Briana J Lugo

MCS 244

Professor Brucker-Cohen

April 29, 2019

How are mashups posing a potential threat to copyright laws online?

Mashups are a mixture of multiple songs to create a whole new song, using different parts of the songs to create a whole new sound. There are definitely many pros and cons when it comes to creating mashups. One of the cons can definitely be the issue with copyright laws such as taking original music from artist and record labels and remixing it and releasing it as their own. Also does the artist who created the mashup get any recognition or does he give all the credit to the original artists. In the article “Grey Album Producer Explains How He Did It” by Corey Moss discusses the details on how Brian Burton created the Grey Album, which is a mashup of The White Album by The Beatles and The Black Album by Jay-Z. The Grey Album is one of the most popular mashup albums in America.  In the article Moss states “As much time as Burton spent at his computer, he doesn’t take all the credit for The Grey Album. He truly believes the two source albums were a good fit”. Burton gives a lot of his credit to The Beatles and Jay-Z for his Grey Album, he explains that without them two his album would not exist. In some ways mashups can be tricky because some artist might feel like their original is being disrespected and stolen, which goes back to the copyright laws. On the other hand there are some pros when it comes to mashups.In the article “1 + 1 + 1 = 1 The new math of mashups” by Sasha Frere-Jones she states “Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does”. Mashups create new music and sounds as well, it provides new content for artist. There is a lot of work that goes into creating a mashup. Burton explains how it took him months to create the Grey Album and how he almost wanted to give up.

Mashups have been commonly popular through the years sometimes getting more recognition then the songs themselves. To begin mashups are a recording created by digitally combining and synchronizing instrumental tracks with vocal tracks from two or more different songs. According to the article “1+1+1=1” by Sasha Frere Jones Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does. Mark Vidler, known professionally as Go Home Productions, explained some other benefits of digital technology to me in London not long ago: “You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself.” Mashups are posing a potential threat to copyright laws online by being able to access it files through programs there really isn not a way the internet will be protect the files from being copyrighted. According to  “INFOENCLOSURE 2.0” By Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick Web 2.0 Companies, namely control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them – the harnessing of the collective intelligence they attract. Allowing the community to contribute openly and to utilise that contribution within the context of a proprietary system where the proprietor owns the content is a characteristic of a successful Web 2.0 company. Allowing the community to own what it creates, though, is not.

Mashups are when an artists “mashes” two or more songs into one whole song and posts it somewhere for people to hear. This has always been a complicated issue between copyright infringement and being able to allow the creator of the mashup to receive monetary value for their work. In “1+1+1=1” by Sasha Frere-Jones, she states that ““Frontin’ on Debra” is an example of a “mashup,” in which, generally, the vocal from one song is laid over the music from another. The best-known mashup in the United States is an unauthorized album-length project called “The Grey Album,” assembled by Brian Burton, known professionally as Danger Mouse. The vocals are from Jay-Z’s “The Black Album,” and the musical bed is a highly processed and reorganized version of the Beatles’ “White Album.””. Albums like these used to be very popular, and as technology evolved so has the way we listen to music. Layering artists who you might not have thought would pair well together is a skill, it’s a talent. It’s  like learning how specific alcohols go with specific cuts of meat or seafood. You may not realize it in the beginning, but that red wine does go well with that cut of steak and the history behind that was trial and error- but also analyzation and skill. Now, one can find mashups anywhere on the web but more specifically YouTube. Modern day examples of mashups would be artists like William Singe who takes popular hip hop songs and pairs up the ones that would sound better together, and then putting an R&B twist to it. That’s his signature and YouTube allows him to make money off of the videos he produces because he isn’t using exact words from the songs he chooses. Another example of this would be SoMo, who used his mash ups to eventually record his own album. He does an R&B take on the songs he mashes up, and YouTube doesn’t take it down because he doesn’t always use the exact words of those songs- he’ll replace Drake’s name in a song with his own or he’ll replace the N-word with “singa” (as does William Singe). It’s little tweaks to these mashups that can allow for them to not be victims of copyright infringement, therefore YouTube can’t do much about them. Creating mashups isn’t a lazy way of producing music, it takes a skillful ear and background knowledge on music production itself. Mashups are a way of allowing music artists to express themselves in ways they probably couldn’t before because maybe they don’t know how to write lyrics or because they don’t want to showcase their own songs yet. Whatever the case may be, recognition for the hard work that goes into mashups need to be put in place because it can be hard to produce a successful song. Usually, these songs also have such well known artists or beats that the integrity of the original artists is not being taken away but instead admired and appreciated.

