In the Spring of 2001, within just a day or two of the EFF's publication of the Open Audio License, I created the Open Music Registry. A few years and tens of thousands of music downloads later, I closed the site. The following statement was posted on the site at the end:
The Open Music Registry is now closed.
A final XML data file of the music listed in the Registry database has been posted to alt.binaries.music in the file final_omr_entries.zip.
Recently, OMR founder Stuart Whitmore asked artists to spend a couple minutes, and (optionally) a little paper and postage, to help reduce his exposure to legal problems resulting from running the Registry, which some people decided to abuse by attempting to unlawfully distribute music for which no Open/Free license applied. Although he had spent countless hours and hundreds of dollars, many artists apparently did not find the Registry worth the investment of a few minutes and a few cents.
The Open Music Registry certainly was not a pointless effort, however. No download counts were kept for the first 18 months or so that the Registry was open, but after counts were started there were over 72,300 downloads requested for music listed in the Registry. In a recent (but short-lived) survey for artists, all of the artists who responded indicated that the OMR had increased the downloads of their music.
Stuart gratefully thanks the artists who did make a good faith effort to confirm the legality of their listings, including:
Since additional confirmations may be en route, that list may be expanded, but only for a short time.
To the artists who found it "too much trouble" to confirm their listings, the music community can thank you, in part, for the loss of this resource. To the EFF, Stuart would like to point out that it would have been polite, at least, to inform him (as possibly the earliest and most active supporter of their Open Audio License) that they were abandoning the license.
If you are interested in music licensed with more Freedom in mind than what you get when you buy a CD from the major entertainment corporations, you may be interested in what you find at Creative Commons.