An update from Bjorn Lynne 2017

Hi all!

It's been a long time since I wrote anything, so here's a little update from me. Actually, the fact that I'm writing this was kind of triggered by an old fan writing in and asking if there were any new emails going out on the "Bjorn Lynne email newsletter mailing list", because the last time he got such an email newsletter was back in 2012, and he was asking for any new Bjorn Lynne CD releases.

I am not really active with releasing new "solo albums" anymore, because it seemed to me as the years went on, that I spent a huge amount of time and effort on creating those albums, and fewer and fewer people bought them. I didn't officially retire as a solo music album composer, but I just haven't been doing it.

On the other hand, I have made a very successful business out of my music licensing / stock music production company, Lynne Publishing -- doing business as www.Shockwave-Sound.com. At this site I offer music tracks for licensing for use in media, I've had this site going since April of 2000 (Can't believe it's been that long!) and I've made enough money on my music and my music business in that way, to be able to make a nice and comfortable living for myself and my family.

I'm now 50 and with a comfortable economy, I'm able to focus a bit more on health and leisure, so I've taken up some outdoor activities, hiking, taking long walks in the beautiful nature here in Norway, and playing tennis.

I'm also the chairman of the board of my local tennis club, Larvik & Stavern Tennis, a tennis club with about 250 members and 12 tennis courts. This is a voluntary position without any pay, but it gives me some pleasure to do this work for the local community and it gives me a more active lifestyle. I also work as a tennis instructor, about 6-8 hours a week in the evenings. It's nice to do something that's completely different from running a music business, and I love tennis as a sport. I started playing tennis 8 years ago, at the age of 42. Now I'm a player, instructor, tournament organizer and chairman of a tennis club!

I don't know if I'll ever make another "Bjorn Lynne music album". Probably not. I still produce some new music now and then, and put it out on the stock music site, Shockwave-Sound.com.

As for the old Amiga days, the demo-scene, the "Dr. Awesome" music etc, I have now "retired" as Dr. Awesome.  :-) I'm no longer taking part in reunions, interviews, demo-parties, tracker music competitions, disk magazines and all that stuff. After I took part in the "Amiga 30 UK" event in Peterborough a couple of years ago, where I was able to meet and greet a lot of the old Amiga folks and I was interviewed for the film "From Bedrooms To Billions: The Amiga Years", I decided, that's enough. The Amiga scene was fun, it was "awesome" ;-) and I appreciate those great times and all the fun we had, but it's now a closed chapter to me. You can find Dr. Awesome on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play Music and many other places -- those releases serve as a historical record of some sort. Here they are at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/Artist/DrAwesome

So, what about the future for the "solo artist" musician Bjorn Lynne? Well, maybe my time as a musician in *exactly that way* is probably finished and done with. I'm still a musician, I love music and I'm lucky enough to still have it as my daytime job. But I don't know if or when there will ever be a new Bjorn Lynne solo music album. Who knows?? Years go by, interests change, other activities come and go. Since my debut album "Hobbits & Spaceships" in 1992, I think I've released approximately 25 albums. You can find many of them at iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google Play Music and other places. Here they are at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/Artist/Bj%C3%B8rnLynne

Here are a few photos of me and my adventures in 2017. One pictures me at the Molde Jazz festival last summer. One is with myself and my wife Hanne at the Roland Garros tennis centre in Paris last summer. One is my daughter Lisa (now 17) and me at a local restaurant last spring. And one is me inside my new tent, since I bought myself a tent and some camping gear and started to spend a few nights outdoors in nature. :) And finally, one photo is of myself on top of the "Besseggen" mountain range in Norway last summer.

Take care for now!:

Me at the Molde Jazz Festival this summer. I went to lots of concerts, including 3 concerts with Pat Metheny, each one in a different band/setting, and I also got the opportunity to chat with Pat Metheny himself on a couple of occasions.

My daughter Lisa (now 17) and myself at a local restaurant last spring.

I bought myself a tent and took to spending a night out and about in nature every now and then. 

Me, #5 from right, standing at the back and wearing the bright blue T-shirt, as part of the coaching team at a tennis beginners' course at Larvik & Stavern Tennis Club.

My wife Hanne and me, at court #2 at the Roland Garros tennis centre in Paris, visiting the French Open tennis tournament.

Using Bjorn Lynne music in YouTube videos

Hi all!

Sometimes I get emails from people who wish to use my music in their YouTube videos, and they ask for my permission to do that.

