Jamison Young, originally uploaded by dominick.chen.
When I started accepting donations, John Green said it best – “this isn’t charity, this is an experiment in community”. Even though I’m not an official charity, accepting donations from the public has been a great way of making a connection between those who this project has been able to help and those who have provided the funds to make that help possible.
In my previous blog post of “Meet a Donor” I introduced you guys to Hank Green (although I’m sure almost everyone reading this blog is already familiar with Hank Green and the vlogbrothers). Hank decided to match my “Xbox 360 challenge” by donating the funds equal to that of buying a new Xbox 360. I used those funds (after a rather remote and shaky journey) to help sponsor a child name Rithanu in the Chittagong-Hill-Tracts.
In this blog post of “Meet a Donor”, I’d like to introduce you guys to someone who has blown me away with his level of generosity and compassion: Jamison Young.
Jamison Young is an Australian born singer who lives in Prague. Even before he donated any money, his contributions to this project have been invaluable. Jamison licenses all his music under the Creative Commons. Not just that, but the specific license Jamison choose lets people use his music (in both for-profit and not-for-profit capacities) without having to pay Jamison a cent for the rights. It’s Jamison Young’s song “How Far” that has been the theme song for this project ever since the second video went online.
And it’s also actually been Jamison Young’s generosity with his work that inspired me to release all my videos, blog posts, and photos under the Creative Commons. I already thought Jamison was a generous guy – but his latest contribution blew me away. One of Jamison’s song actually got featured in the soundtrack of the new X-Files movie. For a guy that normally gives his work away for free, this was one of those opportunities where he actually earned some well-deserved money on his work. And you know what he did? He gave it all away.
Jamison Young at the new X-Files Movie, originally uploaded by jamtea.
So, when voting ends for my latest video, I’ll be going back to Bangladesh to execute whatever you guys have voted for. Depending on which options I end up doing, Jamison’s donation will be enough to cover either a large chunk – or the entirety – of one of the options. How far can this dreamin’ go?
That’s simply amazing – It’s wonderful to hear stories from those who are that invested in helping those less fortunate. I’m really excited to hear about the projects you’ll be able to focus on when you get back to Bangladesh.
Take care Shawn!
Hey Shawn,
A pleasure to be a part of your project. This film use was great news for me as i’m self publishing my art. Part of the problem is that the large charity organizations all want to deal with the big stars like u2, yet there is heaps of art that sounds great that can be used in so many ways and create such a great result for the organization. I started a project a long time ago called hungry artists feed hungry people on myspace http://www.myspace.com/hafhp i started to gradually understand the reality of many of the charity organizations. They are interested in the rock gods. Yet the reality to my mind is that these media stars are a big part of the problem and part of the reason for poverty. When people are hearing the song “one love” “one world” written via the likes of U2, some might think that problems are being solved. Yet part of the reality is that a publisher is collecting something. Creative commons is part of the solution and its great that i inspired you to use the licenses. I bumped into the CC licenses through the hafhp project. I hope that more artists go with the hafhp idea. I just wanted to be true to my word,
its great work your doing shawn, keep going. thanks a lot.
the more i come back and check ur updates bro shawn the more i smile.. mashAllah wa brvo.. ur doing a wonderfull job. barak Allah feek ameen.
to people like mr young who give their money away.. thanks soo much..bless u always.
cant wait to see whats gona happen when u get back to bangladesh inshAllah.
Just to add, its not so much that i am giving my money away. Shawn is doing a great job of letting the world know about the songs I wrote. I feel i am giving a bit back to Shawn and his project.
The funds that go to help people in Bangladesh, come from fox films, the bulk of the revenues that arrive through the use of any song arrive through the public performance of a song, not the license fee paid for the use.
Its interesting to see people like Bono (one.org) go on about how much they are giving to the world, yet in the same breath these media icons are still getting paid revenues through the use of their songs in public performance and also massive licenses fee’s for the use of the sound recordings. I’d like to see some of these artists and media representatives that are being paid their weight in gold as the seconds tick in a film, give their rights up for the term of copyright, even if it was just for 20 minuets.
These Icons are cashing in on poverty, the problem is the centralized media. I am not giving away my money, i have a good business model. Just so people don’t get it mixed up… thanks.