The Daily Tarheel

Issue date: 4/24/08 Section: Diversions

As the music world continues to be turned on its head, everyone is scrambling to get on the front end of the curve, on the cutting edge rather than the chopping block.

And what better place to provide the proverbial kick in the rear than the Research Triangle Park, an area known for the very innovation that the music industry needs?

In the spirit of RTP, it was an idea drawn from the world of software that led WKNC's local music director Steve "DJ Stevo" Salevan right to the front lines of that cutting edge.

Like all great ideas, Salevan said the inspiration for WKNC's Sessions project came to him in the shower.

"I was just thinking about all the awesome live music that we have here and how it is really a shame that a lot of people outside the Triangle don't get a chance to hear most of it," Salevan said.

What he came up with was an innovative approach using top-of-the-line recording equipment and a DIY spirit to record local bands in spaces around N.C. State's campus and publish their music under a Creative Commons license, an alternative to traditional copyright laws that allows artists to retain whatever rights they choose.

In the agreement arranged with the artists by WKNC, the station reserves the right to play the recordings on air without having to pay royalties to the artists, who in turn, get mixed and mastered recordings that they can use however they please.

In addition, WKNC places the recordings on www.jamendo.com, the largest collection of Creative Commons media on the Internet, for users to download, remix and edit on their own.

Salevan said his interest in Creative Commons is rooted in his other passion, computer programming, citing the progress made in software through General Public Licensing, which allows users to edit source code to make their own improvements.

"Once something is released into the Creative Commons eco-system, it supports sharing. It's sort of how it works in the software field, creating a music sharing source," Salevan said.

While Salevan's passion for Creative Commons media and open source software made the Sessions Project an innovative idea, it wasn't until Greg DeKoenigsberg, community development manager at Raleigh's Red Hat, got a hold of the idea that it really got rolling.

Salevan, who was working at Red Hat during the summer, approached DeKoenigsberg with the idea of a music project centered on Creative Commons.

Continued...

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