Open Music Lives Happily Ever After

Now here's a heartening tale of musicians doing all kinds of creative things with CC music and getting their just desserts - including 15 minutes of fame with a certain lonelygirl15, and heaps of dosh.

Not So Lonely

Geek that I am, the only thing that really interests me about Lonelygirl15 is the technology behind the follow-on Web site:

On a shoestring budget themselves, the trio supports the Web site with open-source technologies like MySQL databases. "Our entire backend that supports the Web site is free because we use WordPress," Beckett said. "Five years ago, you would have had to buy UNIX boxes and build a custom content management system."

That is, a LAMP stack like just about every other Web 2.0 startup - not so lonely. In this respect, it feeds off the same forces that made the original videos possible:

The Lonelygirl15 episodes cost virtually nothing to create. All are shot with a $130 Web camera. The sound is recorded from the internal microphone. Two desk lamps provide the lighting. Beckett's laptop is the computer required to record the segment.

No wonder Hollywood is in trouble.