When I talk about someone remixing YouTube you’ll probably roll your eyes and say ‘I’ve seen that before.’ – well maybe not like this.

Kutiman takes all the acapellas, demos, gear tests, people showing off their skills which there are millions of in YouTube – and a bit like the Napster Nuggets aka Mic In Tracks of old, makes a new track from them:

An amazing mix, and apparently there is an album of these but it’s been nuked by the attention – hope it comes back soon, I really dig this video and would love to see it and the others in hi-res – but it seems quite a few of them have already made it on to YouTube.

Intro:

More like this 4:20 tune (check out the white rasta :

And proof you can go all dnb on our asses with stuff like this:

This article in Technology Review includes a interview with me – it sprang out of the anti-Girl Talk post I made on Radio Clash where I posted examples that were far better that don’t get Pitchfork’s tongue up their arse (bitter? me? why yes when it’s so meh!).

It also has interviews with several other people that have been featured or played on Radio Clash – the ever-lovely DJ Earworm (as interviewed on the podcast in 2005, and regularly played on the show and I made the approved video for the Reckoner Lockdown mash mentioned in the piece) and Lenlow who’s mashes I’ve played many times on the show.

The interview – well I had a great 1-2 hour chat with Larry Hardesty, lovely journalist who had done his homework (so many journos don’t – it’s why I wanted to make sure he had all the info – a lot of the stuff in the article is stuff we talked about, like the acapella sources but I didn’t want to go into proper print saying something like ‘Yeah Tim told me how to get acapellas from video games’ – err nope. I may be punker than Girl Talk – not hard – but I’m not stupid .

And nice to see he agrees with me about Stairway to Bootleg Heaven – it is the best mashup, ever as I told him

Ooh we like a bit of \m/ metal here, and via our GHey Metal Show co-host Scott tga I learned that there is a band that outdoes Therion in the operatic vocals department – and has NO guitars. Metal with no guitars? Does that work? Well find out for yourself, as Van Canto cover Metallica’s Battery:

I’d like to think doing an own goal on the Net is known as doing a Metallica; like being Dooced, it’s where you go against your own fans (as with Metallica and Napster, and recently having a go at bloggers daring to write about them). But that’s restricted to aging non-technical metal leather blokes right? WRONG.

Let me tell you a story:

There’s an unsigned rock band in Scotland, they’ve got a buzz around them, mostly created around demos pushed around the internet with the band’s permission. They do an interview with a blogger, who posts some of the said demos with the band’s permission. The band becomes a hot ticket as part of all this attention, and signs with a major label. So everyone’s happy then? Band have got big deal, blogger and others who caught on early got the scoops, the fans got the demos and are likely to buy the LP to hear the final tracks and others. All butterflies, yellow brick roads, unicorns and fluffy kittens?

Nope.

What actually happened was over a week ago the blogger, Ed from 17seconds got a DMCA takedown via Google/Blogger from Columbia, for an interview done before Glasvegas, the band, signed with them. The kicker? Well the tracks weren’t even available anymore. And originally were there with the band’s permission (implicit or otherwise, they were posted free at their site I think); when they owned all the rights, anyway, as they were then unsigned.

What this reveals is the utter stupidity (and doing a Metallica-ness, damn need to work on those verbs) of Google, Columbia (aka Sony BMG), Glasvegas and the DMCA. Google for pulling stuff without question – like Prince does with NPG Productions on YouTube, using the DMCA like confetti even when he doesn’t own the rights – Columbia for obviously doing a standard ‘buy everything’ deal with Glasvegas, and then strangely infuriating the fans and bloggers who put the band in the charts by regarding their initial promotional support as reason for litigation, Glasvegas for doing what bands like the Clash did before them and sign with $$$s in their eyes not realising probably what complete CONtrol means and probably not caring about the people who got them there, and DMCA evil piece of litigation that made this whole sad sorry state of affairs possible (apparently right or wrong the offending piece has to be taken down for 10-14 days? Is that true? If so, that is really a chilling effect).

Now where does it leave us? There seems to be one of the periodic crackdowns atm – Teenage Kicks have been threatened also, although that was the Baitles who tbh are like Prince litigious as feck. And no-one wants defends the rights to post ‘illegal music’ do they?

What tends to be less said is that these are less than ‘illegitimate’ bloggers in most cases, they’ve got the go-ahead, the contacts etc – and still get hassle even after being told it’s OK. So the official route is no less difficult, but ‘legit’ or not the record labels and their pluggers and marketers depend on these blogs in part to promote their music – they court them, as they do with DJs and remixers with acapellas and instrumentals, they lure them with the latest tracks. It’s no suprise, there isn’t a darkened back door where these ‘demo’ or pre-release MP3s are leaking out like fleeing rats; the record labels GIVE THEM to the blogs. Or the bands, or the marketing departments, or managers, or agents.

So hence irony of turning around and biting the hand that feeds you.

What to do? Well what about this – goto the Glasvegas Myspace page. Befriend them. Post a message pointing to 17seconds or the Don’t be Evil post. Then unfriend them

Tell your friends not to buy Glasvegas’s album and/or download or give them a copy until Ed or someone hears back. In fact fuck it boycott all Sony BMG if you want (who due to a contact I used to have used to be quite cool about all this, regularly releasing tracks for remix and review, unlike another frequent offender EMI who I’m glad to see are going down the pan May they rot in hell. They caused my own Cease and Desist – ooh remember them? How quaint they seem now – but anyway it’s sad to see Sony BMG join that cabal of stupidity).

Because I’m sure, Glasvegas being a Glaswegian band might not like being asked whether they are men or whether they are mice. Or that they are just now Columbia’s prison bitches…and might see these messages and respond. Doubtful, but one can try.

Interesting article about blogging and stress – and the recent stress-related deaths of several professional bloggers.

What I find most intriguing about the article is the description of professional bloggers and he sites, and that it’s become in part a digital sweatshop economy, where speed is of the essence. Certainly in the mashup world there is pressure to use the latest acapella, remix the latest competition tune, take part in this album and that album – something I stepped back from years ago as it’s just stirring the shit cauldron, endlessly recycling the same usually crappy content. Quality is not part of it – and I get that feeling from the commercial blogs I know of, or suspect are so (one tip: if they have advertising and use the same ‘wacky’ font all the time, they’re probably doing it as a brand and a company). I have to say I am slightly wary of those people.

Why? Well weirdly in this supposedly transparent Web 2.0 medium, I notice blogs and forums tend to keep ot secret the money side -  certain blogs and forums in the music world I suspect are either paid or advertising, taking kickbacks or freebies for plugs, taking press releases and regurgitating them, and getting ‘exclusives’ pushed at them directly from the record labels (some are less quiet about this, I notice several talking about ‘only allowed to release the 128k version’ – ie. the record companies have released it to them, it’s official – and now no more than say sending to radio stations or an advert on MTV).

For instance, one former forum I know of sold for 1000 pounds. I was astounded, a) I didn’t know there was a market for such things and b) when I found out I was saddened that the person sold out (if he’d made it clear it was not just for love I’d probably be OK with it, but a forum is more than the URL and logo and a bunch of threads, it’s the people that go to it – you can’t sell those) – I stopped going to that forum.

My blogs and the forums (which was bigger than that one) and the podcast have always been for free, and I’ve never accepted advertising nor made more than 5 quid from them (thanks Pete).

Maybe I’m a chump for doing that?