So Amazing, So Illegal 492
Jamie gave me a nice writeup of a mashup where the writer shares some random youtube mashup video that you maybe have seen before called the Mother of all Funk Chords. It's a pretty amazing artistic achievement and probably worth at least a quick glance of your time. But the larger point should be taken seriously. He says "If your reaction to this crate of magic is 'Hm. I wonder how we'd go about suing someone who "did this" with our IP?' instead of, 'Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,' it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page. Because, this is what your new Elvis looks like."
Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page.
Can anyone explain what the hell this means?
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Funny)
it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page.
Can anyone explain what the hell this means?
I think it means CmdrTaco is off his meds again.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
If your reaction to this crate of magic is 'Hm. I wonder how we'd go about suing someone who "did this" with our IP?' instead of, 'Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,'
what if your reaction is "this looks and sounds like ass" ?
Re:Um, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
what if your reaction is "this looks and sounds like ass" ?
What if your reaction is
(1) "Yeah, this is pretty good, but hardly the revolutionary work the summary makes it out to be", then
(2) "Are mashups really the future of music or in truth the *present* of music that's going to look as dated as hippyesque flower power and 'so 2000s' in ten years time?"... and then later on
(3) "This story- and the way it's presented here- is quite Digg-esque, isn't it?"
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Funny)
it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page.
Can anyone explain what the hell this means?
I'm guessing the writer thinks that the diet of the readers is Ramen, so we should go buy it at 10 cents per package with financing and work on some mashups? Last time I bought Ramen noodles it came to be less than $5, and most small places don't allow charges under that to be put on plastic.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funk isn't something you admire while you're sitting alone in front of a computer, it's something you groove to with a scotch on the rocks in your hand while surrounded by a bunch of classy ladies who like to shake what their momma gave them. The band isn't there to perform something they conceived in a dark room, they're there to play the crowd, to react and interact with the people as they get excited, antsy, tired, etc.
If this is the future of music, then the future is bleak indeed.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is the future of music, then the future is bleak indeed.
That bleak future is here when American Idol has the highest ratings and even the ones who get disqualified within one week of the premiere get record deals. Have you taken a stroll through the CD store and seen the mainstream music? It's almost as bad as Nickleback.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Creed. [offspring.com]
They broke up. Scott Stapp will remain a piece of crap.
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Okay, someone help me out here... what's so bad about Nickelback? I like a few songs from them... not that many, I'll readily confess, but if you had seen the German version of American Idol you'd know teh evil that is mainstream music.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Funny)
For your viewing... ah... pleasure?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt2JhuXMRMk [youtube.com] this is what Deutschland sucht den Superstar has brought forth.
Re:Um, what? (Score:4, Funny)
You owe me a new brain.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Funny)
That would be an awesome video if Technoviking showed up in the first five seconds and kicked his ass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nzEFMjkI4 [youtube.com]
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American Idol isn't kitsche it's just bad. Support local live music.
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Nickelback recycles their songs. Several years ago someone mathematically picked apart their songs and showed they are all the same.
I can't seem to find it, but I did find this example from the wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20070928171441/http://www.thewebshite.net/nickelback.htm [archive.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nickelback recycles their songs. Several years ago someone mathematically picked apart their songs and showed they are all the same.
There's lots of bands that only really have one song with rewritten lyrics each time. Nickelback is hardly the worst offender.
(I have no problem with Nickelback. It's nice, average middle of the road poprock. Not something I'd ever spend money on, but it doesn't give me homicidal urgest either, which isn't too bad considering some of the stuff out there.)
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Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Three words.... "Contemporary Christian music"
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My biggest problem with CCM is the artists I like (and there are quite a few) are inconsistent. For example, on Jeremy Camp's "Carried Me" there are *two* songs that I actually like; the rest I can do without (and one of the two is a cover, IIRC). Unfortunately, it often seems that Christian musicians put all of the time and effort into the message, and aren't particularly conc
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it often seems that Christian musicians put all of the time and effort into the message, and aren't particularly concerned about the musical wrapper, thereby creating music that is often, well, bland.
