Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Music is a linear medium

Author:Todd Blanchard
Posted:9/13/2000; 11:30:14 AM
Topic:Music and software
Msg #:21304 (In response to 21272)
Prev/Next:21303 / 21305

provide multiple versions of a song, ranging from rehearsal to recorded to live to bootleg to ...

If the artists wants all those versions out there - bootlegs are illegal you know.

ability for listener-users to edit music as well as playlists

Edit music? Look I understand the techno house music where the signature riff of a popular song is sampled and vamped on and rapped over. This can range from well done and clever to a blatent rip-off (Vanilla Ice's ripoff of the Queen/Bowie duet Pressure comes to mind, Tone-Loc's use of the opening drum fill from Van Halen's Jamie's Cryin' produced something that felt entirely new). I like music concrete, but I think sampling of performances over two beats long ought to require royalties. Besides which, originally music concrete didn't use musical performance as its building blocks - the idea was to use something not musical to create something musical. But I digress and we're getting into a gray area there. Suffice it to say that I consider a song and its performance to be atomic.

The motion picture directors guild already won the right to prevent people from screwing around with their content with the colorization wars. Musicians should be able to exercise the same control.

Now playlists well, you've been able to create your own playlist and share it with a room full of people for about a quarter since about 1911. Creating party mix tapes using material you already own is fine. But I don't see anything new there.

I'd also have to say that the only kind of music that the near-real-time internet is likely to enable is dance, synthetic, machine music. Its a small fraction of music and certainly not the kind most people over 20 like.




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