Darknet

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.) ...

Remix culture video contest

Owen Gallagher, Creative Director of TotalRecut.com, passes along word of a remix contest that I'll be a judge in:

TotalRecut.com is hosting a Video Remix Challenge over the next two months and we want you to create a short video using the theme: 'What is Remix Culture?' You can you use any footage you can find, including Public Domain and Creative Commons work, but the finished video cannot be longer than 3 minutes or shorter than 30 seconds long.

The prizes include a laptop computer loaded with video editing and conversion software, a digital camcorder, a digital media player, as well as Special Edition Total Recut T-Shirts, books, DVDs and CDs. We have an amazing lineup of judges for the contest including Lawrence Lessig, Henry Jenkins, Kembrew McLeod, Pat Aufderheide, JD Lasica and Mark Hosler. You can find out more information at: http://www.totalrecut.com/contest1.php.

Entries will be accepted from May 1 until June 2 when public voting will begin. The best 10 videos at the end of the 2-week voting period will be put forward into the final, where they will be voted on by the judging panel. The winners will be announced around the 1st of July. So get busy making those videos!

Here's a link to the YouTube promotional video for the contest.

DIY random CD cover

   

Wow, I love these fake CD/album covers by mikelietz on Flickr. He writes here:

To make your own random CD cover, follow these steps:

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first article title on the page is the name of the band.

2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four words of the very last quote is the album title.

3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ The third picture, license permitting, is the album cover. [To save time, get one from here.]

4. The finished product belongs in the  CD cover meme pool.

I was hoping there was a ready-made mashup tool that added album titles to a photo -- and I'm sure there are some Web 2.0 sites out there that let you do this -- but for the most part looks like you have to do the mashing up yourself.

Here's the Flickr pool, with 790 photos. And here's mine:

Cross-posted to Social Media.

On the Richter Scales' "Here comes another bubble" video dispute

Lane Hartwell: My statement regarding the Richter Scales “Here comes another bubble” video dispute.

Dave Winer: A flash conference on fair use?

New mashups site

Here's a cool new site: Totalrecut.com. Check out the Disney mashup of Copyright law on the front page.

Politics and hip-hop are doing a mash-up

Steve Levy in Newsweek: Politics and hip-hop are doing a mash-up. Excerpt:

"Mr. Chairman," said Doyle, "he blended Elton John, Notorious B.I.G. and Destiny's Child, all in the span of 30 seconds!" Doyle asked whether what Gillis does is any different from Paul McCartney's nicking a Chuck Berry bass line in a Beatles song. "Maybe mash-ups are a transformative new art," he said. In a Congress that reflexively goes overboard on granting rights to content owners, it was a rare recognition that there may be other ways of dealing with digitally enabled creativity besides outlawing it. ...

The lunch's climactic moment came when the congressman asked how one could write a law "that would somehow square up with the 167 artists you've used and allow you to get on store shelves." Gillis said that he'd try to find a middle ground where some samples were OK because of fair-use provisions in the law and others paid for by a reasonable fee. The congressman listened, but admitted the odds were long for a Mash-Up Relief bill. "Some members don't even want to understand it," he said. "They just get a call from the industry saying, 'Bad'." On the other hand, Mike Doyle said he might catch one of Gillis's Girl Talk shows soon.

Sun's new mashup site

Sun Microsystems today launched a site called The Big Mashup: How the network is changing entertainment and news gathering in the Participation Age. Particpants include Andrew Baron, Douglas Rushkoff, DJ Spooky and others.

Mash-up maps

Washington Post: Start-Ups Try to Plot A Complete Picture. 'Mash-Ups' Add Data to Online Maps

Son of Beatles producer mashes up the Beatles

Associated Press via San Jose Mercury News: Son of Beatles producer makes a loving mash-up. Excerpt:

It's the Beatles as they never even imagined themselves.

The Beatles' ``Love'' album, released this week, is a thorough reinterpretation of their work, with familiar sounds in unfamiliar places, primarily created by the son of the man who was in the control room for virtually all their recording sessions.

It's a mash-up, even though Giles Martin said he hates the word. John Lennon sings ``he's a real nowhere man'' in the background of the instrumental track to ``Blue Jay Way.'' The keyboard of ``Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite'' dissolves into the plodding guitar of ``I Want You (She's So Heavy).''

``Strawberry Fields Forever'' builds from Lennon's acoustic demo into a psychedelic swirl of sounds that incorporates bits of ``Hello Goodbye,'' ``Baby You're a Rich Man,'' ``Penny Lane'' and ``Piggies.''

The project was created for a collaboration with Cirque du Soleil and has the endorsement of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of Lennon and George Harrison, Martin said.

``I had fresh ears -- if you can have fresh ears to the Beatles -- and my job was to make things different,'' said Martin, who was born in 1969 as the band was breaking up.

The rules were simple: Beatles tracks only, no electronic distortion of what they recorded, and no newly recorded music. The single exception was a string arrangement, written by original Beatles producer George Martin, to accompany an acoustic version of Harrison's ``While My Guitar Gently Weeps.'' ...

As a producer, Martin said the term ``mash-up'' implies two things rammed together. While it can be good, it doesn't stand up to repeated listenings, which he believes is what sets ``Love'' apart.

Cuts.com: Mash up a Hollywood video

Someone just alerted me to Cuts.com, an interesting startup that demoed at DemoFall:

Product Description

Cuts lets everyday people edit, share and watch personalized versions of copyrighted video. Parents can take control by removing inappropriate or scary scenes. Friends can insert and share commentary, re-arrange scenes or add to the videos they own. By creating Cutlists, which are virtual edits separated from the content itself, users can share their creations over the Internet. Now everyone can watch their videos their way, legally.

Market Opportunity

All over the world people are taking control of their viewing experiences: TVGuardian has sold 7 million devices, 4 million people viewed Brokeback Mountain satires on YouTube, The Shining trailer re-cut was the most popular blog link for two weeks. Cuts enables these uses and much more, legally.

Demo Says

Film directors everywhere will cringe at Cuts, but parents, educators and digital media geeks are going to love it. By enabling individuals to create their own film edits and sequencing, Cuts lets you watch a film the way you wish it had been made (for example, much shorter, for parents forced to endure any barney video for the 356th time), add commentary to elucidate key scenes, or simply watch that favorite moment again and again and again. Cuts puts film fans in control of their movie-watching experience.