That is because most CCM that gets picked up only gets picked up because it sounds like whatever is being played on mainstream radio. You get an imitation of already bland music with
s/(girl|woman|baby)/Jesus/g
There's some good stuff out there. One of my favorite bands, even after ditching CCM and most of Christianity, is Burlap to Cashmere, a Mediterranean-flavored group with very poetic lyrics and great arrangements. Even DC Talk turned into something special, albeit very much a studio product, with the albums Jesus Freak and Supernatural.
The primary reason CCM sucks is precisely because it is mostly imitative: it's a microcosm where the barrier for entry is set low because if it were up to mainstream standards (which doesn't set the bar very high to begin with) there wouldn't be enough acts to sustain the industry. Christian artists (which really means "artists on Christian labels") are also subject to "The Jesus Quota," wherein an album won't be released unless it mentions Jesus at least five times or what have you. Additionally, since Christian music is viewed as a reversal of mainstream music, very few artists are willing to talk about the negative experiences that they have as Christians: being friendless at a church, feeling hopeless due to an external situation, doubting God or some aspect of God, etc. These are things that nearly every Christian has to deal with at one time or another but they are not often represented in music, hence the shallowness of the lyrical content.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. A Nickelback is a football term. Typically on defense you'll have what is called a "7 man front" comprised of either 4 defensive linemen and 3 linebackers (4-3 base defense, think Chicago Bears) or reverse, 3 defensive linemen and 4 linebackers (think Baltimore Ravens). Since you can have 11 men on the field at a time, that leaves you with 4 players, called "Defensive Backs". Typically two cornerbacks, one on either side of the field ~ 5 yards off the line of scrimmage covering the wide receivers, and 2 safeties, again, on either side of the field, anywhere from 10-20 yards off the line of scrimmage. Largely they're out there for pass coverage, but safeties will sneak up into the "box" (the 7 man front) to give you "8 men in the box".
Okay, so what does this have to do with anything? Well - if you suspect a play might be a passing down, you can trade one of your linebackers out for an additional defensive back. So now you have a 6 man front, but you have 5 defensive backs. That fifth defensive back is referred to as the "Nickel Back", because the formation is referred to as a "Nickel Package".
As an FYI, if you absolutely positively KNOW it's a passing down, you can opt to trade yet another linebacker for another defensive back, giving you 6 defensive backs, and that is (predictably) called a "Dime Package". That last defensive back could be referred to as the Dime Back, but that term is rarely used.
Re:Um, what? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Funny)
You can buy CDs with music already on them?
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah but the guy who burns them has like never heard of mp3s. He burns them as uncompressed WAV files or something, so you only get like 78 minutes per disc. On the plus side, he has a badass label printer.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does every band have to "push the envelope" or develop something "experimental" in order to not be called worthless corporate drones. Perhaps Metallica are popular because they make good music? It doesn't matter if it isn't genre defining or something 100% original. Its fun to listen to and I have a blast every time I see one of their shows. Metallica is just one example I used because you mention it in your post, but the same goes for a lot of mainstream bands.
What I hate are music snobs that think anything "indie" is god's gift to music, and anything you can buy from a record store is trash. I've heard plenty of indie and local bands who are absolute crap, but people insist that they're "awesome and misunderstood by the mainstream."
Just for the record, I love all kinds of music, both indie, local, and mainstream. Just because a band is able to sell millions of records does not in and of itself make it crap.
Re:Um, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because a band is able to sell millions of records does not in and of itself make it crap.
I agree, however it is true that most mainstream music sucks these days. It doesn't suck because it's mainstream, it sucks because it sucks.
You used to be able to see Billboard charts on iTunes going back like 60 years or something. It was pretty eye-opening, because normally that's protected info - you need to subscribe to their service to see it (and that's expensive). They issue takedowns to web sites that post it.
Anyway, in the 1960's and 70's you'd literally have stuff like Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, etc. all over the top 40 charts. These were mainstream pop bands! It started changing in the 1980's, which is not coincidentally when radio moved to fixed formats (previously DJ's just played what they wanted on many stations) and when MTV started acting as gatekeeper to modern pop. Nowadays a band like the Rolling Stones would be lucky to get a record deal at all.
Most "indie" bands I know, and I do know quite a few of them, really don't sound much different from 1960's rock music, whether they call themselves "experimental" or not. They're usually no more experimental than Pink Floyd or the Beatles were in their later period. That stuff literally would have been top 40 material in the past.