To use my music in your YouTube videos, you have two choices:

1) You can just use it for free. There will probably be a "copyright claim" on your video, that appears automatically. This copyright notice does not cause the video to be blocked, and does not have any negative effect on your YouTube account. The only difference it makes is that you will not be able to monetize your video. While the copyright notice is on your video, I will receive some tiny amount for each view that your video gets (I believe it's something like $0.02 per 1,000 views). This money comes from YouTube/Google advertising -- it's not paid by you.

2) OR, you can purchase a commercial rights license to the music track. You can do that by going to www.Shockwave-Sound.com and buy the track from there. The price is around $30.00 or so, and that includes a commercial rights license to this music track. When you have this license, the "copyright claim" will be released from your video, and you may then also monetize your video, because then you have the commercial rights.

Buying a music track or album from iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon or some place like that does not give you the commercial rights to the track. Those purchases only gives you a personal listening license. Buying the track from Shockwave-Sound.com does give you the commercial rights.

So long as you are okay with the Copyright Notice existing on your YouTube video, from which I make some tiny income, then I'm okay with you using our music in your videos, for free.

Credits for the music is always expected -- regardless of whether you have bought a commercial use license or not. The same goes for all creative content that's part of your video -- you should always credit the creator(s).

If you wish to purchase a commercial rights license to a track that that track is not found at Shockwave-Sound.com (not all my music is for sale there), then just contact me personally and I will sell you a license directly.

Thank you!
--
Bjorn Lynne

No, you may not use my music for free in commercial projects!

I just received an email from a producer of a Travel television show that would be aired on "an Arabic TV channel, with more 200 million viewers world wide", and he wanted to know if he could have the use of my music for this for free because he had no budget. I would, however "be credited" for the music.

Quite frankly, this is an insult to me as a music composer and producer. What the hell is somebody doing producing travel programs for an audience of 200 million viewers, and hasn't even got $100 to license music, but has to go out and beg composers to use their music for free, in a massive project like this? What's up with that? 

Why do people think that composers should be happy to give away their music for free use, in return for credits? If you are going to use our music in public, in broadcast, in commercial or for-profit projects, we are entitled to payment and to get credit for our work.

Does the TV station, who broadcasts to 200+ million viewers, offer their advertisers free advertising on their channel, oh, hey, in return for "credits"?

I really would like to use some considerably stronger language here, but suffice to say I reject this, and any similar offers.

If somebody wants to use my music for charity, for selfless projects to help others in need etc., then you may ask me to use my music for free, and I'm happy to consider it.

If you're working commercially and you want FREE music, you are a joke!

Hullaballoo over Universal Music Group (UMG) copyright claim on my music

Hi all! A few days ago I wrote a note on my Facebook page about my frustrations over a copyright claim on my music track, by Universal Music Group. I was angry with UMG that they took my music track (as incorporated as background music in their audio-book release) and wrongfully put that music into YouTube Content-ID for their monetization, but most of all because when I disputed the claim and explained the situation, they rejected my dispute and upheld their claim. I was upset, and I wrote a bit of an angry rant on my Facebook page.

By the way, here is the music track in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BISlp85Njts ("Kingdom of the Persians").

The fact that my Facebook rant "went viral" was a complete surprise to me. I usually get like 15 likes when I post something :-), so I was unprepared for the deluge of shares and comments, and completely surprised that my case made the front page of Digital Music News, Torrentfreak and other popular websites. I was offered help, money and crowdfunding by people who wanted to help me get a good lawyer, and I was contacted by volunteer / non-profit lawyers offering their help and support. Wow! All this support was of course much appreciated, albeit a little bit overwhelming. My "case" was on the front page of several popular websites and was the basis of discussion forum threads with hundreds of replies (none of which I took part in).

The issue is now resolved and I have to move on. I've got a lot of work to do. For reference, here is my original Facebook post:

Can I just state publicly that I hate Universal Music Group (UMG). For the second time now, they have hijacked my music and claimed ownership of it in all YouTube videos that include my music, thereby monetizing my music.

UMG, or somebody who produces content for them, have apparently picked up my music track "Kingdom of the Persians" as stock music / library music and used it as background music for an audio book. They have then released the audio-book on CD (fair enough, if they have paid the license fee), but they have also put the audio-book into YouTube's Content-ID system, which creates a digital audio "fingerprint" of the music, and then proceeds to sniff out any YouTube videos that contain this audio, for the YouTube system to then send a "Copyright notice" to the Youtube video uploader, telling him that his video "contains music owned by UMG", and then put advertising on the video, for which money is paid to UMG.

