It's the first and probably last time the Free Music Archive will ever tweet about Justin Bieber (though he is the preeminent trending topic). But I just had to this week on the occasion that multiple major labels have lent their support to a hugely popular (and quite excellent) 800-x-slowed-down remix of Beiber's song "U Smile". This, despite the fact that it is arguably "an infringement of both the sound recording (owned by Universal’s Island Records) and the musical composition (owned by both UMG and EMI)" (Billboard). I mean, with the same free open source program that producer Nick Pittsinger aka Shamantis used to create this 30-minute glacial epic, it could just as easily be shrunk back into the actual song.
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If you just listen, clearly this is a transformative work that meets the conditions for Fair Use. But Fair Use has yet to reconcile with US laws pertaining to sound recordings, and the influential Bridgeport ruling seems to imply that there is no such thing. Meanwhile, Soundcloud who are hosting the file are based, one of many countries where "fair use" doesn't even exist (though a court in Germany did recently reverse their decision and declare that a 2-second sound recording twisted beyond all recognition and not used as the basis of a new composition, is legal [BBC / Techdirt]). |
Fortunately, there was no need for the law i this scenario as it clearly stood to benefit all parties. Beiber's tweeted about it (link) and this new form of public announcement from our young king of tweet-pop declared it to be good, it shined an interesting light on Bieber's own music for new fans (and twitter followers) who now have a much deeper appreciation for his music. All of which is invaluable in our increasingly fragmented Attention Economy.
In cases like these (#musicblogocide, for example) I often think of Lawrence Lessig's chart describing the Law as one of four forces that impact reality. Our society and the structures of the music industry are changing rapidly. Soon -- with any luck -- remixes like this which clearly just draw attention to the artist in a purely noncommcercial environment may even be declared legal! Or at the very least, we should be able to publicly acknowledge that there are certain noncommercial forums for shared creativity where the law need not interfere. Transformative remixes are already kind of impossible to stop, and seem to stand to everyone's benefit. Quite an artistic and politicized cultural statement by our friend Shamantis.
Maybe even Prince will come around to this. Or -- since he's already declared the end of the Internet -- maybe he'll simply sit back and let his music (and the people who love it) take care of spreading the word on his behalf.
Suppose Shamantis just awakened the early 21st century's Scott Walker.
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Posted by: G O D | August 20, 2010 at 10:10 PM
Glacial indeed. Does anyone know if Fair Use includes Midi patterns? rex84project did this a while back. http://www.rex84project.com
The dev tree is here for the tracks: http://www.rex84project.com/drupal/tree/version_tree4.php
JFC
Posted by: Jfculhane | August 21, 2010 at 01:53 PM
It's funny, all the comments I was reading tagged on to that audio file... people will literally not only listen to but eat up positively anything with a spoon. And lick said spoon, eat it up yum.
It's slowed down Justin Bieber. Negativland this ain't.
Posted by: QuizmasterChris | August 24, 2010 at 12:05 AM
A slight correction: The Bieber remixes were done with PaulStretch and it doesn't speed up audio -- it goes from realtime up to 1000-fold stretch. There are other programs (Soundforge, Wavelab come to mind) that can speed up samples, but the result would be unrecognizable. PaulStretch works by using FFT to analyze the spectral information in overlapping windows into the audio, which it crossfades through; it's an inherently destructive operation (in the information-theoretical sense of the word) and while the time dilation could be reversed the result would only be distantly related to the original.
As it happens I did a port of PaulStretch for the Macintosh, if you're one of those 'different thinkers' and don't want to mess with a Windows PC to make your own titanic epic:
http://music.cornwarning.com/2010/04/06/paulstretch-new-build-for-the-new-decade/
http://music.cornwarning.com/2010/04/08/paulstretch-2-0-os-x-ppc-build/
Posted by: Chaircrusher | August 26, 2010 at 10:29 AM