Being a top 40, mainstream band used to be something everybody aspired to, whatever kind of music they were in. It didn't used to be derogatory, and you weren't considered a "sellout" if you reached that status. That's different now because the type of music on the top 40 chart is different now, and because those charts are now controlled by mega-conglomerates by way of their radio and TV networks colluding to shove this crap down people's throats.
Personally, if a great band manages to break onto the top 40 chart, it's certainly nothing I hold against them. I don't say "well, now they suck because other people like them." That's what a snob does.
But, that doesn't mean I don't think most bands on the top 40 these days do suck. They just suck for other reasons.
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Anyone who tells me what I should like, whether it is music or food or girls, loses credibility with me.
Shut up with that crap, it lost its shine in high school.
Don't like something? Don't buy it. If I show up and tell you about The Black Keys show I went to and you think they suck, feel free to not like me. Babble on about what you think 'real' artists do the feeling will undoubtably be mutual.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, Great. Fan Fiction for Music. (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a niche just crying out to be filled, eh?
If this is the future of music, then the future is bleak indeed.
I share your sentiment, but am a bit more optimistic. There will always be geek pseudo-artists with more toys than talent, but just as PhotoShop didn't kill off photography, I'm guessing that this... this... whatever it is, won't kill off actual music.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Go listen to Frank Zappa and the Mother's 1966 "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet [wikipedia.org]", one of the most groundbreaking tracks of the twentieth century. It's "what freaks sound like when you turn them loose in a recording studio at one o'clock in the morning on $500 worth of rented percussion equipment" -- pretty much something they conceived in a dark room.
I'm pretty sure that Beethoven, Mozart, et. al. conceived some of their music in dark rooms.
Yes, live improvised music, or composed music varied in response to the crowd, is great too. But the fact that live stuff can be great doesn't preclude stuff conceived in a dark room by artists working alone also being great.
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If you think you can't listen to DJ music in public or at a party... uh? There are so many people who do so many crazy parties doing this kind of music live I can only name a few big ones: Mick Boogie, KutMaster Kurt, Kid Koala, Kruder & Dorfmeister. Hell, take it back a decade or
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funk isn't something you admire while you're sitting alone in front of a computer, it's something you groove to with a scotch on the rocks in your hand while surrounded by a bunch of classy ladies who like to shake what their momma gave them. The band isn't there to perform something they conceived in a dark room, they're there to play the crowd, to react and interact with the people as they get excited, antsy, tired, etc.
I'm sorry to break your balloon, but not everyone likes to listen to music in small clubs. Even those who like Funk (which would include me, BTW). I understand the crowd-rapport thing, but that only works if the audience is <300 IMHO (well, it may work for the BAND, but it doesn't work for me as an audience member). But in the smaller venues, usually the music is 1) too loud for the acoustics in the room &/or their PA system, 2) crowded full of drunk idiots (and at one time or in some places, drunk and smoking idiots), and 3) was accompanied by expensive parking in bad part of town & cover charge. If that's your idea of the future of music, I don't want any part of it.
On the other hand, the last concert I went to was free, was at the local University music department, the sound system was right for the room and adjusted properly, and I got to sit really close without having to climb over drunk jerks (or vice versa) in the process. Parking wasn't cheap, but that's all the two venues had in common. It was for these guys. [tyvakyzy.com]. Not exactly Funk, I grant you. But somehow I don't think they are particularly threatened by the competition from YouTube mashups.
But I don't go out for music all that often, as it's rare that a group I actually want to see will be in a venue I would want to go to. I don't care for the big mainstream bands that would book huge concerts, but the smaller bands tend to end up in crappy clubs that you couldn't pay me to visit. So, mashups like the one in TFA provide at least, some entertainment value now and then. But I'm over 50 so maybe that explains my low tolerance for aggregations of 20-something dipshits.
Plus, I like a lot of electronica, which often sounds a lot better on my own tuned up home sound system than in public venues.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Funny)
what's next, porn mashups from videos of people writhing around naked and alone in front of their webcams?
Actually, that was first
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Informative)
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It is saying they will be out of a job.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
not if one is a hipster doofus.
I'll confess it threw me for a minute, but I grinned once I put it together. It's a tad clever, if a bit awkward.
