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Mashed-Up Music
An unnamed reader submits: "The New York Times is running this article (also available here) about "mash-ups:" songs created by digitally synchronizing instrumental tracks with vocal tracks from two (or more) existing songs. Often the source songs are wildly disparate, and the result is frequently better sounding than you might first expect. Who knew that Christina Aguilera mixes well with The Strokes or that Nirvana and Destiny's Child make a good combo?" This is an interesting answer to arguments that online music sharing is nothing but theft.
If you can find it, get "Uneasy Listening, Vol 1" although I think they only put out 1000 because he didn't license any of the songs he mixed on it. :-)
A good review of the album
Moulin Rouge featured a lot of very interesting repurposes and so called "mish mashes" of music. My favourite was the "Nirvana/Can-Can Techno Remix".
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
search on a p2p for evolution control committee. They put herb alpert and public enemy a few years ago with great results. The "rebel without a pause" still cracks me up.
+++ ATH0 +++
This has been going on for quite a while now, especially in London. The boomselection blog probably has the latest bootlegs available, although some of the more recent ones have been rather dodgy
Performance allows one to play (using the traditional term here) any song at any time without owing anyone.
No. Even local bands playing in bars have to pay royalties if they perform covers of other bands' songs.
Besides mixing Public Enemy songs with Herb Alpert songs they've also been on the wrong side of some lawsuits from CBS regarding 5 minutes of remixing of Dan Rather's broadcast.
You mean like Scarborough Fair crossed with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme? Or for that matter, 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night? Now, admittedly, Simon and Garfunkel were excellent musicians, but this stuff is from the 60's! Just because people are doing it now with computers, and illegally, doesn't make it all of a sudden new and cool. I haven't heard any of these new ones, but I'm guessing aside from the novelty, they probably sound like ass.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Illegal under the current copyright law - yes, it is. However, it was not illegal until 1909 when protection of derivitive works was added to the collection of copyright protections. From 1790 to 1909 - 139 years. The nation has been here only 227 years and for over half that time making derivitive works has been legal.
The 1909 copyright revision was done in response to such technological changes as movie making and early recorded music. It was the same revision that first allowed for corporate owners of copyright. I think maybe the 1909 Congress was being influenced by something other than the public good. Allowing innovative uses of someone else's ideas IS for the public good. It may hurt some individuals, but it gives a wider range of creativity to the public.
In 1790, George Washington set for a new law "For the encouragement of learning" not "for the protection of authors." The public is supposed to be the beneficiary of copyright law - whatever benefits the author might see are coincidental.
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
So, is the article wrong, is this CD available here in the UK? or has it climbed to #4 solely as an import CD? Does anyone know?
If it's available off-the-shelf here in the UK, I might very well go and get myself a copy!
behind copyright is that if the makers of originals aren't allowed to control derivitives, the originals wont be around to create derivitives in the first place. Thus , under that theory, allowing unautthorized derivitives impedes progress.
"I wonder why the RIAA isn't sending street teams out to every bar in the country (think of the thousands, nay 10s of thousands of bands, every weekend, playing in bars all over this great land of ours not paying royalties) with bands, or a stack of CDs."
I know another poster responed with the legalities of this, but I just wanted to note that the RIAA DOES send out teams of folks to bars and otherwise to check this stuff out. They do a small sampling, and check for compliance. Many content holders do this...for instance, you ever wondr why there are always TVs in bars, but they NEVER have the sound on? Its because if they have the sound on they have to pay a performance license for public usage...if someone comes in and notes this was playing and the bar hasn't submitted the appropriate forms and fees, they get sued for quite a bit. I had a friend who's bar was sued for something similar. He had the sound on during some prize fight and was reported.
But yeah, they do have teams that watch for this stuff. Not teams of millions in every bar, but they do make their rounds.
clif
The track is a mix of Come On Eileen and Bring Tha Noize - there's a crap mp3 of it hanging around on Audiogalaxy.
There's some interesting stuff here too.
A compilation of bootlegs was released, naturally a-la bootleg, on a collection called "The Best Bootlegs in the World, Ever." Here's a tracklist.
Radio 1 recently did a special on the whole bootleg scene (also called "mash-ups", "cut-ups" and "remixes"). You can listen to it in MP3 format here.
The best sites I've seen are:
Dsico
Boom Selection
Evolution Control Commitee
Due to a recent New York Times article, and because of these site's recent popularity among other online media sources, you may have to wait a couple of days to get to the MP3's on these sites.
A incompletely informal introduction to good mash-ups:
Hope this helps...
Go here
You can see their cheesy video for "Smells Like Teen Booty" while you listen to the cool song.