I was happy with being a member, got some modest payouts each year and otherwise didn’t really think about it. Then artists started releasing their music for free on the web, under “Creative Commons” licenses. I thought it was such a wonderful thing to do, and I wanted to do it too. Perhaps not for all my tunes, but a handful of them would be nice to share. That can’t be a problem, right?
Wrong.
I soon learned that STIM won’t let you decide much about your own music. 
As long as you are a member of STIM a big chunk of the rights to your tunes are in the hands of the organisation. The right to collect the checks from users. The right to distribute those checks, part of it to you and part to STIM. Also, you have “responsibilitys”. You can’t let anyone download your music for free, ever. And you definitely can’t release any music under other types of licenses. Ever. So I was pissed off, and have contemplated giving up my membership for several years. But I do like to make records, and I do like to get paid from airtime on the radio.
But, as of today, STIM has finally come to their senses and allows for individual tunes created by their members to be released under a Creative Commons license. Unfortunately there are restrictions, such as it has to be in “non-commersiall” context – you can’t use it in a place with ads, in example. Wich means you aren’t allowed to upload your CC-tunes to myspace?
But it is a glorius first step. It opens up lot’s of possibilities for songwriters, and gives us a little more freedom to do what we want with our music. Stay tuned for some CC-tracks to download right here!