I think the guy is completely wrong about this being marketable - but hey, everybody is entitled to their own opinion and style. I think this is getting a lot of attention right now because it's novel and it obviously wasn't easy mixing it all together. But pull away from that and judge it purely as music - it isn't that great.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right, because nobody ever wrote any music or lyrics or anything like that. We wouldn't want to have to listen to, I don't know, something that we haven't already heard?
50 bloodsucking leeches in suits
As opposed to the bloodsucking leeches in sweatpants that can't think up their own guitar riffs or lyrics, and so they use someone else's? Or th
Re:Um, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
As opposed to the bloodsucking leeches in sweatpants that can't think up their own guitar riffs or lyrics, and so they use someone else's? Or the bloodsucking leeches that are too cool to pay for any of the entertainment they want? Those kind of leeches?
Er, no. See, leeches in real life are little critters that suck blood out of bigger critters. They nourish themselves at someone else's expense, hence the metaphorical use.
"Bloodsucking leeches in suits" makes sense in reference to someone who sues musicians, because he's enriching himself at the musician's expense: if he prevails in court, that musician will have to pay a hefty settlement. The dude in the suit gets richer as a direct result of the musician becoming poorer.
But it doesn't make sense to call the musicians themselves "leeches", because they're not removing the original content. If you mash up 50 YouTube videos to make a song, the original 50 videos are still there for anyone to watch. You're not enriching yourself at someone else's expense, you're just building a new work on top of the existing works you see around you -- and the term for someone who does that is "artist".
EMERGENCY BROADCAST NETWORK (Score:5, Informative)
Don't get me wrong, I think this kind of stuff is AWESOME. But it's not novel.
Emergency Broadcast Network was doing this kind of stuff in the early 90s, and released a record, Telecommunication Breakdown, that was all made in this style. They even wrote software to do it, and U2 had them do the ZooTV footage for one of their 1990s tours (including the alternate "Numb" video with machinery.) There are videos online. Their work was also a critique of the role of media, marketing, broadcast media, etc., so there was an extra political layer in there.
That said, I think the remixing of video samples in the same way that we remixed audio samples in the past is definitely an obvious (yet delicious) advance in the way we make music... or video... or art or whatever you want to call it.
Here's a link to get you started on EBN:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Broadcast_Network
Re:Um, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
It may be better but what you emphasize actually proves my point. What is good and what is popular do not always align.
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole write up was stupid. I think that he was implying that you're getting old and need to get with the times. The whole "this is your new Elvis" is a little sensationalist. This is no different than hip hop producers who've been mixing stuff for 30 years, it's just progressed over the years from mixing vinyl, using samplers, using computer, using computers to mash up songs, to mixing youtube videos now. It's not revolutionary, it's the natural progression.
Once in a while a transition in media is made quickly enough to where one person gets pegged as reinventing or revolutionizing the art. This is not that.
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I think you are supposed to give your passport to the FSM in tribute for the help he will give you in finding a new job, hence the lies on your linkedin page. The first of which would probably be 'that you understand what that meant' so you don't look so not cuil.
Mashups (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't speak for most people, but I personally can't stand mashups. I don't find anything entertaining about it, there's maybe three I've heard out of all that have been good. It falls into the same group as artists like 50 cent taking "Crazy Train" and putting it into a song as background vocals or whoever did the same to "Riders on the storm."
In short, get off my lawn!
Re:Mashups (Score:5, Informative)
I don't like them much either, but this isn't like, "Michael Jackson Thriller vs. Enya Watermark" or some other odd thing... if you watch TFV(ideo), he takes a collection of single-instrument tracks from other YouTube videos and mixes them all together to make a Funk song. It's pretty neat, though I have to confess to liking funk.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
mashups and mixups go back decades, and funk itself is thirty-forty years old.
I don't think the submitter meant that amateur funk was the future of entertainment. His point was more sensible, but not one that I agree with: if some amateur could produce something this good with found scraps on YouTube, then the big boys should be scared. Or, more simply, modern equipment has made the gap between amateur and professional musical entertainment get small enough that it should scare the professionals.
Personally I think that professionals will always have a place, at the very least finding
Re:Mashups (Score:5, Informative)
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Seriously, slashdot: wtf? if you're not willing to appr
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I despise the word "mashup", and people who use it too much, and the whole whiny hipster self-crucification feel of the discussion ...
