"This song wouldn't legally exist under current copyright laws" (SgtHydra),
*first comment under video...
And the list goes on...
Danger Mouse - The Grey Album
Adele vs. Daft Punk - Something About the Fire
Biz Markie - Just a Friend
Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Unless you have the capital to clear samples...
Jay Z feat. Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind
Drake - Hotline Bling
Jason Derulo - Whatcha Say
Justin Timberlake - Let the Groove Get In
Kaytranada - Lite Spots
What do we make of the industrial and legal policing of "remediation" (i.e. mashup culture, sampling etc.) in the music industry? As Lev Manovich writes, "the logic of the art world and the logic of new media are exact opposites. The first is based [on] the romantic idea of authorship which assumes a single author... The second privileges the existence of potentially numerous copies... [and] collaborative authorship" (p. 14). In the music industry especially, the romanticized meta-narrative of the single author is staunchly maintained as the schema (by copyright) through which a conceptually contending mode of artistic production is pegged. To outlaw technological "remediacy" is essentially to condemn the ideological foundations of now mainstream genres like Techno, House, Hip-Hop, and all other sample-based electronic music. What would the landscape of the current pop music industry look like without these genres? Furthermore, to the extent that Bolter and Grusin note the "special" connection between conceptual (as opposed to technological) remediacy and "borrowing" within more traditional art practices like literature, film, and painting, it suggests that the systemic monitoring of remediacy is selective to favor those modes of production that have already been readily assimilated into capitalistic regimes. Copyright law currently only protects and legitimates those musical genres that operate under the logic of single authorship - a logic that can also be conveniently siphoned into monopolized profit-generating strategies...
On a brighter note, while we're on the topic of remediation in music, here's one of my favourite remixes in the intro to this beautiful ambient techno set:
David Hohme - Soft Landing (Jody Wisternoff & James Grant remix)
:D
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