December 31, 2002
DJ Shadow Samples...
He talks about how hard it was to clear rights for his work in an interview with David Krinsky/Rolling Stone:
- Clearing samples is always difficult and interesting and time consuming and frustrating. It really shows you that the legal profession is really just who talks the best talk and who fights the best fight. It's just all semantics and who wants it more and who is glib and who is the biggest BSer . . . It is quite unsettling as an artist. The music that I make is a collage medium. The music industry and the legal profession need to update the way they think about samples. The way it's done now, lawyers still pretend like it's some great infringement -- an affront to everything musical, which we all know is not the case. Sampling has been around long enough. There are many classic songs that everyone loves that are made from samples. So to try to pretend that it's some sort of "How dare they!" is just silly.
Check it out. Good discussion on how he feels about downloading verses bootlegging, and why one is okay but the other, making money off artists without paying them, is not okay.
December 28, 2002
December 27, 2002
Napster Movie Planned
Oh my gosh, and guess who's going to star! The Shaunster himself. Well, actually the spokesperson just said that he was not ruled out as playing himself. But really, don't you think that's just too much napsterization for all concerned? I mean, we can take the complete disruption of the music industry, cause it was a mess anyway, and really it was time for some change in that biz model, but I'm not sure we need to watch a movie about the making of the code by Mr. Fanning, et al. And do we need to put trained actors out of work? Maybe we could just download the trailer....
December 24, 2002
Algebra, Say Courtney, Will Save Us
"The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid" says our lady of perpetual responsibility, who goes all napstery on us with Courney Does the Math.
December 23, 2002
Artists Sound Off On Napster
Here. And a couple of the representative comments...
"Most people I know who use Napster listen to stuff they've never heard before. And then they get psyched and go out and buy the damn records. It's more like a sampler."
- Ian MacKaye, recording artist, Fugazi and co-owner of Dischord Records, Salon.com, 1/8/2001
"The cool thing about Napster is that it...encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do."
-- Thom Yorke (Radiohead), 10/9/2000
December 21, 2002
OD2 Opens the Gates to Music
On Demand Distribution, Peter Gabriel's two year old venture, recently did a did a one day/500 free download promotion for people from Ireland/England. Testing the waters on digital distribution, I see.
December 17, 2002
Creative Commons Launch
Last night, at the Creative Commons launch, we chatted about Napsterization, what it is, why we think it is about the bigger issues, beyond music, that disrupt digital media and technology, affecting so deeply old economy businesses and institutions. The Napsterization of Hollywood is only one part. It's happened with journalism, law, cultural institutions, education, social space, even things we think of as digital like older software and hardware. It's become common to hear the word, napsterization, describe these things, as last night I overheard a number of people using it.
Oh, and Brewster Kahle downloaded, printed and signed a public domain copy of Alice In Wonderland for me. How cool is that?