BUT
Have you heard the infamous Cassetteboy records? They alone are worth all the hullaballoo about the genre.
Re:Mashups (Score:5, Funny)
Without mashups, we'd all be able to touch M.C. Hammer.
But without copyright protections... (Score:5, Funny)
nobody would ever produce music, art, or literature. Which is also why works need to be protected for a century or longer.
Re:But without copyright protections... (Score:4, Insightful)
nobody would ever produce music, art, or literature. Which is also why works need to be protected for a century or longer.
This is, of course, why no one ever produced any music, art, or literature before copyright protection was in place. *ahem*
~AA
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Indeed, and also why nobody produces any cultural products in countries without aggressive copyright enforcement.
Future generations will look back on this time in history and wonder why the recording industry was so hot to protect top 40 crap-pop.
Re:But without copyright protections... (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably not. I suspect future generations will look back and ask, wide-eyed, "Wow, they could just steal arbitrary two-note sequences from other artists dead less than the full millennium required by Disney? Didn't they worry about getting the death penalty?"
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Think your sarcasm detector needs a bit of tuning.
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>>>why no one ever produced any music, art, or literature before copyright protection was in place
They did produce music, but they also had crap jobs. Johannes Bach was little more than a choir director for his local church - and he hated it with a passion. At least today, with protection of songwriters' creations, they can live better lifestyles.
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>>>why no one ever produced any music, art, or literature before copyright protection was in place
They did produce music, but they also had crap jobs. Johannes Bach was little more than a choir director for his local church - and he hated it with a passion. At least today, with protection of songwriters' creations, they can live better lifestyles.
I got news for you: Artists today still overwhelmingly need crap jobs to make ends meet.
But businessmen get to buy exclusive rights for the couple hundred bucks the artist needs to make rent that month; and then get rich on the IP they conned out of the creator! Yay?
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>>>But businessmen get to buy exclusive rights for the couple hundred bucks the artist needs to make rent that month; and then get rich on the IP they conned out of the creator! Yay?
I defer my answer to someone who knows the business better than me: J.Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5:
You're missing the point. Several, actually.
First, having talked to distributors, I can tell you straight up that if a show has had too much online exposure and too many downloads, if it's too much out there, they won't distribute it because the market that would want to see it already has. So you're helping to destroy any chance of a show getting picked up. The logic of "well if I watch it that'll help to create a market for that show" is a convenient untruth downloaders tell themselves that has not once ever been validated. It just never happens. It's just a justification.
Second, when you download a show (and most of the shows that are downloaded don't fall into the category of "there's no other way to get it," they're downloads of popular shows and movies)..... it's not just that you're denying the producers/distributors of that movie or TV show the "price" of the DVD (or the commercials not watched). You're also having a direct impact on the creative people who made that show, and taking from them as well.
Actors, writers and directors get paid a fee to make a project, and then they get residuals, which are not a bonus, they are deferred compensation. If the show does well, they share in that; if the show tanks, they share the risk. When shows are downloaded free, those creative people get nothing. Why should this matter? Residuals are what keeps actors and writers and directors able to survive the lean periods between jobs, and those are legion. Those periods can last a year or two sometimes, during which your ONLY source of revenue is residuals.
They help to insure that the talent pool is available when needed and not out working day jobs to make ends meet.
Downloaders think there's no difference between data and entertainment, that everything should be free. Great, it's free to YOU. Now, how do you propose paying the people who produce these shows at the costs of millions of dollars, and the people who need to put food on the plate when they are getting nothing in return?
jms
From: "jmsatb5@aol.com"
Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:36:27 -0700 (PDT)
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Especially after the artist has been dead for 50 years.
And I say this as someone who's family still gets royalties from music my grandfather wrote in the 1940's.
Ice ice baby (Score:5, Funny)
Theirs goes, 'ding ding ding dingy ding-ding.' Ours goes, 'ding ding ding ding dingy ding-ding.'
The future of entertainment seems so old (so old).
Re:Ice ice baby (Score:5, Funny)
Pay back:
The Oscar Meyer Weiner song. "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner ..."
Or "Who wear's short shorts..."
God, if you say, "What?" I've never heard of those." I'll have to put this onion back on my belt. Because that was the style when I was growing up. Right after the Vietnam War. Ford was President and this Peanut farmer from Georgia was running against him, Chevy Chase loved to make fun of Ford on that new show "Live on Saturday Night". Taxes were....
