Creative Commons Remix Contest

victors writes "Creative Commons and WIRED recently went public beta with CC Mixter which is a Commons pool for music samples and remixes. The site creates a tree of remix/sources inline with every entry and has Flikr/del.ciou.us style tagging. The launch includes two remix contests and features samples and cuts put in the Commons by Chuck D., Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Danger Mouse and tons more. The winners end up on Chuck D.'s next CD and a CC promo disk and there's already been some pretty astounding entries. Of course every upload is under a CC license that allows legal sampling including contest entries and the big name source tracks and samples. I took over the coding for the site from Lucas Gonze (of WebJay) who did a proof of concept. We're currently working on making the site source part of the CC Tools open source project. That version will support remixing of any media including images, videos and Flash mods."

Comments

The Beastie Boys? David Byrne?

[Dagny Taggert]

I enjoy their music, but how are struggling musicians supposed to make a living with CC? Maybe I don't get it, but these guys can afford to give their stuff away now...I can't.

do you know how old "re-mixed" material is?

[museumpeace]

The Feb issue of Scientific American has an editorial on the history of the idea of copyrights...it begins with a terse description of how Shakespeare borrowed most of Romeo&Juliet:

If William Shakespeare were working today on Broadway or in London's West End, he would be spending a lot of time with lawyers. The Bard adapted Romeo and Juliet from Arthur Brooke's poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, which Brooke, in his turn, had based on a French translation by Pierre Boaistuau of various Italian stories. The history of creative works, whether Romeo and Juliet or the Beastie Boys' "Pass the Mic," is a chronicle of "borrowing" from others. Intellectual property lawyers might use a harsher word. But the framers of the Constitution always intended to provide owners of creative works with only limited monopolies, ensuring that the public gets the right to fashion new works from old..

Re:do you know how old "re-mixed" material is?

[Quixote]

ensuring that the public gets the right to fashion new works from old..

As Newton said, "If I have seen further, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants" (or something to that effect).

Without "borrowing" or creative re-interpretation, most creative efforts will wither and die. Not surprisingly, the artists understand this and agree with this; it is the media companies which are the roadblocks. To them, art is just a product that needs to be sold to the masses; it doesn't matter how it is produced, as long as noone else "steals" it (just like Nike doesn't care where the sneakers are made and who makes them).

Re:do you know how old "re-mixed" material is?

[museumpeace]

And I think it is worth emphasizing, especially to purists [typically with little creative work to their credit] that slam plagerism, that it is the remix, Shakespeare's derivative work, that has been esteemed the greater work of art by 300 years of critics, teachers and audiances, not the work of Brooke. I would venture that the one moment in history when any work of literature or music is "perfected" occurs only in the mind of the artist and only at the point when he or she ceases fussing with the product. From that moment on, others may find a way to make the result more appealing or more compelling or just plain better at least to some audiance in some particular time and culture.

Re:The Beastie Boys? David Byrne?

[Dr.Opveter]

They have to perform a lot. Many bands that give away their albums on mp3 would like the increase their popularity so that next time they're in town you will go see their concert/performance.
Anyway, doing a couple of CC tracks doesn't mean you can't release a regular full album later that might score increased sales because of the band/group's exposure by the CC tracks.

Re:The Beastie Boys? David Byrne?

[dcarey]

I understand your situation is different if you are making music for a living, but in recent times there has been such a surge of amateur musicians who are technologically-savvy.

Take me for example. I had the unfortunate realisation at age 25 that I was not going to be a rock and roll star, so I switched gears and got a CS degree. But I told myself that I would always make music, but it would have to be in hobby form from now on. Fortunatley with a CS degree I would be able to afford some nice toys for that hobby (at least in theory ...)

Well it worked, and I'm now in the process of recording an album. No, Island records has not flown me to NY for a posh recording session with cameos by Steven Tyler, but I make great sounding music recording the album 100% digitally, with not much $$ invested, thanks to technologies like this (heck, the software was free -- Garageband).

The point is many people like me who always wanted to record in a studio now can -- they can build one that is relatively inexpensive -- and those are the type of people that enjoy tools like this.

I would not be surprised in the future if we see a few people out there who were working professionals who suddenly become famous for musical works they did as a hobby with no intention of making it big in the first place.

Re:The Beastie Boys? David Byrne?

[andymac]

Sometimes just getting your track sampled and looped in someone else's can expose your music to other audiences. Besides, if it's not a super hot/top ten track, which you could license for big cha-ching, why not let it go. This seems analogous to letting folks d/l your back catalog for free (or some nominal fee), because you're not expecting to make much money off sales for those albums (you've either already made your money or you haven't - of course there are notable exceptions a la Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon). If you've already made your money (or not and have written those "losses" off), why not give it away, you might gain a new audience, who - if they like your stuff - are far more likely to purchase your next album and see you in concert (where artists actually make their money).
Seems like a great idea to me.

Re:The Beastie Boys? David Byrne?

[evilmousse]

"There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone."

- Duke Ellington

Re:Where is the talent here?

[lucas_gonze]

Yup, you are missing something. Check out CC Mixter's tagline -- "mixversation".

Remixing is about bouncing ideas back and forth, getting in a conversational flow, a jam approach that isn't done in real-time. It's like a mailing list or a forum. Here and there you see really cool things, the rest of the time it's just people talking.

So all sound engineers are talentless?

[PenguiN42]

Maybe I'm missing something here. What is the big deal of remixing something?

How about going out and creating new and original music? Taking other people's work and mixing, splicing, etc...just really doesn't seem much like talent to me...

By your logic, every mixing engineer out there is doing something that's "not a big deal" and requires no talent. After all, all they're doing is taking other people's work (the tracks recorded by the band) and mixing, splicing, (and balancing, and arranging, and adding effects, and creating a proper stero image, and creating the proper dynamics, and making sounds "fit" together into a cohesive whole), etc to make a song. That doesn't seem much like talent to you...

Which is, of course, ridiculous. Doing good sound mixing is an incredibly difficult and artistic process. Doing good re-mixing, therefore, can be as well.

BTW: most remixes use only a small number of tracks from the original work (often only the vocal), and are built around completely new compositions to create what's effectively a new song. Would you also claim that in every band and songwriting team, only the vocalist has talent? Because that's where your logic leads.

Re:Common? Yes. Creative? eh...

[victors]

yea it's flamebait.

For the record: all art involves stealing. Every piece of music you've ever enjoyed stole directly from somewhere else. Sorry.