Amalgamation

I wonder if I was the only one who was inspired for a completely non-sports related blog post during the Temple game? It helps to keep your ears open, I suppose. If you were at the game and doing the same, you likely would’ve noticed two particularly interesting mashups that were certainly designed to be crowd pleasers.

In the first half, we heard the beginning of a mashup containing Fatboy Slim and Dire Straits : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vzZeb-G9Q4&feature=related

Second, we were treated to a mashup with Queen and AC/DC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LrL5zSlW_s

Now, what jumps out immediately about both these productions is the use of older, perhaps “classic” samples. The concerned songs would certainly pass off as acceptable football music, and the mashups, in my mind, are equally “rah!” “ ‘merica!” worthy. Some of those around me seemed to think otherwise.

Of course, some people seem to think they have ownership of songs they really like, and changing them in any way is sacrilege. However, the greater sympathy seemed to be one of confusion – ‘wha… what is this… song?’ It quickly became apparent that the very existence of mashups is not universally known.

But that’s changing.

Now that mashups are sneaking their way into commercials (like Budweiser’s “Eternal Optimism” Commercial, mashing together The Cult and Flo Rida : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enfJEibY1nY) and into big-time sporting events, they’re becoming a more prominent part of the American music culture. It will be interesting, as they become more prominent, what the attitude of the average citizen will evolve into.

The question of legality, and arguably morality, for mashups, as was discussed in last week’s post, is rarely a matter of direct profit. It has become increasingly apparent, as internet marketing has risen to become the public face of electronic music, that a mashup artist stands to gain profit outside of the direct profit paradigm, through influence and increased popularity.

Essentially, it works like this – mashup artist A makes a mix and posts it to soundcloud, youtube, and makes it available for download on their facebook page after the page has been “liked.” Listeners desire a download of the mashup, so they go ahead and “like” the page, and (most likely) receive updates from the artist and perhaps become a more loyal fan. This works for the artist in three ways. First, it gains direct influence towards new listeners. Second, it increases the ‘reach’ of their page to exponentially more potential listeners, through posts that show up on other user’s newsfeed. Neither of these alone holds any monetary value for the masher – but the final, most important factor does – bargaining power.

Say you’re booking an electronic music tour. Seeking to appeal to a large group of possible customers, you seek to hire the most popular acts on the scene. The first statistic you’ll look to is the artist’s social reach. All those facebook likes are starting to make mashup artist A look like a good choice. Soon, he’s landing more shows, bigger shows, better paying shows. Things are starting to get complicated.

Because the downloads are free and mashup artists claim no ownership, the mashups in and of themselves are considered by most to be under the fair-use clause of copyright law. Using at a live show is covered as long as the venue pays proper royalties, as they would for a normal DJ – more importantly, this means that a popular masher is actually earning the original artist more money when they themselves play larger venues and earn more.

I think this highlights an interesting paradigm shift created with the influx of high bandwidth internet usage. The internet is becoming more and more like a venue for music, but it lacks the formality (and the monetary restrictions). Perhaps what we will see in the coming decade is an attempt to formalize the medium the internet offers in terms of what it represents. Why is any artist, mashup or not, considered differently if they are playing songs at a club or streaming songs to users over soundcloud?

In a perfect world, the solution would be to treat streaming like a live show on demand, and sites like soundcloud would pay royalties to original artists, which would be subsidized by users through ad revenue or direct payment. But the internet isn’t controllable like that – it never will be, either. There are too many ways of getting music freely to expect listeners to accept the restrictions of a formal approach. I think, perhaps, that this form of setup would work, though, as a means for more popular mashup artists to come to a compromise with original artists who feel ripped off. It’s worth a shot.

Summary:

• Mashups in and of themselves do little to reduce original songs’ value, and generally are considered under fair-use provisions of copyright law, granted they actually provide a new take on the original tracks
• Mashup artists should be treated like DJ’s in regards to live shows
• The ambiguity of the internet’s function as a quasi-venue creates the issue of free publicity, although there is no real solution at the moment

The issue of copyright and legality has likely been contemplated quite a bit by anyone who has a real stake in the mashup art form (if “art form” caused you to double take, cool thy jets, I’ll defend its status as such in a future post). The recent Hardwell controversy brought the issue to light once again in a certainly more public way, however, so its stands that an evaluation is timely.

First, let’s define our subject: A mashup and a bootleg are, for the intents of the discussion of this issue, synonymously referential to a piece of audio which is most likely to be considered as a single song built from content by several original artists. There is a fuzzy territory between what we can consider a mashup and a mix, but let’s assume that a mashup is meant to stand alone as a production by a masher. It is created by rearranging sections to form a song-like structure, whether it be in the form of verse-chorus-verse-chorus or build-verse-build-breakdown, or another definable arrangement. A mix, on the other hand, generally follows a common build-release(repeat) structure, and/or is meant to evoke a mood or theme over a longer period of time.  We’ll be looking at the status of both in today’s legal and moral climate.

Next, some clarifications: in general, mashups are not sold for direct profit, and asking for donations, as is common for other legally ambiguous practices, is almost equally as rare. Mashers do not pretend to control the ownership of their material, and in most cases, would take down any material requested of them if the content holder simply asked (personally, if given the chance, I’d discuss the points I’m making here with them, but nonetheless, I would respect their ownership above anything else, as would any respectable mashup artist).

So why the hate on mashups from labels and certain big artists? Well, the issue has several complications. First and foremost, most mashers offer free downloads for their tracks, which can legitimately be viewed as a copyright breech – If I told you, as an artist, I would sue someone because they were giving away my material without my permission, you’d likely understand.

But let’s say it’s not the whole song, but just a vocal track (or ‘acapella’). Suing over that seems less understandable. How many people, out of those who would legitimately purchase the original song (if we were talking about pirates, it wouldn’t matter either way, would it?), would give up on doing so because they found a version that was missing the instruments? Logic tells us not many. And in the same light, if a song is stripped of its lyrics, the chances the resulting instrumental is as satisfying to a legitimate customer diminishes severely. Finally, if the song is cut up and stripped of some of its parts, the resulting, incomplete mix is unlikely to satisfy our hypothetical consumer. I just described the constituents of most mashups, my point being that we must consider the fact that the use of partial tracks is unlikely to negatively affect the monetary value of the originals from which these parts came.

…Unless the mashup in question isn’t comprised of such samples of low inherent value. Since there is no strict definition for what a mashup must be, the final product can be (but rarely is) extremely similar to the original. There’d be more legitimate legal frustration with a mashup that only slightly deviates from an original.

The other pitfall for the legality argument for mashups is the presence of indirect profit and influence from their use. Because this post is breaking 600 words, I’ll break down this side of things, keeping in mind the equally hazy legality of mixes, and the effect of the internet on the definition of public presentation.