One thing would have been to have done this unwittingly, by mistake. But I have "disputed" the claim on YouTube, written an explanation and told them about the origins of this music -- then waited the FULL 30 DAYS that the claimant has to process the dispute, only to be told that UMG have reviewed the dispute and UPHELD their claim!

The only reasonable thing to do here, for me, would be to hire a top lawyer to go after them legally. But realistically, it's like $350 per hour for a lawyer and a 3 hour minimum for a case, so I'm looking at over $1,000 just to get something started. I feel powerless and I'm left to watch my music being raped by a media giant, who sits behind closed curtains, ignores the rightful owner of the music and just goes "Nah, we'll take it anyway". Screw you, Universal Music Group!

This is the second time they're doing this with my music as well. They did the same thing also with my other track, "The Desert Nomads".

And here is the follow-up I posted a few days later, when the issue had been resolved:

Hi all. As an update to this situation, I am happy to say that the Universal Music Group claim on my video has now been released.

I have not had any communication with/from UMG, but what seems to have done the trick is that I used the "appeal" process at YouTube after I was told that my original dispute had been rejected by UMG. Going through the "appeal" at YouTube is a pretty scary process, because YouTube uses some very strong language to warn you that you may face legal action and/or your YouTube account may be shut down. I did it nevertheless, I was that hell bent on getting UMG to stop monetizing my music and claiming ownership of it.

After a couple of days, I received notification from YouTube that the UMG claim against my video had been released. I think that the "appeal" process is the only thing that UMG takes seriously, because the way it works is that, if they still want to uphold their claim on the music, they have to issue a legal DMCA takedown notice and provide legal argumentation as to why they own the rights to that video/music. Obviously they could not do that, because the music was composed by me, and it was very easy for me to prove that. So it appears that, when they saw the appeal, they released their claim.

I'm still angry with UMG over their handling of this. First of all, they used non-exclusive stock music (which in this case happened to be composed by me) in a product and then entered that product into Content-ID at YouTube. This is explicitly against YouTube's Content-ID policy, which clearly states that in order to use Content-ID, you must fully own the content exclusively. Which they didn't. Admittedly, anybody can make a mistake like that, and I wouldn't have made a noise about it, if they had then released their claim when I disputed it and explained the situation. But they didn't. They waited the FULL 30 days that they are allowed in which to respond, and then they upheld their claim. That's when I got angry.

I don't know if UMG ever even looked at the dispute. Quite possibly, it is their policy to always allow the full 30 days to pass, and then uphold their claim, no matter what, knowing full well that the "appeal" process is so scary. In my opinion, this is speculative and legally questionable. Right now, they are probably monetizing hundreds of thousands of videos that contain audio that doesn't belong to them at all, deliberately and knowingly. It's the second time they've done this exact thing with my music (first, with my track "The Desert Nomads" and then with "Kingdom of the Persians"). And, as one guy commented on this thread, these are the same guys crying so loudly about people copying their music.

Thanks for all your comments, shares and support in this matter! Much appreciated!

Two Christmas albums produced by Bjørn Lynne

Dear friends,

Now that Christmas is here, I wanted to give you guys a couple of tips if you wanted to put some traditional Christmas music into your homes. Here are two Christmas albums that I've produced. Perhaps many of you didn't know that I'd been involved with making Christmas albums :-). On these two albums I was the arranger, producer, and played some of the instruments. Other instruments were played by guest musicians and the various vocalists were hired for the job, so to speak. So here they are:

Lynne Music Project: "Favorite Christmas Songs":
Spotify /  iTunes / Amazon / Deezer
License the music for commercial or in-public use: Shockwave-Sound

Lynne Music Project: "Favorite Christmas Instrumentals":
Spotify / iTunes / Amazon / Deezer
License the music for commercial or in-public use: Shockwave-Sound

Merry Christmas!

