Jamendo is a Luxembourg-based music website and an open community of independent artists and music lovers. A subsidiary of Belgian company AudioValley, and Independent Management Entity (IME) since 2019. Originally, Jamendo was a music platform under

Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

s. As of October 2015, Jamendo no longer presents itself as such but rather as a free streaming service for personal use. The stated purpose of Jamendo is to bring together musicians and music lovers, while providing opportunities for artists to become better known and earn money through its licensing services. The name "Jamendo" is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsjam session" and "

crescendo In music, the dynamics of a piece is the variation in loudness between notes or phrases. Dynamics are indicated by specific musical notation, often in some detail. However, dynamics markings still require interpretation by the performer dependin ...

". At the heart of Jamendo lies an economic model that provides free music download and streaming for Internet users, while allowing artists to sell commercial licenses of their music for commercial use, such as music synchronization for audiovisual creations or

background music Background music (British English: piped music) is a mode of musical performance in which the music is not intended to be a primary focus of potential listeners, but its content, character, and volume level are deliberately chosen to affect behav ...

in a public space throug
Jamendo Licensing
Based in Luxembourg, Jamendo has a community of 3 million users in 2017. In late 2013, the catalog has 400,000 titles, shared by over 30,000 artists from over 150 countries. In May 2015, the homepage of the site indicates a total of 460,000 titles and 250 million downloads since the launch. In December 2016, 40,000 artists from more than 150 countries are part of Jamendo, sharing more than half a million songs to be streamed and/or downloaded for free.

History

Jamendo S.A., originally created under the name Peermajor SARL in 2004, was launched in January 2005. It was funded in June 2007 by Mangrove Capital Partners,

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

's investors. Starting in January 2007, Jamendo tested an advertising revenue sharing program which was later dropped. In December 2007, the second version of the website was launched, offering a new design and new functionalities. On 18 June 2008 the platform passed the 10,000 albums milestone. At the end of 2008, Jamendo launched Jamendo PRO, a music licensing platform for commercial use, making Jamendo music available for the synchronization of audiovisual projects (film, TV, advertising, web and corporate videos, video games, apps, etc.) and as

in public places (stores, restaurants, hotels, etc.). June 2009 saw the release of Jamendo's first

mobile application A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on des ...

s for Android and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

. That same month, Jamendo's co-founder and CTO Sylvain Zimmer received the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

. In December 2009, a partnership was made with

Deezer Deezer is a French online music streaming service. It allows users to listen to music content from record labels, as well as podcasts on various devices online or offline. Created in Paris, Deezer currently has 90 million licensed tracks in ...

, giving Jamendo artists the opportunity to release their music on Deezer as well. Jamendo faced financial difficulties in early 2010 and started looking for investors. Stability returned when MusicMatic (now Storever), a

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

-based company specialized in music solutions for businesses and public places, entered Jamendo's capital. In August 2011, Jamendo obtained the "PUR" label from the French authority

HADOPI The French HADOPI law or Creation and Internet law (french: Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des droits d'auteur sur Internet, ; or, loosely in English, "Supreme Authority for the Distribution of Works and Protection o ...

, which was renewed the following year. On 24 April 2012, the third version of the website was launched. It offered a new design, new functionalities allowing for more artist promotion, ten new genre-specific radio channels, etc. Jamendo logo

On 8 December 2014, Jamendo PRO turned into Jamendo Licensing, showing an entirely reshaped version of their commercial service. As of October 2015, Jamendo officially became Jamendo Music, showing its willingness to clearly differentiate the two parts of the company (Jamendo Music and Jamendo Licensing). Jamendo Music intends to provide music for private use only, and Jamendo Licensing is a marketplace where anyone can sell and buy music, whether it is for a multimedia project (television, movie, advertising, video production) or as background music for commercial space. By 2018, Jamendo was a subsidiary of Belgian company Audio Valley. In February 2019 Jamendo has adopted the Independent Management Entity (IME) status. Created by the Directive 2014/26/EU transposed in Luxembourg Law in April 2018, the IME legal status allows commercial entities to perform activities similar to national copyright and related rights Collective Management Organizations such as, for copyright, SACEM, SGAE, GEMA and SIAE.

