Before the Internet, any of us who had creative ideas and / or projects had to look for producers, contacts, someone to discover our work, etc. Self-publishing was an almost impossible task, since it required a lot of money, therefore, the need for a sponsor.

Today, there are several platforms that allow people to show their creativity without the need for a sponsor. The Internet is creating a community where artistic work can be freely shared and reused. Non copyrighted music is one of them.

Artists from all over the world make their music known by offering their works to people who need them for their own projects. This is a trend that is growing rapidly and that shows a new paradigm in our society that is more related to a community-based culture.

The twentieth century will be known as the one in which corporate culture became a standard of our society. At the end of the last century, technology changed the way we look at the world. During the first 10 years of the new century, the Internet revolutionized our culture so quickly that we have witnessed the struggle that the old paradigm had to catch up with what was happening in our society. We began to have access to new technologies that allow us to make videos, presentations and even movies. With YouTube, we had the possibility of self-expression. People wanted to tell a story, produced their own videos and used the music they had available. In the second decade of the 21st century, the new regulations restricted the use of copyrighted material about them. And that was when the artists opened a new door to use content: non-copyrighted material.

In general, the only requirement for non-copyrighted material is to add the author in the credits or pay the license.

Today we can find a lot of content without copyright on the Internet. This allows us to work on our own projects with an availability of high quality resources and also provides exposure to artists from all over the world.

As I said before, this is showing a transformation in our society. We are building a community-based culture that leads to self-sustainability. And we can see it clearly in the arts.

Creative Commons, a non-profit organization was born in 2001. This organization is “dedicated to building a globally-accessible public commons of knowledge and culture. We make it easier for people to share their creative and academic work, as well as to access and build upon the work of others. By helping people and organizations share knowledge and creativity, we aim to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world.” The free culture movement is aligned with open source software, where systems such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, among others, have allowed the creation of robust and secure content management systems (CMS) that have allowed the creation of websites in a way easy. Developers around the world work together to create free software that anyone can use without restrictions with ongoing development of new technologies in a common effort, allowing people to have their own websites, at low cost.

With this in mind, we can imagine a future that is very different from what we have known in the past, where creativity will not be limited to those who have resources, but will be accessible by all.