Some Real World Info on Funky Beats

My friend Seba, who DJs around here in D.C. from time to time, had some interesting insights on the music scene, and the relationship between copyright and new music, which I brought up in my recent “Amen Brother” post:

You know, I was thinking more about this and I’m not sure it’s totally correct to say the current legal framework for IP as it applies to sampling stifles creativity. I am in total agreement that it’s overly restrictive . . . and, as that YouTube vid pointed out, it’s kind of ass-backwards: How does a series of seminal beats that were so widely sampled — and thus arguably in the public domain — become the intellectual property of a company that creates beats for musicians to use in new works?

What I want to say is that this legal framework creates a barrier, but not at the level of creativity. Rather, the barrier exists at the level of commercial release. Here’s an example:

Virtually all electronic music that is made today (hip hop, house, dnb, techno and more) is in some way derivative of previous music. There is almost nothing new under the sun. Innovation comes from creative reworking or recombining of elements of previous releases.

This applies to using beats from a database like the one described in the YouTube video, as well as using substantial elements of older tracks. Electronic music artists (I’ll focus on house cause that’s what I know best) freely use even substantial elements of old tracks and distribute their product and have no concern about giving it visibility.

Before giving you specific examples, it’s important to note that technology is what is making this sort of distribution possible. Dubplates, as in acetate discs that can be played a limited number of times, went out some time ago as tools for creative producers to provide djs with their new tracks (I doubt they made it into the 90s). The “white label” became the next vehicle for this: Producers would have a limited number of vinyl 12″s printed on white labels with white sleeves (often with handwritten track info). It’s sort of a “do-it-yourself” release. In some cases, tracks could get wide distribution (at the dj, not consumer level) and high visibility. (Get your white label to the right dj and he drops it in the middle of a recorded radio set, etc.)

In the last 5 years, the digital format has really taken over the house/club circuit. Even locally I see it: When I started about three years ago, I was the odd man out, using cds. Now almost everyone local does — bigger-name djs even more so because they’ve realized that the digital format can give them access to a broader spectrum of new music faster (and also because they can more easily manipulate it when playing live).

So, for example, I can create a digital track in my home studio, put it on a cd and give to a major local dj, say Deep Dish, and they start playing it at gigs and other djs hear it and they get copies (make their own from my “original”) and so it spreads . . . . In a short time, the track can get global distribution and visibility, and the second someone makes it available on a p2p like Soulseek, everyone has it.

Now to the examples: What I just described is exactly what happened with two tracks that are so derivative of previous releases as to virtually be remakes. Swedish dj/producer Eric Prydz last spring made a track called “Proper Education” that revolves around Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2” (using the entire chorus with the English lads singing up a storm). His version was widely distributed to djs at the Miami Winter Music Conference (held in late March), and it blew up during the summer in Ibiza. BBC Radio 1, probably the most popular radio station in the world for electronic music, was regularly playing the track as a white label on its programs. It was downloadable on some p2ps (though not, of course, ITunes and similar legal dl sites). Even local djs here were dropping it in their sets.

Smelling an opportunity for commercial gain, a label signed the track, got Floyd’s permission and legally released it at the end of 2006.

Virtually the same thing happened, over the same time period, with Deep Dish’s Sharam’s remake of Eddie Murphy’s “Party all the Time” (released as “PATT“). This is another track that took off and eventually got a major label release. Murphy forbade them to use the original vocals but allowed the track to be released with a different vocal track (which sounds identical).

Of course, Floyd and Murphy could have said no, in which case these tracks would not have been released. But the only real difference is that at least part of the listening public would not have been able to get copies (either because they don’t do p2p or don’t know how). So, it seems, at least from these examples, that the barrier created by the legal framework is not at the creative level, but at the commercial release by a legit label level.

Why don’t labels pursue the likes of Prydz and Sharam? I imagine it’s cause they’re not directly generating any revenue from their releases (though these releases do increase their notoriety and thus get them even more lucrative dj gigs, production opportunities, chances to release legit dj mixes etc.).

So, viva la revoluciòn…musicàl!

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