Researching Mashups, Bootlegs, and Bastard Pop

Dissertation Finished!

2010-04-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

It has been too long since I have posted, but I have been extremely busy finishing my dissertation. I just defended the dissertation on Wednesday. You can download it here.

Themed post: Michael Jackson

2009-10-12T21:37:00.000-07:00

As I was listening though my mashup collection I realized that I have a ton of Michael Jackson mashups.

Here are some of my favorites (in no particular order):

Norwegian Recycling - "Wanna Be Mixin' Something"
You will be hard pressed to find more King of Pop samples in one song. This mashup features 7 Michael Jackson songs and several others. For a list, and to download, visit Norwegian Recycling's website. Norwegian Recycling also made the video:

DJ Schmolli - "Jacko Breaks Free on Earth"
An excellent mashup from Austria's #1 exporter of Michael Jackson mashups (and more). Unfortunately I don't know who made this video:

Party Ben - "Promiscuous With You"
Nelly Furtado and Timbaland vs. Michael Jackson. This is a seamless mashup and a seamless video by VJ Brewski:

Go Home Productions - "Jacko Under Pressure"
Sticking with "Rock With You" a great A vs. B mashup by pioneering mashup legend Go Home Productions (a.k.a. Mark Viddler).

Mad Mix Mustang - "The Way You Got Me That Feeling"
Combining Michael Jackson with James Brown is tempting fate. Toying with two of my musical heroes could either be a colossal failure or a colossal success. Like most of Mad Mix Mustang's mashups this is the latter.

DJ Gauffie - "I Want ABC Back"
The vocals from The Jackson 5's "ABC" over the instrumentals of The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." This is extremely well done. My mom is two years younger than Michael Jackson and grew up listening to the Jackson 5, watching their TV shows, mimicking their dance moves, and crushing on Jermaine. I played this for her and she didn't notice that it was a mashup until I pointed it out. That is the sign of a well-produced bootleg.

I encourage you to visit the artist's websites where you will find many more excellent mashups.

New York Times Racial Profiling Fail

2009-07-26T11:51:00.001-07:00

I apologize that this is so far off topic, and that I have posted so little recently, but I saw this while reading the New York Times this morning and couldn't let it pass.

This weekend the Times ran a number of different columns reflecting on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. One of the columns, Obama, Gates and the American Black Man, by Brown University professor Glenn Loury, discusses racial profiling and systemic discrimination against Africa-Americans, particularly black men. I have posted a screen shot below. Notice the advertisement on the right side of the picture (click for a larger image):

To be fair, this ad was almost certainly generated automatically. It could also be coincidence that this ad was generated for this particular article. That being said, running an advertisement for hair straightening products along side an Op-Ed about the injustice of racial profiling and systemic racism is, at the very least, embarrassing and strikingly ironic.

Simply incredible

2009-03-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

I am nearly wordless in awe of this mashup project by Kutiman. The project is called Thru YOU. Kutiman has pulled dozens of videos from YouTube featuring individuals playing musical instruments and mixed them into 7 tracks/videos. Each track mashes up numerous separate YouTube videos. This is what creativity, media remixing technology, and Internet communication can do.

Here is one of the tracks:

Kutiman explains a little bit about his project in this video:

All of the videos or linked on the project website here.

This makes me giddy.

I Have A Weakness For Puns

2009-02-22T08:13:00.000-08:00

I guess this is sort of a mashup. Not really, but I love it and I wanted to put it on the blog.

Listen To This

2009-01-27T06:41:00.000-08:00

This has already been posted widely but in case you didn't see it this is DJ Earworm's United States of Pop 2008:

This mashup combines samples from each of the Billboard Top 25 songs of 2008. Earworm made the video as well. DJ Earworm also created a mashup combining the Billboard Top 25 songs of 2007 last year:

Both of these and many other excellent mashups can be downloaded from DJ Earworm's site.

Earworm is one of the most talented mashup artists out there. His production skills are incredible. Earworm is also the author of a mashup instruction book which is quite good although sadly not Mac compatible (he uses Sony's Acid Pro). DJ Earworm is best known for creating mashups with a large amount of samples all melded together seamlessly. However unlike other mashup artists, such as Girl Talk, that use tons of samples in a sort of frenetic collage, Earworm's mixes sound much more like recognizable songs with verses, choruses, and lyrics from multiple sources that are often tied to a common theme. For more about DJ Earworm's style check out this article from the MIT Technology Review which also features a cool "make your own mashup" tool.

Copyright Squelches Local Music

2009-01-26T06:02:00.000-08:00

I am currently living in Providence, RI approximately 410 feet from Patrick's Pub. Pat's is an Irish pub and the only neighborhood bar in the area that you would want to go to. Aside from an excellent pint of Guinness and the traditional Irish favorite "Nachos Tipperary", the pub used to feature frequent live music from local bands, a weekly Irish music session, karaoke, and a juke box.

For those of you who, like myself, are somewhat new to the intricacies of copyright, any venue that serves food or alcohol and plays copyrighted music must pay licensing fees. For example, if a bar wants a juke box they have to pay licensing fees. The only way to legally avoid paying licensing fees is to require musicians to perform only their own original works (no covers), have a juke box that only plays music in the public domain, or simply have no music at all.

