From P2P Foundation

Principles of Open Music:

Any open music business proposal should adhere to the following five principles, if it wants to be viable against the free filesharing systems:

"1. Open File Sharing: users must be free to share files on their hard drives with each other.

2. Open File Formats: content must be distributed in MP3 and other formats with NO digital rights management protection.

3. Open Membership: content owners must able to freely register to receive compensation.

4. Open Payment: users must be able to access the system using either credit cards or access cards purchasable anonymously in cash from retail stores.

5. Open Competition: there must be multiple such systems which can tie into each other’s file sharing databases. It must not be a monopoly through legal design." (http://shumans.com/articles/000033.php; see also: http://shumans.com/p2p-business-models.pdf)

More Information

See related entries on Open Access, Open Content, and the more radical Free Music Philosophy.

We are keeping track of Open Music Business Models as well.