5. What’s the Free Music Archive? What’s the idea behind it?

The Free Music Archive is a large-scale collaborative project that WFMU launched last year. It is a vast online library of great music that is free and legal to download. We took inspiration from the Creative Commons movement, which is a licensing scheme that is more flexible than standard copyright.

I’m sure everyone has discovered a lot of free and maybe even legal music on the internet, but it’s very difficult to find GOOD music. The idea with the FMA was to pull together groups that are already presenting great music, radio stations like WFMU and KEXP, venues like Dublab and Issue Project Room, and festivals and record labels, to invite great independent artists to participate. The music is all licensed for non-commercial personal use by the artists themselves, and many tracks can be legally used in podcasts, videos, radio shows, etc.

There is promotional value for the artists to have their work featured in the Free Music Archive because many radio stations, podcasters, and independent producers will have access to it. We encourage the site’s users to “tip” artists they like by donating money to the artist’s paypal account. The FMA is valuable to radio stations and webcasters because it is a collection of music that is separate from what the RIAA controls, and if webcasting fees ever rise above what is affordable to small non-profit stations like WFMU, we will have a source of great music to fall back on.

The FMA already has over 17,000 songs, and it will continue to grow over the years.