The Creative Commons license is the (in my opinion brilliant) licensing model created by Lawrence Lessig.  Please check these links for more details about why it should be the only game in town, as they do a much better job of explaining the concepts involved than I could.

As to what the license that we've chosen allows,  the simple explanation is that you can do whatever you want with whatever you can get out of our material (sample, re-use, mash, steal lyrics, etc.) provided that you give us proper credit and that any derivative work must be licensed under the same precise license.  Yea viruses!

There are several reasons for this. First and foremost is the fact that we don't want anything to do with the music industry as it currently exists. We have come to the conclusion that the music industry, and its legal backing, is actually harmful to the continued creation of music and its progression as an art form. Between DRM, payola, overly restrictive copyrights, and legal nightmares, the industry seems to have very little to do with music any longer. And given the egregious amounts of money involved, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The problem, in our opinion, with this system is that it prohibits the growth of music as an art form, and stifles humanity's chances of gaining anything non-monetarily profitable from it.

These arguments have been made by many, including Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University, so I would recommend that you follow some of these links or play with Google to learn more, but to summarize: There has been, for most of human history, a rich heritage of music and other arts from which people could draw entertainment, enlightenment, inspiration, etc. This heritage, until recently, was shared among any who could participate in the experience and these people could, until recently, take from the experience and build upon it in a way that frequently drove the progress of art through the ages. Now, governments feel the need to legislate in ever more restrictive and lengthy ways, not only who can participate, but what they can take from it. Hegelian synthesis, artistic borrowing, and derivative works, are just some of the things that are formally disallowed. This will necessarily lead to a situation where music cannot grow in the way that we have come to think of as natural. Thankfully, Dr. Lessig has provided something of an alternative: the Creative Commons license, which is what we are using for the music here. For more information of what this means in terms of the music available here, see the relevant FAQ article.

Now climbing down from the moral high-horse, though, there are several more tangible benefits for both us and you in our distributing music in this manner, such as:

• One of the points of this site is to allow anyone who enjoys this music to be part of the process of its creation (See the relevant FAQ article for more information).
• By not being restricted to the manufacture and sale of CDs, and all of the overhead costs that they entail, we can release a lot more tracks. Furthermore, we can release many versions of the tracks without having to narrow differing versions down to “the best” (a necessarily arbitrary distinction) for release.
• You can pick and choose what you like, and listen however you prefer. CDs made the concept of song order on an album more of a suggestion than anything else, and MP3 distribution has almost done away with the concept entirely, and we welcome the idea. We’re actually planning to write a playlist (M3U) generator for the site, so that you can create a playlist and then download or stream it from the site in any order you choose.

The answer to this one is threefold, though they’re obviously all connected:

• First, we’re trying to create a community who enjoy, or at least appreciate the music that we’re making. Within that community, we are trying to empower people to be involved in the creation of the music through commentary, criticism, and advice.
• Second, we’re trying to create a community of people who will steal from us like maddened little fiends. Hopefully, there will be a group of people that, even if they don’t like what we’re doing, will like parts of it, which they can then grab to make music of their own. We're even more than willing to fulfill requests (e.g. Can you give me a flac version of that drum loop in the refrain of  fill-in-the-blank?).  Obviously, then the viral nature of the share-alike portion of the creative commons license will kick in and they will have to be willing to (or hopefully want to) share their music in the same way.
• Finally, we’re trying to create a musical community with the capability of working online and at any distance. By publishing music while it’s in progress, and never really considering a piece to be finished, hopefully other people would like to contribute to what we’re making. In turn, hopefully we can contribute to what other people are making as well. Mash-ups, remixes, collaborative efforts - the sky is the limit.

There was a time when, as a young man, I thought that music would make me rich. I even came close once, though not very close. Eventually, I gave up on the idea and found other ways to make a living. Somewhere along the way I became middle-aged (or at least I turned 30 - is that middle-aged?). I’ve given up on making music a couple of times, but I’ve always come back to it, and have realized that it’s just something that I enjoy doing. Specifically, I enjoy making the music that I want to make and hear, in the way that I want to make it, in my time, and with no concern as to the commercial viability of the final product. I actually enjoy it more when I don’t have to think of it in terms of being a final product at all. So the answer to the question is no – I don’t see anything to gain from compromising my morals, though I don’t want to go all the way and condemn those who make music for different reasons than I do. To each their own.