Damn these are popular. Mash Ups are kind of going through a surge in popularity right now. Mash ups can be two or more new, popular songs mixed together (like mash up #1 by Terry Urban – Lil Wayne’s “A Millie” and Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”), or two or more older, popular songs mixed together (like mash up #2 by A Plus D – Notorious BIG’s “Going Back To Cali” and Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ “Dani California”), or a mash up can be new and old songs, whether or not they’re popular or unpopular, mixed together (like mash up #3 by Bobb Deep – Mobb Depp’s “Shook One’s Pt II” and Bob Marley’s “I Shot The Sheriff”). Check these out too:
M3 – Michael Jackson and James Brown – “The Way You Got Me That Feeling”
5ose – Fatboy Slim and The Beatles and Billy Joel – “Praise the News of a Day”
Yea, I know about Girl Talk. So what?
3 Comments
1 DSSaims
Posted January 3, 2009 at 9:51 pmPermalink
Interesting, I love Fatboy Slim but how’d he get the rights to use the Beatles? Post something about what’s involved in mash ups.
I know there was a rumor about Dave King & Asgard being sampled by a number of artists but I haven’t heard anything yet, have you?
Great site!
2 stewbie
Posted January 4, 2009 at 6:07 pmPermalink
Fatboy Slim didn’t actually make the mash up. 5ose made it (click his name here, it’s a link to his myspace). My guess is that 5ose does not have the rights to use the Beatles song, the Fatboy Slim song, or the Billy Joel song. But he’s not selling the mash up (as far as I know) so he doesn’t need to pay for any rights. Not really sure what the legality is here though…
3 DSSaims
Posted January 4, 2009 at 7:37 pmPermalink
Spencer, I think (and hope) you’re mistaken here, and perhaps so is 5ose and others. It seems to me that the US Copyright Law was meant to protect the author and to give him control over the reproduction of his work. There are some exemptions for news and educational uses but I would be shocked if mash ups were exempted as well, especially when they are clearly commercial in nature. Taking another artist’s work, even just portions of it, seems to be a clear violation, at least to me.
I had a multimedia business for twenty years where I eventually digitized thousands of videos to use within an Internet VOD system. I used portions of videos in online quizzes, and even though I owned all distribution rights to the content, I would never have considered not compensating the author. To do so seems to me that it would bring on the end to a great deal of art, by those that rely upon it for their livelihood.
Although MGM’s “ars gratia artis” (art for art’s sake) sounds good, You would not find too many new film productions if copyright law did not protect the works and allow artists (and their producers and distributors) to make a profit. And even though music is less expensive to produce than a feature film, I doubt we would be seeing as many new and creative artists emerge. Artists have always needed sponsors, commissions, contests; some way to allow the artist to actually survive while creating his art. And yes, there are many artists who do create art fully on their own but they seldom find any popularity or opportunities to grow without some benefactor or commercial success.
The Internet has allowed people to create and distribute art for art’s sake but our society seems to be dependent upon marketing to popularize art and that is not likely to happen unless someone is benefiting from it.
Back to the legality issue, I highly recommend an article by Edward Lee for the Illinois Law Review (“Warming Up To User-Generated Content”) -
http://home.law.uiuc.edu/lrev/publications/2000s/2008/2008_5/index.html
It seems that until all the gray areas in copyright laws are addressed, there will be continued confusion and questions. We are trying, however, to hit a moving target with imprecise weapons due to the rapidly increasing advancements in technology that keep changing the rules of possibility.
I’d love to hear your thoughts…