Original Amiga Works and Early Game Soundtracks

Hi all,

Over the past few weeks I have been working on gathering, collating, cleaning up and sorting my old Amiga music from 1988-1995 approx. It has resulted in two album releases:

• Dr. Awesome: Original Amiga Works
• Dr. Awesome: Early Game Soundtracks

The "Original Amiga Works" album contains 105 different tracks that I composed using only an Amiga computer and various "tracker" software like Soundtracker, Noisetracker, Protracker, OctaMED and JamCracker back in about 1988-1993. The sound is untouched, exactly as output from the Amiga. I considered maybe fixing up the sound a bit, maybe make the left/right channels less extreme panned, applying some mastering, EQ etc. But after thinking about it, I decided in the end to keep them exactly as they were originally. I wanted the listening experience to be exactly as we remember it. This is a digital-only album, so no actual physical CD's are made, but it's divided into 5 "CD's" anyway, so it's a 5-CD album containing 100 tracks. It's really 105 tracks, but the maximum allowed number of tracks on one album was 100, so I had to join some tracks together into one sound file, in order to get the 105 tracks reduced to 100. The album, or its individual tracks, can be purchased and downloaded from CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon or other similar digital music services, or it can be streamed at Spotify, XBox Music, Google Play Music, Wimp and other streaming services. I hope you enjoy. Click here for a full track listing.

The "Early Game Soundtracks" album contains 3 virtual CD's and a total of 81 tracks. It contains some of the original video game soundtracks that I made for Amiga games and some early PC games, back in about 1988-1995. Some of this music (I guess most of it) was also made using only the Amiga and the 4 channels of digital sound, although some additional tracks were made with MIDI and synth sounds. Games include Qwak, Spinjam, Brat, Siege of Avalon, Bomberman, Cubulus, Shanghai and many more.
This album, or its individual tracks, is also available for purchase and download from CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon or other similar digital music services, or it can be streamed at Spotify, XBox Music, Google Play Music, Wimp and other streaming services. Click here for a full track listing.

It was fun to gather, clean up and release these old tracks and I guess they kind of serve as a "document" to the music I made using the Amiga computer back in the good old late 80's and early 90's.

I did also create several dozens more tracks on the Amiga, which are not represented on either of these two albums. But I had to be a bit careful when selecting the tracks to release, because in my old Amiga music days I made quite a lot of cover tracks, like "Mama" by Genesis, "New World Man" by Rush and many, many others. I tried my best to get those tracks to sound as good as I could using only 4 channels of 8-bit audio. Quite the challenge! But fun. :-) Obviously, for reasons of copyright, I could not include those cover versions / sound-alikes on these two albums for commercial release.

At long last an update, with new album release

Hi all,

Wow, I can't believe it's been that long since I last posted anything on this blog. I'm sorry about that. I'm still alive, and well. I haven't been hiding in a cave either. :-)

Over the last couple of years I have been very busy with main two things... (1) Running my music company, Lynne Publishing, and the stock music label Shockwave-Sound.com, and (2) Playing tennis and being active in my local tennis club as both the team captain of the veteran's tennis players team, a member of the board of directors of the club, an assistant coach and an arranger/organizer of events, tournaments, series etc. The photo on the right shows me on the tennis court earlier this year.


Those are the two things that take up nearly all of my time these days, and I'm really enjoying it. The music company is going well; I have about 350 composers from all over the world who have their music sold and licensed via my company.

I released a new album of my own personal music also, a couple of months ago. The album is called "Traveller", and it was my first digital only release, meaning that the album is released only as a downloadable album, and no actual physical CD's were made.
For this album I tried not to make it very "epic" or difficult. It has been a problem for me in the past that I've made some very big projects, and the next time I sat down to write music, I felt there was a huge mountain in front of me because I had to "surpass" my previous release, to make it even bigger, even more epic, even more impressive. So I decided to try to drop that feeling, and instead go back to basics and just create some nice, chilled-out tunes with an ethnic / world / fantasy kind of feel. I also deliberately wanted to make it a fairly short album, not one of those huge 79-minute epics. :-). Anyway, I hope you like how it turned out.

I will try to write another blog post already tomorrow, about some new releases of old music that I composed on the Commodore Amiga computer already back in 1988-1995. More about that tomorrow.

Bjorn Lynne music appearing in thousands of productions - what's up with that?

Today I received an email from Assad, who had come across my music in a game called SolarMax (I've never even heard of this game before, but that's not unusual) and he had done a little bit of research and found that the same music tracks were up for sale / licensing via the royalty-free music website Shockwave-Sound.com for only $30. So he was wondering - is this really the case? Can people really take my music and put it in their game... and pay only $30??

I wrote him an answer and I thought I'd share it here, since I'm often asked about this.

