Creative Commons License. | |Description=Yueh-hsin Chu is an independent musician/producer in Taiwan, and leads the band Jesus Rocks! The band released an album of the same name in October 2004 under a Creative Commons License. | ||
| − | |Quote=I see CC licences as a way for one to express goodwill in exchange for goodwill from others. Before CC licences, my works were either protected by record labels to a ridiculous extent, or I was doing it all for free, as a charity. CC is a smart charity in interesting ways. Yueh-hsin Chu, aka Pig Head Skin | + | |Quote="I see CC licences as a way for one to express goodwill in exchange for goodwill from others. Before CC licences, my works were either protected by record labels to a ridiculous extent, or I was doing it all for free, as a charity. CC is a smart charity in interesting ways." -Yueh-hsin Chu, aka Pig Head Skin |
|Mainurl=http://www.streetvoice.com/pigheadskin/, http://youth.pct.org.tw/music/ | |Mainurl=http://www.streetvoice.com/pigheadskin/, http://youth.pct.org.tw/music/ | ||
|Author=Pig Head Skin (a.k.a.Yueh-Hsin Chu) | |Author=Pig Head Skin (a.k.a.Yueh-Hsin Chu) | ||
Revision as of 19:54, 20 April 2008
"I see CC licences as a way for one to express goodwill in exchange for goodwill from others. Before CC licences, my works were either protected by record labels to a ridiculous extent, or I was doing it all for free, as a charity. CC is a smart charity in interesting ways." -Yueh-hsin Chu, aka Pig Head Skin —
Images
Overview
Yueh-hsin Chu, better known as Pig Head Skin, has been an icon in Taiwan's music scene since his ground-breaking sampling-rich album Funny Rap (1994). Many found his satirical lyrics about Taiwanese society hilarious while some found them shocking. Since 2001, Yueh-hsin Chu has led the band Jesus Rocks! with members of the Youth Ministry Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan.
Creative Commons Taiwan commissioned Chu to write a song as part of the launch of Creative Commons Taiwan on September 4, 2004. He wrote Welcome to My Song to illustrate the concept of Creative Commons. This song expresses the will of artists to share their works. In the song, Chu writes:
And he'll be rapping: Sing the melody and feel free, An acknowledging credit and I'd be so happy. Sing the melody and feel free, If you gig'ed it and made money, grant me a due share of it. Sing the melody and feel free, If you don't gig for the money, you just sing and feel free. Brothers, what's the worry about the word proprietary? Sisters, the more open you be, the more you feel rich.
(Lyrics translated to English from Holo by Deng Liu)
Chu and Creative Commons Taiwan worked together to produce a CD album of the same title for distribution at the launch. The Welcome to My Song CD proved to be popular and was used after the launch for many outreach events. The entire CD album was released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Taiwan Licence, and is available from Creative Commons Taiwan.
A month after the launch of Creative Commons Taiwan, the band Jesus Rocks! released an album of the same title under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Taiwan Licence. The album Jesus Rocks! was created by Youth Ministry Committee (Pop Music Missionary) of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, and was produced by Yue-Hsin Chu and Te-Fu Hsiao. Chu calls Jesus Rocks! ‘Contemporary Christian Music’. While CC-licensed, this album is also available for sale in many of Taiwan's record stores.
Motivations
Creative Commons Taiwan conducted the following interview with Yueh-hsin Chu on May 24, 2006, in which he expressed his views.
CC TAIWAN: How did you hear about Creative Commons?
CHU: You are kidding me! You people contacted me in 2004 to write a song for the launch of Creative Commons Taiwan. Of course I agreed immediately. As a result a CC-licensed album, Welcome to My Song, was produced just before the launch.
CC TAIWAN: What attracted you to the idea of Creative Commons?
CHU: I see CC licences as a way for one to express goodwill in exchange for goodwill from others. It is like: Here are my works and I am CC-licensing them so you can use them. But please return your goodwill by respecting my rights. Before CC licences, my works were either protected by record labels to a ridiculous extent, or I was doing it all for free, as a charity. CC is a smart charity in interesting ways.
Creative Commons means a lot to creators. I know of many indie film makers (some of whom are just Mom-and-Pop). They are so glad that they can now use music from opsound.org for background music in their works. Before that, it would cost them a lot to get those kinds of music usage rights. The paperwork alone will kill you. CC facilitates remix culture. CC somehow is the tender light to inspire the kindness of human beings. It is a lot of fun to live by creating works. CC-licensed works are like energy for a creative life.
CC TAIWAN: What has been your experience using the CC licence to date? Are CC licences alone sufficient to you?
CHU: It is difficult to tell the effect of using a CC licence for our album, Jesus Rocks! I don't know whether we get more gigs just because it is CC-licensed. I don't know either whether the tracks are ripped more often just because of it. Nowadays people are ripping everything, even from ‘copy controlled’ CDs. Besides, it is really tough to sell any album in Taiwan's music market. It may just be simpler to allow people to copy my music, as long as my goodwill is respected.
It will be worth working out more cases (of CC-licensed albums). Right now we have few cases to speak about. One thing I would like to see is a case of musicians making a living by making CC-licensed music. We are nowhere near there. At sites like http://tw.streetvoice.com/, they are already streaming CC-licensed music. Perhaps an artist-owned agency for CC-licensed music will be possible. Right now it is too early to know. I would like to see CC Taiwan doing more in this respect.
(Interview by Hui-Ju Wu. Abridged English translation by Tyng-Ruey Chuang.)