There are three main organizations that collect these licensing fees ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. When Musician A writes a song that he/she intends to publish Musician A will register the song with these organizations. These organizations then track the amount of times that Musician A's song is played on radio, television, on jukeboxes, or by cover bands, and give a portion of the licensing fees that they have collected from the venues that play the music (like Pat's Pub), radio stations, clubs, etc. to Musician A. The payments to Musician A are known as royalties.

Here's the problem: there is no way that these organizations can possibly track the amount of times that a single song is played on every radio station, television station, in every bar or concert hall. So instead they use a number of variables and algorithms to determine who gets what royalties. In the end, the vast majority of the royalties collected go to a small amount of very popular musicians and their record companies. Meanwhile Musician A will likely never see any royalties from his/her work.

In other words the system is broken. In practice it is little more than a racket in which three large organizations collect a lot of money, keep some of it, and give the rest to a handful of already wealthy musicians and their even wealthier record labels.

This is not to argue against the idea behind royalties. Musician A should get paid for his/her work. A radio station sells advertising and can charge more based on the station's popularity which is determined largely by the music that they play. A pub makes money by selling food and drinks and attracts customers, in part, with live or recorded music. Since these entities are making money due, in part, to the works of the musicians whose music they are playing, it is only fair that they should have to pay those musicians for their work.

Unfortunately, as explained above, it isn't that simple. Take Patrick's Pub as an example. I have been there on a number of occasions and never heard much in the way of Top 40 pop either performed live or on the juke box. Yet there is a very high chance that the bulk of the fees that are collected from Pat's Pub are going to those Top 40 artists. Meanwhile the musicians whose music is being played at Pat's might not be getting any money at all from the licensing fees that the pub is paying.

There is another problem with all of this and Pat's Pub again provides a good example. The owner of Patrick's, either because he was unaware or unwilling, did not pay his licensing fees and was caught. ASCAP sued Patrick's Pub for up to $120,000 in damages. This made news nationally because Pat's pub is a local hangout for many Providence politicians. This NY Times article gives a good summary of the case. Patrick's settled the case for $16,000 and is still open.

As a result of the suit, and this is the worst part, Patrick's no longer has any live music. The owner of the pub is too concerned that he may run afoul of another of the three licensing companies and so he has decided to just stop all live music. This means that local bands have one less place to play, people have one less place to come together and be a part of local music culture, there is no longer an Irish music session, the pub is unable to attract people in with music, and the reduced amount of customers along with the fine has put the pub in danger of closing.

Who does all of this serve? The profits of a select few record companies and their most popular recording artists. The system as it exists currently is not helping local musicians, it's not helping local establishments, and it is certainly not serving local communities. I used to really enjoy seeing music at Pat's Pub. It was entertaining to watch and gave a unique view into the community. Now that is gone.

Yo-Yo Ma to Join Ashlee Simpson in Lip-Synch Hall of Fame

2009-01-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

It turns out that the performance by Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, and Gabriela Montero at the Presidential Inauguration was pre-recorded. The musicians were actually playing their instruments but the music that was broadcast over the speakers to the Mall and over the air to the world was a recording. The quartet had made the recording in advance and acted it out during the "live" performance. This article from the New York Times has more information.

As I was watching the performance I had some of the same thoughts raised in the Times article. It was hard to believe that they were able to perform so well based on the effect that the weather would have on their instruments. I also couldn't believe that any of them would put their own instruments in jeopardy of cracking.

It is interesting that the organizers of the event chose not to make it known before or during the event but waited until afterwords. It raises a question about "liveness": When Aretha Franklin performed she sang to a pre-recorded backing track complete with pre-recorded backup singers. If the back up was live we never saw the band. Additionally when the Navy Chorus sang the Star Spangled Banner we never saw them (at least not on the CNN broadcast).

In other words, the event organizers made the decision that it was more important to project an image of "live" performance for the quartet than for Aretha Franklin or the Navy Choir. Would it have been acceptable to have Yo-Yo Ma performing alone to the taped accompaniment of the rest of the quartet? I believe this is a reflection of the expectation/delusion of "authentic" performance in classical music that is not an expectation of popular music.

DJ Hero

2009-01-23T07:15:00.000-08:00

It appears that Activision, the publisher of Guitar Hero, is set to release DJ Hero this summer. Somehow the concept of playing a guitar controller is more appealing to me than playing a turntable controller, but the game will apparently focus on creating mashups and will allow the use of Guitar Hero controllers alongside the turntable.

For more about the game go here or here.

Several members of the mashup community have been involved in the making of this game which is a good sign. The game is being developed in the U.K. which is home to an abundance of great mashup artists.

I am now officially one step closer to buying a new video game system.

New News and Old News

2009-01-20T17:29:00.001-08:00

I apologize for my lack of posting recently. I just moved across the country to Providence, Rhode Island where milkshakes are called cabinets. Fortunately I don't have to worry about what milkshakes are called because it is about 20 degrees here and snowing and only a crazy person would want a milkshake*.