What were we talking about again?
Re:Ice ice baby (Score:5, Funny)
DJ Bemopolis Out. Peeaccceee!!
Re:Ice ice baby (Score:4, Funny)
um. (Score:2)
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The story is the context and how it's put forward.
Nice link, not (Score:4, Informative)
FFS, people, trim those goddamn YouTube links! This is all you need: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA [youtube.com]
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Re:Nice link, not (Score:4, Funny)
We try not to use that kind of insensitive wording anymore.
You mean "words of ethnic descent".
Re:Nice link, not (Score:5, Funny)
From now on all words, regardless of hue, palette, or Pantone reference, shall simply be refered to as "words." For instance, these words [capc.co.uk] are just words, they are not "coloured words", "words of ethnic descent", or "words which have been highlighted because they signify something different to any other word. They are just as useful as the other words, and we applaud their contribution to society without at all decreasing the contributions from all other words, regardless of origin."
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all you need to do is click the colored words.
LOL, that's what I was thinking... I can't believe anyone even NOTICED how long the link was!
Try this one! [youtube.com]
Wow (Score:2)
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That's what's called a 'recording studio session'.
Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow that made my morning, not usually a fan of mashups but that was truly inspired, like garage band on acid. Somewhere im sure there is a lawyer about to blow a gasket trying to wrap his head around a way to even approach something like this.
Hm (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but you need to be able to actually do things live. Mashups won't make you any money, unless, of course, you can sell them, which you can't do if they aren't IP-clean.
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Um, he is successful because does live performances. A lot of them. Which is what I said.
Lawyers? We don't need no stinkin lawyers for this (Score:2)
He says 'if your reaction to this crate of magic is "Hm. I wonder how we'd go about suing someone who 'did this' with our IP?"
Disclaimer: I watched the video. I also RTFA. Sorry.
I thought if one is using 10secs (I'm unsure if there is a real number or duration) of any video, song, or literature it is not 'reproducing' or distributing IP or copyright, but Fair Use, and therefore not against a civil or criminal law.
I don't buy the 'this is your future Elvis' bit for a second. While entertaining, and technically/artistically well done, its not appealing enough to make me watch the other videos.
You thought wrong (Score:5, Informative)
I thought if one is using 10secs (I'm unsure if there is a real number or duration) of any video, song, or literature it is not 'reproducing' or distributing IP or copyright, but Fair Use, and therefore not against a civil or criminal law.
You thought wrong. This is commonly thrown around /. as if it's gospel, but the fact is there's no magic number that qualifies something as fair use.
Traditionally, the fair use defense is based on four factors, one of which is the "amount" or "substantiality" of the work that's infringed. That language is as murky as it sounds. The movie 12 Monkeys got in trouble for showing less than a minute of a weird looking chair, and if things hadn't been worked out, it could have been enjoined from distribution. If you're unlucky enough to have infringed the "heart" of the work, even if it's only 5% overall, you might not have a fair use defense.
There are a number of cases that involve sampling, and the way things have gone, it seems that the current consensus is "license it, or don't sample." Hell, even if you do license, you might not be off the hook - remember the whole "Bittersweet Symphony" debacle?
It's unfortunate, but this is the current state of things.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I thought if one is using 10secs (I'm unsure if there is a real number or duration) of any video, song, or literature it is not 'reproducing' or distributing IP or copyright, but Fair Use, and therefore not against a civil or criminal law.
Fair Use is about HOW a copyrighted work is used, not simply HOW MUCH of it is used.
If the source material is readily identifiable, and it is not clearly apparent that the re-user is engaging in a protected action like academic study, critical review, or parody, then the o
Burn! (Score:2)
That is a pretty well written article. Yup. Merlin Mann is a smart guy, and I've seen him be a bit over-nice, but now he's fed up and hitting back. And it's quite the lashing. And he's absolutely right.
Gasp (Score:5, Funny)
it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page. Because, this is what your new Elvis looks like
Right! Wait. What?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, there are a bunch of "free music" sites. Also if you haven't heard about it yet, check out Creative Commons [creativecommons.org]. They do open-source-like licenses for media and have taken care of all the hard work, you just pick the variant that works best for you and post your content somewhere.
