Help
This is help for the Music page of this website. For general Help, go here.
The information here is arranged in a FAQ style, to enable users to find answers to their questions easily.
The links to download songs point to .zip files. What's that about? Songs files should end in .mp3 or something similar.
I believe in the power of open source. Everything I do, I do with open source software. From making music, right down to building this website, I have used open source software all along. And when it comes to distributing what I have made, I want to stick to my philosophy, and want to distribute my songs in the brilliant Ogg Vorbis audio format. However, to protect users' against virus threats, Yahoo! allows only files with certain extensions to be hosted on it's free Geocities accounts. And sadly, .ogg does not feature in this list. So, to work around this, I have put the ogg files in a zip archive and then uploaded them. So, in order to play those files, what you have to do is to download the zip archive, unzip it somewhere and then play the .ogg file like any other music file.
But why not use mp3 files? They can surely be uploaded and they offer small file sizes.
There are many reasons why I won't use MP3 files. First of all, it puts a lot of licensing restrictions on it's users. And even if I could legally use the MP3 format, I wouldn't do it. Primarily because I do not agree with the philosophy of the makers of MP3, and also because there is a better alternative available. Yes, MP3 does offer small file sizes, but Ogg Vorbis offers even smaller file sizes and better quality at all bit rates.
Ok, so I downloaded the .zip file. But what do I do with it?
That's an easy one. Just unzip it somewhere, and play the .ogg file as you would play any music file. For example, you could double click on it, and in all probability an audio player would pop up and start playing it. Some popular audio players that support the Ogg Vorbis format are Beep Media Player, MPlayer and Xine. In fact, as a rule of thumb, if it runs on GNU/Linux, it's sure to support Ogg Vorbis. From audio / video players to CD Burning applications like K3B and file managers like Nautilus and Konqueror, all have inbuilt support for this wonderful format. And for those who still choose to use proprietary operating systems, there is the now oblivious Winamp which is slowly being replaced by Quintessential Player. Again, as a rule of thumb, any audio player for any platform, that isn't made by a big corporation, is sure to support Ogg Vorbis. That's the popularity and impact of this absolutely fabulous format.
Wow! The quality is great! And even at such a low bitrate! Where can I get a software to convert my own audio files to Ogg Vorbis?
Ogg Vorbis is an open source project. And as such, there are many programs that can encode audio to this format, and many audio players that support it. Now, your best bet is to download the command line toolkit vorbis tools which is available as source and binary packages for all major platforms from http://www.xiph.org or Google it for binary and rpm packages for your specific distribution. In fact, if you have a relatively new distribution, in all probability vorbis tools will be installed by default. Grip is something that can directly rip CD's or encode tracks from your hard disk to ogg files. Something similar can be achieved in the Windows world by using Quintessential Player. Do visit http://www.xiph.org for a detailed list of software that supports this format. It has plenty of useful information about converting your existing collection to Ogg Vorbis and a lot of other interesting stuff as well.
What's the licensing policy for your songs? Can I redistribute them legally?
All songs on this site are provided to you under the Free Art License found on http://artlibre.org and you can only redistribute them in accordance with the regulations of this license. In short, you are most welcome to download them, listen to them all you want, and give them to your friends. You are free to modify them according to your wishes; you can basically do whatever you wish to do with it.
Can I sell your songs or can I charge money for them?
In a word, no. The free art license does not permit commercial redistribution or sub licensing.
Will you sell your songs? If I/we offer to license/buy your songs for a commercial release, will you sell them?
Again, in a word, no. The songs on this website are released under the Free Art License, and will continue to remain so. I will not sell them. And I do not accept requests/donations for custom/commercial projects. My music is not for sale.
So, basically, what you're saying is that you denounce commercial releases of albums; that you'll never release an album like a real artist?
No, that's not what I mean. Music is created for two reasons. One, it's created to satisfy inner urges of the artist – if I have something to say, but I have nobody to say it to, I'll make a song. Now, those of us who are Elevated will instantly understand what I want to say, and even those who are not can enjoy it, because blessings are not just for the ones who kneel. The second reason why music is created is to help people – to change people – to change the world. For one, music has changed my life, and I would definitely like to share my gift and change others as well. And this cannot be done by only releasing free music. People have to notice me to understand me, and the policy of free art doesn't quite fit the bill here. People aren't really interested in stuff they can have for free. They only want what they can't have. It's a classic case of the forbidden apple. For example, rather than searching the web for free music, people would rather search p2p sites for pirated music.
People will notice me better if a powerful video of my song is released, rather than if I just put it up on my website. So, I have clearly set the boundaries. I'm going to create separate tracks for commercial release and separate tracks for release under the free art license. Those released under the free license will only be released on the Internet.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not denouncing free art. In fact, I support it completely and I encourage people to use the free art license. I'm just saying that I want to reach out to everybody, and not just those who have a fast Internet connection. Making a commercial release also has a nice side effect that the music can be made available to people all over the world, irrespective of the part of the world they live in. If you would like to discuss this further with me, please contact me by using the information available here.
I don't want to get into all this hassle. I just want to listen to your songs. Can I do that?
Yes, you are most welcome to download and listen to my songs! And please give me feedback!
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