But enough about me, here are some links to interesting stories that have happened over the last few weeks:

-Charles Nesson, a law professor at Harvard, has launched a law suit against the RIAA. Nesson contests that the lawsuits filed by the RIAA against music downloaders were unconstitutional. You can read more here and even more on Professor Nesson's blog. The case is set to start this Thursday.

-The RIAA has decided to stop suing its customers! However the association will continue with any lawsuits that have already been filed (much to the dismay of one Charles Nesson).

-The European Union is considering a copyright extension that its own studies have sown to be misguided. This video by the Open Rights Group gives a good explanation of the proposal and its downsides.

*That's a lie I wanted a milkshake earlier today and yesterday.

Early Mashup

2008-12-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

There are too many complications to claim that any one song is the "first" mashup. However, "Mission Impossible / Norwegian Wood" by the Alan Copeland Singers is one of the earliest that I know of. I came across this through Kembrew McLeod's article "Confessions of an Intellectual (Property)" as well as a comment posted on GYBO (Get You Bootleg On) by Timbearland.

The song was arranged by Alan Copeland. The vocals were recorded, apparently, by The Alan Copeland Singers. I do not know anything more about the production of this track.

Alan Copeland won the "Best Contemporary Pop Performance, Chorus" Grammy Award in 1968 for "Mission Impossible / Norwegian Wood." You can download this excerpt from the track at Mr. Copeland's website.

While I can't be sure, it sounds like both the vocal and instrumental sections of the track have been spliced to fit together (as opposed to being performed live or recorded live). The form of the track (A vs. B) and the method of construction (or my best guess at it) both fit perfectly with contemporary ideas about what makes a mashup.

Listen To This (Easy Like Lionel Richie Edition)

2008-12-01T13:02:00.000-08:00

If you don't have a soft spot for Lionel Richie you're crazy. Here are four great mashups featuring The Commodore's "Easy Like Sunday Morning." All of the tracks can be downloaded from the mashup artists' websites.

"Easy Heaven" by BRAT Productions. Lionel vs. The Cure.

"Easy Wall" by DJ Lobsterdust. Lionel vs. Oasis.

"Take It Easy On Me" by MadMixMustang. Lionel vs. A-Ha.

"Easily Hurt" by Bobby Martini. Lionel vs. Christina Aguilera.

Digital sales outnumber CD sales at Atlantic Records

2008-11-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

For the first time digital sales have outnumbered physical record sales at a major recording company. Here is an interesting NY Times article about the milestone (featuring the graph above).

It is no wonder that the RIAA and the record companies that they represent are fighting so hard to stem the tide of digital media. As the Times article demonstrates, they have not figured out how to make money from digital downloads (or at least not enough). Rather than devote their time to reconfiguring their business models to fit new consumer trends, they are litigating to try to delay the inevitable.

It is reminiscent of the American auto industry. For years analysts and consumers have been telling the industry that they want higher quality, more fuel efficient cars. Rather than retool and give the consumer what they wanted the American auto industry used their lobbying power to win tax incentives that allowed them to keep creating ridiculously outmoded vehicles

(subsidized by tax dollars).

Consumers and industry analysts are telling the major recording companies (as well as television, film, and news corporations) that they want easy access to the media of their choice on their own schedule. Consumers don't want to pay $19.00 for a CD that only has one song that they want on it. They want to pay $1.00 for the single on their computer. I don't think this is a trend that will be changing anytime soon. Yet recording companies continue to create the same ridiculously outmoded albums complete with antiquated publicity and lavish recording costs.

Rather than compete for the business of consumers, media corporations, like the American auto industry, are attempting to use their powerful lobbyists and lawyers to protect their failing business models.

Amazing Hot Dog Launcher

2008-11-21T16:03:00.000-08:00

I saw this today at BoingBoing Gadgets. As far as I am concerned this may be the greatest invention of all time. No wonder the Phillies won the World Series.

A mashup of sorts

2008-11-18T11:12:00.000-08:00

Listen To This

2008-11-11T21:08:00.000-08:00

It just dawned on me that in a blog about mashups I have not yet posted any actual mashups. Beginning today I am going to be periodically posting noteworthy mashups that I have been listening to.

The first is "Stayin' Alive in The Wall" by Wax Audio. The track is a mashup of the Bee Gee's "Stayin' Alive" and Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in The Wall Pt. II."

This track has great production values. The samples both sound clean, clear, and crisp and are blended together seamlessly. This mashup has a terrific chorus and even uses David Gilmour's guitar solo.

You can download this track from Wax Audio's site.

Post Election Bliss

2008-11-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

My friend Cliff Murphy pointed out that I have not posted anything in a while. I blame the election. I was so wrapped up in it that when the election was finally called I needed to take a little break from all media. It is similar to the Olympics. For two weeks I watch hours and hours of television every day and then when the Olympics are over I don't want to see a TV for weeks. The difference is that this election lasted two years.