Sharing music for free

Jamendo offers artists the opportunity to publish their music for free under Creative Commons licenses (and also the

Free Art License The Free Art License (FAL), (french: Licence Art Libre (LAL)) is a copyleft license that grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works. History The license was written in July 2000 with contributions from the mailin ...

in the past). In order to avoid contractual litigation, artists joining Jamendo cannot be registered to any collecting rights society, such as GEMA in Germany, SGAE in Spain, or SACEM in France. More flexibility is observed in other collecting societies, recognizing music under Creative Commons licenses as long as commercial use is excluded. This is notably the case for SACEM in France. In the United States,

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

and BMI recognize the use of Jamendo by their registered artists. Each artist has a profile displaying uploaded albums and singles, along with artist information. These profiles are managed by the artist, with access to various features and tools like stats, notifications about interaction with the music, fan messaging, etc.

Website

Users can listen to

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

encoded audio files (96 kbit/s) and download in

(192kbit/s) and

Ogg Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...

formats. Listening and downloading is free, unlimited and without any advertisements. The site is available in eight languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Portuguese. Each user has a personal account in which extended features are available, for example, creating playlists, saving their favorite songs and albums, becoming a fan of an artist, sharing on social networks, reviewing tracks or albums, and following their favorite artists. The website also promotes new music through an editorial feed on the homepage, along with top charts and genre-specific radio channels. A search engine allows users to look for specific artists or titles, but also search by tags, which are chosen by artists to describe their songs (genre, instrument, mood, theme, etc.). Jamendo is integrated within

media players A media player could refer to: *Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media *Media player software, software that plays digital media *Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media *Windows Media Player Wi ...

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desk ...

, Cantata,

Songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 5000 ...

Clementine A clementine (''Citrus × clementina'') is a tangor, a citrus fruit hybrid between a willowleaf mandarin orange ( ''C.'' × ''deliciosa'') and a sweet orange (''C. × sinensis''), named in honor of Clément Rodier, a French missionary who fir ...

and Amarok 2. It was integrated into

Rhythmbox Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player software, tag editor and music organizer for digital audio files on Linux and Unix-like systems. Rhythmbox is designed to work well under GNOME, but can function on other desktop environments. I ...

from version 0.9.6 until 2.9x, then removed for technical reasons, but the library can be accessed from Rhythmbox's Grilo plugin. Jamendo is not integrated into

Banshee A banshee ( ; Modern Irish , from sga, ben síde , "woman of the fairy mound" or "fairy woman") is a female spirit in Irish folklore who heralds the death of a family member, usually by screaming, wailing, shrieking, or keening. Her name i ...

by default, but can be integrated with a plugin.

Business model

According to one article on Jamendo's business model, Jamendo's use of voluntary donations represents the first serious attempt for a file sharing site to provide a direct way to pay artists. In 2007, Jamendo provided an advertising revenue sharing model for artists. In 2016, Jamendo generated $1 million for independent artists, and passed up to 65% of revenue to the rights-holders. Jamendo works with Storever (formerly MusicMatic) to offer music solutions for chainstores and public places.

Jamendo Licensing

The Jamendo Licensing service is an intermediary between artists and third parties who wish to use the music in their projects. Based on the CC Plus concept, the licenses are granted mainly for the uses not covered by Creative Commons licenses. Jamendo’s artists are free to opt in and out of the service, which grants them an up to 65% share of all income generated by their licenses sold on the platform. This share is determined by several factors, such as the type of contract, the amount of sales, and so on. Jamendo Licensing answers different needs in

music licensing Music licensing is the licensed use of copyrighted music. Music licensing is intended to ensure that the owners of copyrights on musical works are compensated for certain uses of their work. A purchaser has limited rights to use the work without ...

: Catalog offers low-priced music licenses for synchronization in audiovisual projects (advertising, film, television, video games, mobile applications, YouTube videos, etc.), while In-Store offers background music solutions for commercial spaces (stores, shops, hotels, restaurants, etc.).

References

External links

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Jamendo #hot100 Charts
{{Authority control Creative Commons-licensed websites Online music and lyrics databases Luxembourgian music websites Free music download websites