What’s of interest? 10 years of ‘Monkeys Spinning Monkeys’ on the internet : NPR
Tell me more!
Turn to TikTok for some amusement, and you’ll find short videos of a fluffy cat cuddling a fluffy dog, a toddler clutching a bag of Doritos as though it were a teddy bear, or a penguin creating flipper-print artwork.
You’ll have to turn up the volume to hear what all these posts have in common: a song created ten years ago called “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod.
And once he tries his hand at something better, he releases it for free.
In the early days of his career, MacLeod would craft his own licenses — not to protect his rights, but to give them away. MacLeod says his approach was to “find a license, and then do everything the opposite,” adding clauses like “you have the right to use this for your personal things. You have the right to use this commercially. You can sell this thing in another product if you want to.”
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.”
Note: This NPR article neglected the link! I have made use of Kevin MacLeod’s music for projects and teaching-- https://incompetech.com/
Where is it?: 10 years of 'Monkeys Spinning Monkeys' on the internet : NPR
This is one among many items I will regularly tag in Pinboard as oegconnect, and automatically post tagged as #OEGConnect to Mastodon. Do you know of something else we should share like this? Just reply below and we will check it out.
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