I am beginning to make my way back to my normal life. I read the NY Times for the first time again today. In fact, there is a very interesting article about the possible demise of the "Southern Strategy" that Republicans since Nixon have been using to win the South. The article also speculates that the South voted so strongly for McCain (while the rest of the country went blue) that the political influence of the South may have taken a big hit. The Times provides compelling visual evidence off this as well.

Map of counties that voted more heavily Republican than in 2004:

National county map showing change in voting since 2004:

Another Copyright Documentary

2008-10-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

There is a new documentary coming out centered around copyright, remixing, and, like Good Copy, Bad Copy, featuring Girl Talk. The new film is called RiP: A Remix Manifesto. It is not finished yet but I would imagine that it will be available for download once it is complete. The director, Brett Gaylor, has an interesting blog post about Go Home Productions. I don't know if the film will focus just on Girl Talk or more broadly on the mashup community, but it looks promising.

From the project website:

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.
The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil's Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture criticCory Doctorow are also along for the ride.
A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A remix manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle.

Entertaining Documentary about Copyright

2008-10-11T17:12:00.001-07:00

In case you haven't already seen it, Good Copy Bad Copy is a concise examination of the current state of copyright law. The documentary looks at several different ways that intellectual property rights are handled around the world and also offers some possible alternatives like Creative Commons. Another interesting alternative is a blanket licensing fee paid either to the telecom companies or in the form of a government tax. The proceeds would be distributed to the various companies that hold copyrights and then all the copyrighted content that they produce would be freely available. It seems improbable that this could take hold in the United States given the extreme fear of anything remotely socialist (unless it involves taking over banks and mortgages), but it is a fascinating alternative. It seems to me that no matter what your opinion of the need for copyright protection there is something wrong with a system that requires a 57 page EULA agreement to watch a children's Disney film.
You can stream the documentary Good Copy Bad Copy or download it via (a remarkably fast) torrent.

Girl Talk on NPR

2008-10-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of differing opinions about Girl Talk. I think that most people would agree that he is probably one of the most well known mashup artists around. He was interviewed on NPR yesterday afternoon. The interview is not in depth but he has some interesting comments about not paying for samples. You can listen here.

Dissertation Proposal

2008-10-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that some people visiting this blog may want some more detail about my research project. I am posting the most recent version of my dissertation proposal. I apologize if this makes for dry reading. Please contact me directly or leave a comment if you have any advice, suggestions, or anything else.

Mashnography: Community, Creativity, Consumption, and Copyright

A mashup is a combination of pre-recorded samples taken from two or more sources (usually popular songs) and mixed into a new track. As a genre, mashups are defined by shared production techniques as much or more than by stylistic commonalities. Mashups typically consist exclusively of samples. In this respect mashups are unlike other sample-based musics that incorporate sampling with original content. A standard mashup, often referred as an “A vs. B” mashup, will feature two or more songs from different artists edited into one single track. This process involves the manipulation of elements like tempo, pitch, and key, and will often feature the vocals from track A juxtaposed with the instrumentals from track B. A completed mashup will be posted to the Internet and made available for downloading or streaming. Many mashup artists have their own personal websites; others use personal blogs that link to file hosting sites from which their work can be downloaded. Mashup are publicized, distributed, and critiqued in online forums popular with the mashup community. Mashups are also heard and shared in dance clubs across the country as well as occasional radio airplay, podcasts, and the rare commercial album.

My dissertation will be the first ethnographic survey of the mashup community. The existing scholarly work on the subject has been from the perspectives of communication studies and critical theory and not ethnographically informed. My project will be grounded in interviews, participant observation, and multi-sited analysis of the mashup community as it exists online and offline. The dissertation will describe methods of production and distribution as well as sites of reception. Theoretical discussions will focus on dispersed communities interacting both online and at small gatherings, and the agency of producers and consumers of music that is reliant on technology and other mediated commodities. The project will also address how the mashup community negotiates copyright law and values intellectual property.

Mashup Production

There are many ways to make a mashup. The most prevalent technique employs digital audio editing software such as Ableton Live, Audacity, or Sony’s Acid Pro. The sampled material comes from a variety of sources and the samples used are usually MP3 files. Using audio editing software it is possible to manipulate these MP3 files in countless ways and combine elements from multiple sources into one new track. There are inherent limitations to working with audio files that have already been mixed for commercial release (few mashup artists have access to raw master tapes), but the software programs mentioned above are powerful and allow for countless creative reconfigurations and combinations.

Mashup artists are adept at using audio software to isolate particular elements within an already mixed recording. By stripping out select frequencies, reversing the phasing of certain songs, and adjusting the EQ, it is possible to enhance the vocals from a track while muffling the instrumentals. These methods can be applied in reverse to produce an instrumental version with no vocals.

The vast majority of popular music is recorded using multi-track recording techniques and one of the ingredients of most songs (before they are mixed down and released) is an a cappella vocal track. Record companies often release vocal tracks and instrumental tracks in an effort to publicize a song through remixes and extended club mixes. Frequently these a cappella and instrumental tracks are released or leaked to the Internet and are archived and shared at sites like Acapellas 4 U (http://www.acapellas4u.co.uk). The commercially produced tracks tend to be of high sound quality and they are generally preferred over the homemade versions.