The original content has to come from somewhere (Score:4, Insightful)
These mashups don't appear in a vacuum. They have to get their source content from somewhere. There will always be a market for original work, if only to feed the mashup machine. Now, I would personally find it sad if the original creators were relegated to being raw material for commercially-successful mashups, but hey, it's a free market, and if that's what the kids want...
I personally think Kitoboy's accomplishment here is more one of editing than one of actual creating. Still, an enormous amount of work went into it, if not creativity.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would disagree, you're implying the only value in a mashup is a sum of the creative value of the original pieces. When dealing with a mashup of well-known tracks, this is certainly true, but in this case, he is certainly not taking well-known riffs or tracks, just a huge bunch of anonymous samples and working them into something complete and awesome.
I have huge respect for the guy, I've been DJing for 15 years and done my fair share of mashups, and recently been getting into video editing. What he did i
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>I personally think [Kutiboy's] accomplishment here is more one of editing than one of actual creating.
I'm unclear on the difference.
If I'm writing using the English language, aren't I just editing? since I didn't invent the language?
Editing, in writing, is generally considered to mean changes intended to clarify a work or to make it adhere to some ruleset. I don't think TFV was aiming for either of those.
That is actually the whole point of patents and copyrights: they acknowledge that any creation peop
Call me a Luddite (Score:5, Insightful)
But the future of entertainment is not a 320x240 flash video with a "mashup" of random songs.
This Isn't New (Score:4, Insightful)
Well-Deserved Kudos, But Not New (Score:4, Interesting)
Kutiman, the artist who did the Thu-You audiovideo compositions, did a marvelous job. As other posters have noted, these songs are generally good compositions, beyond the novelty effect.
But, seriously, there isn't that much new here. These really aren't even mash-ups, because such extensive editing has happened. The classic mash-up, Dark Side of The Moon played against The Wizard of Oz retains the originals in great part, and while their combination brings a sum that is greater than the individual parts, it would be difficult to argue that it would qualify for fair-use exception from copyright protection.
The Thru-You project deconstructs the source material into individual components and re-assembles as an entirely new whole. There is no question of copyright violation because it is clearly a derivative work. It's an exceptionally cool idea, and in this case done very well, but collaging isn't new, even within the music industry.
There are entire genres of popular music that are devoted to construction of new songs from sampled components of other songs. Perhaps the first genre where this happened with distinction was House music, starting, what, 20 years ago? Of course, the more technology advances, the more deconstructed-reconstructed the music can become, but still, someone like club master Stephane Pompougnac has been publishing his Hotel Costes line of recompositions for 10 years now.
S1, S2, S3, S4 (Score:4, Interesting)
There's nothing new or illegal about this.
This is what subsampling law is explicitly for; the law even goes as far as to say how long each clip can be and still be legal (and he's way, way in the clear.) Intellectual property law explicitly allows things like this in the United States as long as they're within guidelines, and this is well within guidelines. This is how the TV news and rappers get through their day.
As far as new, bands like White Noise, James Tenney and The Beatles were doing this in the early 1960s; your choice of "The New Elvis" is particularly apropos, as this was determined legal in 1961 regarding James Tenney's Collage #1 ("Blue Suede"), made out of Elvis samples (though some would argue that there are earlier examples.)
This is what my old Elvis looked like.
But the video is freaking epic, that much is true.
Worth watching. (Score:4, Informative)
The one link in the summary isn't the only thing this guys did. This isn't a fluke, this is a true artistic talent. These mashup artists are getting better and better. Listen to the whole set then you'll be in a better position to appreciate and critique. I realize there will be those that do not like it, but if you have a shred of appreciation for music you'll have to recognize the talent. BTW track 8 is the guy explaining the project.
Track 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA [youtube.com]
Track 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAvS0pc9NIw [youtube.com]
Track 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBfj6khrG4 [youtube.com]
Track 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JffZFRM3X6M [youtube.com]
Track 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXulsZpu72E [youtube.com]
Track 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i88CKr6Shn4 [youtube.com]
Track 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vch-Z9ccHTk [youtube.com]
Track 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0gYbqOZXQ [youtube.com]
And yet. . . (Score:3, Funny)
And yet, I was out of my chair and grooving. (On your lawn).
-FL