Melanie Beltran

MCS 244

April 29, 2019

Mashups are collaborations between two or more companies or artists. Mashups have consequences for companies and artists. In Henry Jenkins’ “Taking the You Out of YouTube?” it states, “YouTube, along with Second Life, Flickr, Wikipedia, and MySpace, has emerged as one of the key reference points in contemporary digital culture — emblematic of the move towards what people are calling web 2.0. As Newsweek aptly put it last year, web 2.0 is ‘putting we into the web’… What separates these companies from the dotcoms which fueled web 1.0 is the emphasis upon participation, social networking, collective intelligence, call it what you want. What distinguishes them is that their content arises bottom-up from the community of users.” What is beneficial is that fact that the content is various and distinguishes each of the companies from one of another to form a collaborate. In the article, “Grey Album Producer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It,” it states, “…when he heard Jay-Z was releasing an acapella version of The Black Album for remixers, he came up with a crazy idea to blend it with the Beatles’ famous The White Album and make The Grey Album (see “Remixers Turn Jay-Z’s Black Album Grey, White And Brown”).” The mashup of artists Jay-Z and the Beatles created a musical and memorable song. The mixture of the old and new music appeals to audiences that gravitate to that particular genre of music. In Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick’s “InfoEnclosure 2.0,” it states, “The use of the word ‘supposed’ is noteworthy. As probably the largest collaboratively authored work in history, and one of the current darlings of the internet community, Wikipedia ought to know. Unlike most of the members of the Web 2.0 generation, Wikipedia is controlled by a non-profit foundation, earns income only by donation and releases its content under the copyleft GNU Free Documentation License. It is telling that Wikipedia goes on to say ‘[Web 2.0] has become a popular (though ill-defined and often criticized) buzzword among certain technical and marketing communities.’” Because Wikipedia is controlled by a non-profit organization, anyone can put information on the website and could decide to cite the information or not. It is essentially opened to everyone and anyone. The New Yorker’s  “Sasha Frere-Jones, 1+1+1+1=1 The New Math of Mashups,” it states, “Mashup artists like Vidler, Kerr, and Brown have found a way of bringing pop music to a formal richness that it only rarely reaches. See mashups as piracy if you insist, but it is more useful, viewing them through the lens of the market, to see them as an expression of consumer dissatisfaction.” These artists found a way to bring new content to pop genre that has not been seen before in the industry. There are people (not in the music industry) that take music from another artist and creates their own twist to the song. Mashups have created new content and music from companies and artists. Each company and artist has their very own individual content and collabs with others to create something the world hasn’t seen before and will hopefully enjoy.

In Henry Jenkins article “Taking the You Out of YouTube?”, it is discussed how Web 2.0 places an “emphasis upon participation, social networking, collective intelligence”. It is a fan culture, which creates sites like Youtube, Wikipedia, MySpace, etc. Jenkins explains “ At the heart of the Web 2.0 movement is this idea that there is real value created by tapping the shared wisdom of grassroots communities, composed mostly of fans, hobbyists, and other amateur media makers”. Youtube, although it allows for creativity to be brought to the forefront, has certain restrictions which determine if a video gets monetized or taken down for copyright. However, in the article “INFOENCLOSURE 2.0” By Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick, the authors see Web 2.0 as an “Internet Investment Boom 2.0…Web 2.0 is a business model, it means private capture of community-created value”. The authors explain that “The real value of YouTube is not created by the developers of the site, but rather it is created by the people who upload videos to the site”.

In the article “1 + 1 + 1 = 1
The new math of mashups” by Sasha Frere-Jones, she explains a mashup as which the vocals from one song is laid over the music from another. Jones explains “Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does”.
Mark Vidler, AKA the Go Home Productions, explained some other benefits of digital technology to me in London not long ago: “You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself”.