Once the instrumental and vocal tracks are found or created they are imported into multi-track editing programs. The pitch and tempo are manipulated so that the tracks will be in sync. For some mashups this is all the manipulation that is done. Other mashups have added digital effects, chopped and rearranged tracks, loops, and numerous other stylistic embellishments. There are also mashups that do not rely on a cappella and instrumental tracks, but instead are made of smaller samples from songs that are looped and manipulated to fit together.

Mashup methodology has extended beyond music. Mashup artists make music videos to accompany their songs and mashups often feature a photoshopped image combining the sampled artists’ images as “cover” art. These multi-media mashups are especially well suited for public display, such as in dance clubs, where they are often projected onto a wall or screen to accompany the music.

Mashup Distribution, Reception, and Community

The Internet is the epicenter of activity for the mashup community and the majority of activity occurs in online forums. There are a number of online forums, such as Get Your Bootleg On (http://www.gybo.org), and Acappellas 4 U that are devoted specifically to the distribution and discussion of mashups, news, and other topics of interest to the mashup community. There are also physical sites where members of the mashup community can come together. Dance clubs in cities across the nation and in Europe feature mashups or will host DJ’s that specialize in playing mashups. Some dance clubs host mashup only nights and a franchise has emerged called Bootie that sponsors mashup nights in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and several European cities.

Conventional media outlets like radio, MTV, and magazines focusing on popular music and culture have featured mashups. There are also a handful of mashup albums that have been released commercially. Occasionally one of these albums will catch the attention of the mainstream popular music media. The most well known example is DJ Danger Mouse’s 2004 The Grey Album. Danger Mouse took the vocal tracks from each song on Jay-Z’s The Black Album and paired them with heavily manipulated instrumental elements which all came from The Beatles White Album. The mashup community is a relatively small niche of popular music producers and consumers and examples like The Grey Album, which received considerable coverage in the mainstream news and entertainment media, are the exception. Although a small community, the interplay of production, consumption, media, technology, and intellectual property in the mashup community is reflective of larger trends in popular culture.

Copyright Issues And Activism

Copyright is deeply implicated in a genre of music that consists almost exclusively of the reconfiguration of copyrighted material. There are many established websites that openly share and link to MP3 files of mashups. There have been several cases in which record companies have issued cease-and-desist orders (McLeod, 2005). Why distribution of some mashups is tolerated while others are not is unclear. The law is not consistently enforced or enforceable. Kembrew McLeod points out that one of the most well known examples of early sampling is the Beatles’ “Revolution #9” from The White Album in which they cut up and looped unauthorized samples from radio, television, and from EMI’s catalog. None of the samples were cleared with the copyright holders and the Beatles did not face any prosecution or fine. Ironically, 36 years later EMI, the same record company that released “Revolution #9,” issued cease-and-desist orders to DJ Danger Mouse and any website that posted The Grey Album for unauthorized sampling of the Beatles’ The White Album (2005, 82).

How do members of the community understand mashups in relation to copyright law? What does the law say about the legal status of mashups? Copyright law was created before the technologies that are challenging it today had been conceived. There have been regular attempts to update copyright law, but, as demonstrated by the practices of the mashup community, the law does not fully address modern technologies and creative practices.

There are many examples of the mashup community subverting and satirizing the language and imagery used by governments and trade associations like the Recording Industry Association of America. Mashups are on the margins of copyright law and copyright infringers are commonly accused of committing “piracy.” In keeping with mashup methodologies, the mashup community has combined contemporary intellectual “piracy” with the seafaring piracy of yore. “Bootleg” and “bootie” are terms that are often used both in the mashup community and the pirate community. By satirizing their potential status as “pirates” members of the mashup community are subverting and challenging copyright laws and notions of intellectual property.

Existing Scholarly Literature

The first mashup to gain significant attention outside of the mashup community was released in 2001. Freelance Hellraiser combined Christina Aguilera and The Strokes to create “A Stroke of Genie-us.” The media noticed the mashup scene in 2001, but it was not until 2004 that the first academic work on mashups was published. Over the last four years only a handful of articles and one dissertation have been published dealing with mashups. Although a few of these works use ethnographic methods such as interviewing and online fieldwork, none of them have ethnographic aims. Instead most of the existing literature is informed by communication studies and critical theory.

Philip Gunderson published the first academic work dealing with mashups (2004). Gunderson wrote a review of DJ Danger Mouse’s 2004 album The Grey Album for the journal Postmodern Culture. Gunderson envisioned The Grey Album as a harbinger of things to come. According to Gunderson mashups represent the apotheosis of postmodern schizophonia and challenge the structures of modernity. Gunderson wrote,

Artists like Danger Mouse may be taken as cultural prophets. They preach a new economics: the communism of simulacra, the unrestricted sharing of digital copies without originals. This new economics deterritorializes the culture industry; it threatens all industries that have traditionally profited as the producers and gatekeepers of information. Whereas communist regimes in the previous century could not withstand the onslaught of cheap commodities from capitalist countries, today we find capitalist countries increasingly vulnerable to the world's data commies (2004, 5).

