Jamendo has been one of my favorite sites for finding free-licensed music (i.e. music licensed under Creative Commons Attribution or Attribution-ShareAlike licenses) for projects. So, it's very sad for me to find out that it has had a flagging reputation over the last year or so. I first noticed earlier this year that some artists were disappearing from the site. Originally, I attributed this to artists becoming disaffected with free culture in general, which worried me a lot.
However, I've had a chance to track down a few of the artists and find their own comments (and complaints). Several have expressed concern over dealing with Jamendo's management, which has apparently become somewhat inattentive -- especially with issues surrounding the Jamendo Pro service and the other ways artists can make money through the site. Perhaps they are understaffed or overloaded. I don't really have the whole picture, but whatever the actual details, it seems a fair number of free-culture musicians have been leaving Jamendo.
This is really bad news for remixers and fans looking for the music. The software platform of Jamendo is unequaled, as far as I know. I really like the way I can easily search Jamendo not only for types of music, but also limit my search to free-licensed music I can use. So far, Jamendo is unequaled in terms of its search and discovery capabilities.
If the trend continues, finding functional alternatives is going to be a challenging necessity.
Photo Credit: Sergio Piquer Costea / CC By 3.0