Similarly In the article “Grey Album Producer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It”, the author explains how Brian Burton created a Jay-Z & Beatles mashup. Burton took apart the albums songs piece by piece to create the mashup and used a $400 software tool to add Jay-Z’s vocals surrounding The Beatles music. This shows that anyone with some talent and skill can create their own mashup.

Mashups can be complicated when it comes to copyright laws. Musicians and publishing labels want to protect the music they create while mashup artists would want the freedom of using music that is out there without getting into a lawsuit. These artists want to fully exercise their creative freedom but copyright laws put a limit to this freedom. Usually mashup artists do change the music enough so that it can be recognized for its own merits while the original song is still recognizable. Some artists have collaborated with mashup artists but usually to keep the benefits for themselves. If it were easy to get permission to use someone else’s music then everyone would be doing it. However, it is unlikely that labels, artists, and publishers would all agree for someone to use their music since they would not gain any monetary value. Even if the mashup is distributed for free, artists and the ones who hold the rights to the music are still likely to sue.

The article by Sasha Frere-Jones, 1+1+1+1=1 The New Math of Mashups, states, “Mark Vidler, known professionally as Go Home Productions, explained some other benefits of digital technology to me in London not long ago: “You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself.” These are the freedom mashups artists have. They could just sample music they find online and create something new entirely. I still believe it is unfair that if I make a song, anyone can use pieces of it if not the entire song to create something for themselves. This topic is controversial and definitely needs revision by regulators in order to protect artists and possibly at the same time give some freedom to mashup artists. With the internet, anyone can use someone else’s work and make their own based on that. Since there is so much information shared online, I believe it is hard to prohibit people from using other people’s work for their own creativity. I believe this is good for people to get inspired but I do not believe it is fair for someone to benefit off the original work of someone else even though it happens in other industries.

Mashups are something that has been seen for a long time when it comes to music according to Sasha Frere-Jones “1+1+1+1 The New Math of Mashups” it mentions that “Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does.” the articles continues to speak about the mashup made by Dj Reset using songs by Beck and Pharrell. The purpose of this mashup was to create something new and enjoyable.”Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetic”. As seen in Corey Moss’ in “Grey Album Producer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It” it speaks about another example of a mashup being created. It goes into detail on every small aspect that is put into created these mashups. I believe the purpose is to show how much time and effort some put into making them and that it should not be the reason for a potential threat to copyright laws. According to Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick in  “InfoEnclosure 2.0” it mentions that “Web applications and services have become cheaper and easier to implement, and by allowing the end users access to these applications, a company can effectively outsource the creation and the organisation of their content to the end users themselves” basically stating that today we can have more control regarding our own things because of the fact that its been made easier for us to gain that power.

Anthony and I did our class presentation on social media. We created six well informed slides about social media.We discussed  how and why social media has affected or impacted us.What we took away from this presentation is that individuals utilize online networking however don’t generally associate as much as they should. Individuals are keen on what they’re in and stick to it, yet when new thoughts were displayed everybody seemed to check out it. We would take this more remote by consolidating more surveyors into the condition. It feels like the gatherings fancied the current point since it’s entwined in our regular daily existences. Online life is digging in for the long haul, we need to keep the general population who go through it to date and pitching into how it can utilized for better. Our presentation was successful due to both activities, that had the whole class participating and giving feedbacks.  

Piracy is hurting the case for copyright online because it is utilizing another person’s utilizing another person’s work illicitly without their assent at the end of the day copyright encroachment.Paul Tassi states that “As technology continues to evolve, the battle between pirates and copyright holders is going to escalate, and pirates are always, always going to be one step ahead. To be clear, this is in no way meant to be a “pro-piracy” piece, it is merely attempting to show the inescapable realities of piracy that media companies refuse to acknowledge. What’s clear is that legislation is not the answer. Piracy is already illegal in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution.Piracy apparently harms free makers who are attempting to make it – including picture takers, film makers, performers, and application designers – more than it hurts built up craftsmen. Free makers are endeavoring to win an occupation and make a profession. When they are pilfered they lose basic pay, they lose certainty, and the lost salary keeps them from re-putting resources into their inventive work.The way piracy is hurting companies businesses especially Hollywood is that many users can watch a movie without having to make a payment for purchase or rent.