The next article to appear was William Levay’s “The Art of Making Music in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Culture Industry Remixed” (2005). Levay’s article addressed the role of the author in a musical form comprised entirely of the work of others, the democratization of technology and means of production, and the mashup scene’s position in the fringes of the culture industry (if not altogether in opposition to it). Levay and Gunderson raised many of the same points but drew to two different conclusions. Gunderson saw mashups as an example of the weakening grip of the culture industry. Levay concluded that mashups would eventually be co-opted by the culture industry and sold as a commodity:

Any form that is poised to undermine the culture industry’s hegemony, especially if it’s potentially marketable pop music, will be sanitized and brought into the fold. Pop music consumers in the cut ’n’ mix school will surely continue to remix and mash up old songs to create genre-bending new ones. But the industry’s appropriation of the mash-up means listeners won’t hear it as the sound of dissatisfied consumers from the no- longer-mute periphery. Marketed to an audience exponentially greater than what the underground remixer could have hoped to reach, the potentially subversive art is reproduced and bar-coded, turned into a harmless fad or a profitable industry formula, and we all pay for it (2005, 36).

Kembrew McLeod provided a thorough historical survey of the uses of sampling in recorded music in his 2005 article “Confessions of an Intellectual (Property): Danger Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Sonny Bono, and My Long and Winding Path as a Copyright Activist-Academic.” McLeod argued that mashups are a distant relative to Pierre Schaeffer and musique concrete (81). McLeod also detailed some lesser-known uses of sampling in popular music including a series of recordings by Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman that they called “break-in” records. These recordings from the 1950’s featured comedy skits in which the performers interacted with splices from popular songs. The samples used were not authorized, but the records were commercially released and made the billboard charts by selling over one million copies (McLeod, 2005, 82). The “break-ins” are noteworthy because they sold so well but also because they resulted in a lawsuit. Four record labels and two performers sued Buchanan and Goodman to have an injunction placed on their recordings and demanded financial damages. The judge ruled in favor of Buchanan and Goodman on the grounds that the recordings were parody and not in violation of copyright (82).

McLeod’s article provided a succinct description of copyright law, its history, and the problems with the law that are being revealed by contemporary sampling practices. The disparate treatment of cover versions of songs and sampling is one example of the shortcomings of the law. As long as a licensing fee is paid, covering another artists’ work is always legal regardless of the artist/record label’s approval. McLeod notes that while there have been countless horrible Beatles covers, the Beatles' and their label almost never allow sampling of their music (80). The existence of a compulsory license for a cover version of a song but no similar legal structure for sampling is an example of the failure of copyright law to recognize current creative uses of intellectual property.

McLeod’s article also explored the role of the author. When mashup producers create collages with the work of others they are demonstrating that “the work” is never a finished product even after it leaves hands of its author (2005, 84). McLeod associated mashup artists with deconstructionist literary theorists (84). Mashup artists, like deconstructionists, are taking apart and analyzing existing artifacts and searching for new meaning. McLeod wrote, “With mashups, one of the underlying motivations of the bedroom computer composers is to undermine, disrupt, and displace the arbitrary hierarchies of taste that rule pop music” (84). According to McLeod the mashup community is unknowingly doing with popular music what theorists like Derrida did with literature (83-85).

McLeod’s article made clear his enjoyment listening to and thinking about mashups. However, he concluded that despite the challenges that they pose to copyright law and the underlying hierarchies of popular music, mashups are a genre that is “quite limited and limiting… because they depend on the recognizability of the original, mashups are circumscribed to a relatively narrow repertoire of Top 40 songs” (86). He further asserted that by demonstrating how easily many popular songs can be played over the top of one another, “mashups pretty much demonstrate that Theodor Adorno, the notoriously cranky Frankfurt School critic of pop culture, was right about one key point… Adorno claimed that pop songs were simplistic and merely made from easily interchangeable, modular components… after hearing a half dozen mashups, it is hard to deny that he is right about that particular point” (86).

John Shiga’s 2007 article “Copy-and-Persist: The Logic of Mash-Up Culture” was a departure from the theory and criticism of the earlier articles. Shiga was the first to try to understand the workings of the mashup community using some of the community’s own definitions. In his article Shiga convincingly argued that for the mashup community “pluralistic listening and sympathetic audition [are] the basis for membership and ethical sociality” (2007, 95). Shiga also discussed the listening practices that, he argued, reify music transforming it into an object that can be used in mashups (95). The final theme that Shiga examined was the attainment of status, reputation, and various forms of capital within the mashup community.

The most in-depth work on mashups to date is Aram Sinnreich’s 2007 dissertation Configurable Culture: Mainstreaming the Remix, Remixing the Mainstream. Sinnreich’s fundamental concern was what he has called “configurable culture.” For Sinnreich configurable culture broadly encapsulates the use of technology to reconfigure mediated products. Configurable culture is far larger than just mashups, but the bulk of the interviews and examples in the dissertation came from the mashup community.

