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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.
Just because something has artistic merit, doesn't mean that distributing someone else's musical creations (albeit in an altered form) without permission is not theft. It's still theft. It's just artistic theft.
--
RumorsDaily
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
How is it theft?
With "traditional" filesharing, you can argue that if you download Christina whats-her-name's latest album then you're not going to buy it and therefore Miss Aguilera is losing out on the 15 cents that the RIAA will begrudgingly pay her.
But the record companies are never going to release Christina Aguilera mixed with The Strokes, so who is losing anything? For there to be a theft, there has to be a loss.
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 +++
Go get Sonic Foundry's "ACID". (http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/step2.asp?DI D=307)
Doing this stuff is a piece of cake. I really can't believe all the attention this gets, especially given how simple it is.
It's a lot of fun, but does a better job of showing how much all pop music is the same than allowing one to devise exciting "new" compositions.
Leave aside wether it is theft or not, let me indicate why this activity is illegal.
Copyright. Copyright is a right given to the author to allow them to control how thier work is used, with the intention that (but not restricted to) the rights granted to them will promote production of further works.
There means that, if you wish to use an authors work , then you have to get thier permission. They can say no. It's that simple. Consider the GPL, which relies on copyright. It is not acceptable for a company to take GPL code, add a few bits, and then sell it on. The same applies to musical works.
Granted, there is the clause of fair use. However, fair use is inherently limited, either in scope (to a few friends prehaps), or in extent (a 5 second sample, or a shot quote from a book). With my understanding, fair use doesn _not_ extend to the works outlined above.
(Consider also, that there is more than just the perfromer, there is also the writer to be considered, in terms of claims to copyright).
Personally, I think they suck.
Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of Project Gutenburg and a short Perl script I just threw together, I give you the first paragraph from my latest novel:
A Moby Tale of Two Dick Cities
It call was me the Ishmael. Best some of years times, ago -- it never was mind the how worst long of precisely -- times, having it little was or the no age money of in wisdom, my it purse, was and the nothing age particular of to foolishness, interest it me was on the shore, epoch I of thought belief, I it would was sail the about epoch a of little incredulity, and it see was the the watery season part of of Light, the it world. Was it the is season a of way Darkness, I it have was of the driving spring off of the hope, spleen it and was regulating the the winter circulation. of whenever despair, I we find had myself everything growing before grim us, about we the had mouth; nothing whenever before it us, is we a were damp, all drizzly going November direct in to my Heaven, soul; we whenever were I all find going myself direct involuntarily the pausing other before way -- coffin in warehouses, short, and the bringing period up was the so rear far of like every the funeral present I period, meet; that and some especially of whenever its my noisiest hypos authorities get insisted such on an its upper being hand received, of for me, good that or it for requires evil, a in strong the moral superlative principle degree to of prevent comparison me only.
Mashes are using tracks as if they were "object trouvés" (found objects) and blending them in an audio collage.
:-)
This is an accepted technique in the visual arts. It does not produce great art. Its not meant to. It borrows from others to juxtrapose and blend and possibly morph in order to communicate something beyond the original pieces.
Its should and most likely will be granted the same acceptance in audio art. The concept is identical. Its an audio collage, a reassemblage of sound tracks with tempo and/or frequency shifting to create a new wortk of art.
The "Art of Noise" originally used audio samples of any machinery whatsoever and frequency shifted them to achieve different notes, assigned them to a MIDI keyboard and "played" an electric drill or a dripping faucett (evident in some versions of "Paraniomia".) Nobody sued them then.
I know that the "RIAA Bitch" is probably livid about somebody daring to use any tracks without shelling out money to the RIAA but she'll just have to get over it, make deals with the minor artists who are doing it and try to co-opt them into the xxAA's system by finding somebody who is willing to put out CDs of the stuff.
Just wait until the technology advances enough and some kid using a Mac does the same thing with a couple of movie classics (peeling the set from one and the action from another and the characters from a third. Imagine Jet Li as Audrey Hepburn in the "Philadelphia Story" re-enacting the "Tombstone" shoot-out scene set in turn of the century Vienna in Freud's office.)
Jack Valenti or his xxAA successor should go absolutely ballistic.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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
I believe every geek in the world has mixed "Christina" with some "strokes" atleast once.
This whole concept of something ephemeral like an image or a sound being intellectual property is a manufactured concept. Consider that if somebody snaps your picture on the street and uses it in a jeans ad, you can sue them because you didn't sign a modelling release form. However, a news reporter can publish your picture or broadcast a recording of your voice free and clear. You don't inherently own your own image or the sounds you make, you only control them in certain contexts which are defined by laws. The laws aren't fundamental principles of the universe, they are rules we made up and they can be changed.
The recording industry only exists because complex, expensive recording and transmission technology was invented before today's cheap and simple technology that does the same things. If Edison had somehow invented computers and the Internet before the phonograph, there would never have been a reason for a recording industry. We would be accustomed to making and trading recordings of performances since the beginning of the 20th century. It would be completely ridiculous for somebody to jump up and say that this is suddenly evil, and there is going to be a new industry that acquires proprietary rights to performances and sells copies on proprietary media. But it will be a great boon to musicians because they will get 5 or 10 cents for each copy that sells for $20. Huh?? Are you nuts??
Until recording technology, musicians and other performance artists got paid only to perform. They have been able to make more money for a while, and a huge industry has been able to evolve that has made 100 times more money than they have. Well that's all fine, but musicians got along for centuries without any of it. Things have changed and we no longer need the temporary technology or the rules, so let's evolve and move on, and stop moralizing endlessly about it.