24 December 2005

So, it's Christmas today (or it will be tomorrow, depending on where you live). Wouldn't it be nice if you had a bunch of freely and legally available Christmas songs you could listen to all day? Burn on CDs and hand over to your relatives? Share with your friends without the fear of being sued to death by big record labels? Well, here's a list of 110 128 songs which are all explicitly released under a Creative Commons license (no, I did not consider songs which are merely "podsafe"!) and thus can be shared, listened to, and sometimes even modified freely. There's a great variety in style, mood, and genre of the songs: some traditional, some contemporary, some happy, some sad, and some just plain funny. So here's the list: Single MP3s:

• Natalie Brown - Jingle Bells
• Danny Morris - Santa's Gone Surfing!
• Bullette - Christmas Blank
• Bullette - The Finest Gifts
• Jonathan Coulton - Podsafe Christmas Song
• Jonathan Coulton - Christmas Is Interesting
• Pete Green - Everything's Dead Pretty When it Snows
• Robert Gayler - Christmas Bells
• Sonny Jim - Christmas
• Shira Kammen - Christmas Day in the Morning
• Derek K. Miller - We Three Kings
• High-C & DJ Manticore - How George Stole Christmas
• Sarah Whiteley - Still, Still, Still
• Sean McGaughey - Homeless Babe
• Skoria - Christmas Impro

Compilations:

• Kemper Crabb - A Medieval Christmas (11 songs)
• Diorisiy - Christmas Carols (19 songs)
• The 8bitpeoples - The 8bits of Christmas (8 songs)
• Austin Rudy Christmas - Carolina Christmas (5 songs)
• Goyette Christmas Carolers - Various Christmas Songs (10 songs)
• Kevin MacLeod - Holiday / Christmas Collection (8 songs)
• Oilville Christmas Dynasty - Christmas Compilations (39 songs)
• Ottmar Liebert - Winter Rose (13 songs)

This list is by no means complete, I'm sure. So if you happen to know some more Creative Commons licensed Christmas music, please leave a comment! I'd love to hear about it. (Btw., the nice image on the right is taken from the Wikipedia. The author is Malene Thyssen, and the image is dual-licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license) Merry Christmas everyone! Update 2005-12-24: Added "We Three Kings".
Update 2005-12-25: In the press: Boing Boing, Creative Commons Blog, netzpolitik.org, Technorati, digg.com, del.icio.us and lots more. Added "How George Stole Christmas". Added "Winter Rose". Added "Still, Still, Still".
Update 2005-12-26: Added "Homeless Babe". Added "Christmas Impro".