Configurable Culture is explicitly non-ethnographic. Sinnreich’s intention was to show that configurable culture represents several paradigm shifts not to examine the inner-workings of the mashup community. The majority of the dissertation focused on contrasting configurable cultural practices and assumptions with those that came before them. The previous practices and assumptions were referred to as the “modern ontological framework” and broken down into a series of binaries (art/craft, artist/audience, original/copy, performance/composition, figure/ground, and materials/tools). Using mashups as an example, he demonstrated how these binaries are challenged and made irrelevant by configurable culture.

Sinnreich’s work touched on many of the issues raised in previous pieces such as the democratization of technology and the means of production. Sinnreich spent a good deal of time on the conflict between copyright law, ideas of intellectual property, and new uses of technology. Sinnreich also examined the challenge that mashups pose to the role of the author.

The existing scholarship on mashups privileges theory at the expense of ethnographic grounding. Mashups are used to demonstrate theoretical concepts that may or may not have any relevance to the mashup community. As with a lot of critical theory, this approach seems backwards to me. Much of the work surveyed seeks to manipulate mashup culture to fit theory rather than manipulating theory to fit mashup culture

My project will approach the mashup community ethnographically. I will use a multi-sited fieldwork approach. I will conduct interviews in person, over the phone, and over the Internet. Participant observation will play a crucial role in my work. I will actively post and respond to items on the various mashup forums online. Additionally, I plan to survey the local mashup scene in Portland, Oregon and to observe mashup creation and consumption firsthand. There are a number of mashup nights at clubs in different cities. Although there is not a regular mashup night in Portland I will be making trips to more established venues like Bootie San Francisco and several trips to Bootie Boston. Finally, I will be learning to make mashups and keeping a journal of my progress. This reflexive process will provide a solid base for understanding the techniques and technologies employed by mashup producers.

Chapter Outline

I. Mashnography: Themes and History

An introduction to the mashup genre and community as well as the dissertation. Explanation of the multiple sites where the community exists (online and in physical spaces like dance clubs). A brief history of the genre and its precursors situating mashups in the larger history of sample-based music. Finally, a guide through the dissertation highlighting key themes (production, distribution, reception, and copyright/intellectual property) and theoretical arguments (problematizing ideas of community and nation with a dispersed community, and technology and agency).

II. Mashup Production and Distribution

A close examination of the various techniques and technologies used to make mashups. The discussion will be informed by interviews with mashup artists as well as personal experience learning to make mashups. Distribution will be addressed as well focusing on the variety of means available to publicize mashups and make them available for consumption.

III. Mashup Reception Online and Offline

Using a multi-sited approach to understand and describe the ways that mashups are heard, shared, and discussed both in the virtual community on the Internet and in the physical community at dance clubs.

IV. A Community with Multiple Homes: Dispersed Community and the Internet

A community that exists largely on the Internet challenges concepts of the nation and transnationalism. The mashup community has no single geographic center. Comparing community members input about both the physical and virtual gathering sites will inform the theoretical discussion of online communities and their physical counterparts. How do members of this dispersed community define a community whose relationships are so different from others?

V. Giving Voice to the Mashes: Agency, Intentionality, and Democratization

An examination of the ways in which the mashup community appropriates mediated commodities. Analysis of the democratization of technology and the re-configuration of the division of labor made possible by audio editing software and the Internet. Artistic intent provides an example of agency.

VI. Copyfight: Embracing the Rhetoric of Piracy

How does the mashup community negotiate copyright law and intellectual property? Are
mashups legal? How have emerging technologies and practices challenged the current laws and notions of property rights and ownership? Examination of the ways that the mashup community satirizes and subverts copyright law and notions of intellectual property by adopting the language of “piracy.”

VII. Conclusion

The mashup community provides examples of several emerging themes in music and society: the use of technology to create music and sustain community, the reconfiguration of mediated commodities, dispersed communities, and the challenges that digital technologies pose to copyright. Final analysis and re-emphasis of these themes and their implications in contemporary cultural configurations.

Research Timeline

The first three chapters of my dissertation are more descriptive in scope and less theoretical. I will begin with fieldwork and targeted literature reviews for these first three chapters. Specifically, I will be asking questions about the history of mashups, the production techniques, means of distribution, and the various ways that people receive and listen to mashups. I anticipate spending four months researching and writing initial drafts for these chapters.

In January I will be moving across the country to Providence, Rhode Island until mid-May. This relocation will give me the opportunity to attend the Bootie Boston mashup night (a monthly event that I should be able to attend four times) and conduct additional fieldwork that will be useful for Chapter Three regarding reception.

Once I have solid drafts for the first three chapters I will move on to the more theoretical work that makes up Chapter Four and Chapter Five. I anticipate the research for these chapters will be conducted primarily in the library. Fieldwork will play a role, but these are the chapters in which I plan to do the bulk of the work situating my project within the existing literature. The ready availability of the library and all of its resources makes Brown an ideal setting for this research. I plan to do the majority of the work for these chapters during the Spring semester while I am in Providence.

