He is known for winning the Free Music Archive's competition to create a copyright-free replacement for the song "Happy Birthday to You" whose rights were once owned by Time Warner.
He often collaborates with other musicians: Kaleidoscope (2012) incorporated more than 40 artists internationally,[2] and his narrative album Emergency Songs (2011)[3] is a co-creation with singer and lyricist Alanna Lin (a.k.a.
[5][6] Over the years Turner has released all of his albums via Creative Commons licenses “as a means to escape the constraints of traditional music composition / distribution”.
[7] He is a former Featured Commoner and has spoken alongside artists such as Curt Smith about the benefits of CC licenses for musicians and other content makers.
[8] In 2013, WFMU and the Free Music Archive held a competition[9] to create a copyright-free version of the ubiquitous “Happy Birthday to You”.