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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."
If not, wouldn't that violate the whole non-commercial use part of the CC agreement?
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.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
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.
Sample this!
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.
-- (Score:i , Imaginary)
I kind of think of Revolverlution as an open source album. Public Enemy released a few of their tracks on a website, and had a contest for the best remix. The best one got on the CD once it was pressed.
PE has been in the forefront of digital music releases for some time now. Def Jam wouldn't release "Bring the Noise 2000", so PE released it online. Def Jam sued, said they owned all rights to PE music, even though this was all remixes, and didn't want to sell it anyway. In the resultant dust-up, Chuck and Flav split from Def Jam, released the single "Swindler's Lust" for free to show their anger at being owned, and helped in the start of Atomic Pop, what was one of the first Internet focused labels. Atomic Pop released "There's a Poison Going On" (with Swindler's Lust) for $8 download only, $10 pressed, with an autograph from Chuck. They eventually folded, and it was weird seeing "Poison" at Virgin for $18 when I got it for $10. Chuck still has some links from http://www.rapstation.com/ and http://www.bringthenoise.com/ used to be a PE oriented site, now looks like Fark for Hip-Hop news.
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.
"Content's a bitch."
Flikr/del.ciou.us
I hate it when I slam my head into the keyboard too.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
The Creative Commons licenses generally offer exceptions to copyrights. From the CC FAQ:
Is Creative Commons against copyright?
Not at all. Our licenses help you retain your copyright while allowing certain exceptions to it, upon certain conditions.
From Chuck D's perspective, I don't think that this has a much to do with remixing as sampling in general. Now, there is an artistic aspect to remixing itself. For example, see what DJ Danger Mouse did with Jay-Z's Black Album and the Beatle's White Album before it was shut down.
But either way, a large part of Chuck D's success with Public Enemy was the music produced by the Bomb Squad on their It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet albums. On those albums, the Bomb Squad sampled tons of music to produce those tracks. This site has a list of many of them. And in fact, sampling existing music has been part of rap since the beginning with DJs mixing tracks. Such production, though, is not viable today due to the crackdown on such practices without paying royalties, and actually paying royalties would have enormous cost. This issue actually came up in the testimony Chuck gave before Congress regarding file-sharing (where opposing testimony was given LL Cool J).
With Creative Commons, artists would be able to sample existing music for their own tracks and be able to sell them, while still respecting the copyrights of the original artist and avoiding the financial burdens that royalties impose.
This (Google cache) interview with Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad and Chuck D discusses some of this stuff further.
"There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone."
- Duke Ellington
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.
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.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
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.
to bring your site to a grinding halt.