To enable musicians to promote their music while sharing it for free and legally on the web. The difference with the Myspaces of the world being the whole free music ethos behind jamendo, what with Creative Commons licenses and free downloads. Just like Flicker for photos under CC, jamendo is the world's #1 content provider for music under CC licenses, and has been for a few years now.

We're all about independent, unsigned, mostly unknown artists. So that sets us strongly apart from sites like Last.fm, Spotify and Deezer which people turn to mostly to listen to well-established artists and the new hot artists with strong media traction. This means the jamendo community (about 700,000 users at the moment) is entirely made of people who are really into indie artists and discovering new music. Which is great! They like to search and discover, tell their friends about this or that hidden gem they just found.

From a strictly quantitative point of view, the trend is definitely upward: more and more artists are learning about CC licenses and free music and finding they're great for them. Free music is definitely expanding outside of the politicized, militant crowd that was as its core and inception, helped by well-established role models like Nine Inch Nails or Curt Smith (ex Tears for Fears), and even the Beastie Boys who have released some CC-licensed material. But widespread acceptance from the general public is not there yet: most people still associate free music with bad music. It will take time to change that image, but we're going in the right direction.

It's working very well! We now have several thousand clients internationally, and more keep coming every day. These are of all types: from small video projects to fast food restaurant chains - I'm talking audiovisual synchronization and background music all together; those are the two types of licenses we deal with. I think our model is showing that you can be an unknown, self-produced artist and make money by finding people who need music for their professional projects. The key was to put that unknown artist in touch with that professional looking for music, which is what jamendo is doing. Our model is definitely viable, which doesn't mean it will overtake the entire music industry: let's say it's perfectly adapted to 99% of musicians in the world who are not Coldplay, Daft Punk, 50 Cent or Nine Inch Nails.

The bigger vision is what I was referring to above, and it's downright political: proving that CC licenses and money-making are compatible. That open and free doesn't necessarily mean zero money. And everyone has something to gain from such a model: artists who want to share their music with the world but not get ripped off if people want to use it commercially, and professionals who don't need or can't afford major label, well-established artist license fees. Also, there's a strong message about cutting out the middle man, i.e. the numerous intermediaries who all take a percentage along the chain, so that everyone can get a better deal, on both ends of that chain. And of course this message extends far beyond the music industry.

Let's say we're sitting on the fence between the free music community and the general public. Jamendo visitors can be music fans who don't know much about CC, just as much as hardcore free music activists. Our forums are open to all our members, and there is some debate and questioning about CC licenses in them, but then again for people who really want to discuss the ethics and politics of CC, there are better suited places than jamendo. I guess we can say we're a vector for popularizing and vulgarizing CC licenses, which is not a bad start.

Not really. They're playing on a different field, that of traditional-industry, copyrighted, well-established artists' music. They're having a negative effect on the traditional music industry rather, by continuing to make it clear for people that music is free, but that's another debate altogether. Actually, when it will have become obvious for all that listening to music for private uses is free, then there won't be a difference between jamendo and itunes anymore, so their success is actually good for us!

Continuing to do what we do, but more of it, and better, is the goal. Our revenue is going up fast, but we're still a start up, we still need to prove that we can be profitable. So that's the definite goal. In a years time, we will have reached that goal, i'm pretty confident.

I think both are necessary. User-generated music critique is good, and can bring out great music from the masses of the internet, but professional ears are needed at some point in any process, when a choice need to be made.

Great company. One of jamendo's first principles was precisely to allow independent artists to be available on torrent sites, so we're all for that. It's in everyone's interest that the music spread as widely as possible, the artist's of course, but jamendo's too. If an artist that's on jamendo becomes tremendously successful in part thanks to torrents, that will have a positive impact on jamendo. We're all about non exclusivity anyway: music needs to flow freely.

It's pretty hard to keep up, you're right about that. We listen to everything that comes in, at the moderation stage, to keep copyrighted material out as best we can, then we give special attention to those artists who choose to give jamendo licensing rights, obviously. And that represents about 25-30% of the music on the site.

Actually I have a playlist on hand, with 30 artists who are among our best who have chosen to get licensed by jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/124349

There is still a long way to go before CC is accepted by the general public as a credible alternative to traditional copyright, but time is on our side, and the fight must be fought..