Mash-up model

Rob Walker at the Sunday New York Times Magazine: Mash-Up Model. Music you could never buy on iTunes tests the pay-what-you-want business model. Excerpt:

Girl Talk (real name Gregg Gillis) has also won critical praise but is not likely to land a big-time contract, commercial radio play, a spot in an iPod ad or even distribution on iTunes. This is because “Feed the Animals” is composed almost entirely of more than 200 samples of other artists’ music, ranging from Lil Wayne to Kenny Loggins — none of which Gillis has obtained permission to use.

This is what makes Girl Talk’s experimentation with the value of music so compelling. It’s one thing for various name-brand artists to dabble with giveaways. It’s something else for a creator who has operated artistically, financially and even legally outside the structures of the traditional recording business for his entire career to do so. Will “Feed the Animals” make Girl Talk a rock star? And what would that even mean?

The release is the 26-year-old Gillis’s fourth, and a CD version will be distributed in September by a small label called Illegal Arts. (You get the CD if you pay $10 or more for the download.) ...