Chapter Six will be one of the longer chapters and also one of the most time consuming. Copyright law is something that I have little experience with and much of the reading will be from disciplines that I am not well versed in. Chapter Six will also be one of the most important chapters in the dissertation. Copyright and intellectual property are rapidly becoming central topics for a wide range of disciplines and new work is being published constantly. It will take some time to familiarize myself with the existing literature. My initial fieldwork leads me to believe that this topic is also of great importance to the mashup community. I foresee this chapter taking 3-4 months for research and writing.

Following the schedule above I will have completed drafts of all chapters except the conclusion in twelve months. I plan to spend the ensuing three months completing the concluding chapter and redrafting the introduction to reflect any changes to the project. By following this schedule I will have completed a draft of the full dissertation by January of 2010.

Contributions to the Field

My dissertation will be the first substantial ethnographic work on the mashup community. I will be documenting the musical culture of a vibrant contemporary music community. This project will also expand the discussion of several key concepts in contemporary ethnomusicology. Chapter Two and Three will demonstrate the use of recent technologies in the production, distribution, and reception of mashups. I will be contributing to the arguments advanced by Taylor (2001), Theberge (1997), Jones (2000) and Garofolo (1999) that technology has reshaped the making of, consumption, of, and sharing of music. Chapter Four will add to the discussion of dispersed communities and online communication as an important new site of cultural interaction (Ayers, 2006, Kibby, 2000, Watson, 1997). Agency is an enormous topic but Chapter Five will focus specifically on the ways that agency is expressed by creators and consumers of technologically mediated music. This discussion will provide further evidence that technology is not stultifying and does not disempower creativity (Lysloff and Gay, 2003, Taylor, 2001, Wong, 2003). Finally, the discussion of the complicated implications of copyright law on contemporary technologies and practices will add to the critical examination of copyright law (Marshall, 2005, McLeod, 2005, Theberge, 2004). It is necessary for ethnomusicologists to address the emerging uses of technology and technology’s implications for the creation and maintenance of musical communities. This project will contribute to that understanding as well as document a musical community that is certainly deserving of attention.

Works Cited

Ayers, Michael. 2006. Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture. New York: Peter Lang.

Garofalo, Reebee. 1999. “From Music Publishing to MP3: Music and Industry in the Twentieth Century.” American Music Vol. 17, No. 3. 318-354.

Gunderson, Philip. 2004. “Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, Mash-Ups, and the Age of Composition.” Postmodern Culture Vol. 15, No. 1.

Jones, Steve. 2000. “Music and the Internet.” Popular Music Vol. 19, No. 2. 217-230.

Kibby, Marjorie. 2000. "Home on the Page: A Virtual Place of Music Community." Popular Music Vol.19, No.1. 91-100.

Levay, William. 2005. “The Art of Making Music in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Culture Industry Remixed.” Anamesa Vol. 3, No.1. 21-38.

Lysloff, Rene and Leslie Gay, Jr. 2003. “Introduction: Ethnomusicology in the Twenty-first Century.” In Music and Technoculture, eds. Lysloff, Rene and Leslie Gay, Jr. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Marshall, Lee. 2005. Bootlegging: Romanticism and Copyright in the Music Industry. London: Sage Publications.

McLeod, Kembrew. 2005. “Confessions of an Intellectual (Property): Danger Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Sonny Bono, and My Long and Winding Path as a Copyright Activist-Academic.” Popular Music and Society Vol. 28, No. 1. 79-93.

Shiga, John. 2007. “Copy-and-Persist: The Logic of Mash-up Culture.” Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 24, No.2. 93-114.

Sinnreich, Aram. 2007. Configurable Culture: Mainstreaming the Remix, Remixing the Mainstream. Dissertation. University of Southern California.

Taylor, Timothy D. 2001. Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture. New York: Routledge.

Theberge, Paul. 1997. Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.

Theberge, Paul. 2004. “Technology, Creative Practice and Copyright.” In Music and Copyright, eds. Simon Frith and Lee Marshall. New York: Routledge

Watson, Nessim. 1997. “Why we argue about virtual community: A case study of the Phish.Net fan community.” In Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety, ed. S. Jones. London: Sage Publications.

Wong, Deborah. 2003. “Plugged in at Home: Vietnamese American Technoculture in Orange County.” In Music and Technoculture, eds. Lysloff, Rene and Leslie Gay, Jr. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Great political analysis site

2008-10-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I have become obsessed with the upcoming presidential election. I can't remember how I first came across the site fivethirtyeight.com but it is great. I check it multiple times every day:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com
It has become my addiction.

One amazing sentence.

2008-10-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

I am finishing a revised version of my dissertation proposal and I just wrote this sentence:
"Mashups represent the apotheosis of postmodern schizophonia and challenge the structures of modernity. "
What a sentence! Now that's academic.
Also, the Cubs just lost game 2 of the NLDS. Even a great sentence does not make up for that.

Hello mashup (mash-up), bastard pop, and bootleg community

2008-09-15T11:06:00.001-07:00

Hello,
My name is Liam McGranahan and I have just begun work on my PhD dissertation. I am interested in mashups and will be working with the mashup community to find out how and why people make and listen to mashups (as well as many other questions). I will be updating this blog periodically as I make progress or run into questions. Please contact me with any advice, comments, or anything else.
Thanks,
Liam.