Hi Assad,

It's true, it is possible to legally license my music, for use in games and other commercial products, for prices starting from only $30. I have made my living on this for many years now. For the last 12 years I have made myself a good income with this business model. Actually, prices start from $30 but if you want to use the music for “bigger” projects, you have to buy the Mass Market License, which costs 2.5 x the amount of the Standard License. So if you see $30, that means the Standard License costs $30 and the Mass Market License costs $30 x 2.5 = $75.

SolarMax - Just one of thousands of
games and apps with Bjorn Lynne music

I own and manage Shockwave-Sound.com and we are working with about 300 composers who have their music sold via this site. We sell many, many licenses each day. After 12 years of having my music licensed like this, I have got my music used in maybe over 50,000 different projects (films, games, commercials, web sites, YouTube videos, installation, trade show / corporate videos, etc. etc.). Most of them, I don’t even know about. Sometimes I surprisingly come across my own music in some video game, iPhone / Android App, etc.

It may sound like $30 is a very small price to license music, but remember, it’s the same music that gets licensed by several hundred other customers, so this customer is not getting unique music. He/she only gets to use the music that potentially hundreds of other people are also using in their projects. I’m making a lot of money on this and I’ve made great success. So… I’m pretty happy with that!

Plus, it's kind of cool to come across my own music here and there, whether I'm watching a film like Respire (where I surprisingly heard some of my music in the background to one of the scenes in the movie) or playing a game like Vertigo on the Wii, where I also surprisingly recognized my own music.

All the best,
Bjorn Lynne

A new album release - "New Tech Haven"

Hi all!


It's been quite a long time since I posted any news on this blog, but that's just because I've been working on my music and my music publishing business. Anyway, I am now happy to announce the release of my first new CD album release for 3 years: New Tech Haven.

This album contains 12 tracks which I've picked out from the 40 or so tracks that I have produced over the past couple of years. I chose some tracks that I felt would fit nicely together as an album that would be quite mixed, but also somewhat coherent and make up a nice listening experience from start to finish. I guess you guys will be the ones to judge whether I managed it. :-)

The music is a combination of electronic, energetic, ambient, fantasy, sci-fi and technology inspired electro.

You can listen to the whole album from start to finish in low sound quality on this page. From here you can also find links to buy the album as a CD or as a download in high quality MP3 or FLAC.

All the best,
- Bjorn Lynne -- September 2012

Worms, Worms and more Worms

From time to time I'm asked about music that I composed for the many different "Worms" games from 1995 until 2006 when I worked as a composer of video games for Team17 Software.

To keep this music from "dying out" I've now made a lot of it - maybe not all of it, but everything that I still had on backups and that I could make sense of, arrange and present in nice and tidy way, and that sounded ok as music in its own right, outside the scope of the game.

I invested a huge amount of creative effort in all that Worms music through the years, so it's with pleasure that I'm able to present it on my website now, so that the music can "live on" and be heard by fans of the games, and the music itself.

The music is available in FLAC (lossless audio) or MP3 (256-kbps) from the Bjorn Lynne Download Shop.

Just a kind of demo video for the music track "Digital Concepts" by Bjorn Lynne (c) 2010.

I made this track in a couple of days in November 2010. It's nothing big or important, just a sort of electronic groove/tech or whatever you would call it, with some piano leads and a little bit of electric guitar strings here and there.

The music has not yet been released on CD, but the track is available to license for use in commercial and non-commercial projects, video/film, games/YouTube, multimedia/Flash/websites etc. If you want to use this track in any project such as this, you can buy the track from www.Shockwave-Sound.com and that purchase includes a License to use the track for such projects. It's "Royalty-Free" music, so you don't pay any royalties based on sales, views, anything like that. Just a one-time license fee.

White Fields track and video

It's the first of December 2010 - Winter has come to southern Norway, and I felt inspired to write and record this little music track which I called "White Fields". It's nothing big or important, just a little track with some synth washes, a chilled rhythm and some clean electric guitar licks with lots of reverb.

The photos are all taken by me, most of them yesterday, but a couple are from last winter, and they are all from around my neighbourhood, where I live, here in a small town called Stavern, about 100 km south of Oslo.

Well, I hope you'll enjoy it. Feel free to share it, spread this video link, etc. etc.

If you would like to license this music track for use in your own project, be it a game, video, YouTube, film, multimedia, any kind of project at all, then you can buy a license from www.Shockwave-Sound.com (search for "White Fields" in the search field there) and you get a license to legally use the track in your own media.