I’ve been quoted in a Mashup PHD Dissertation…
Sunday, April 18th, 2010…by way of GYBO and a lot of other mashup/bootleg peeps including interview with a lot of the US bootleggers!
Liam McGranahan’s dissertation “Mashnography: Creativity, Consumption, and Copyright in the Mashup Community” as part of his doctorate from Brown University is available here, a ‘mashnography’ study into the ethnography of the bootleg scene. BTW timbearland = me, before my ‘fingertrouble’ namechange (I’ve also been on GYBO as ‘beardie weirdie’, ‘timbearcub, ‘instamatic’, ‘DJNoNo’ and about a million aliases, just to confuse the historians and dissertation writers out there 
).
Slightly surprised since it is a ethnographic study that focuses on GYBO as much as Bootie that there aren’t more interviews with some of us original 2002 GYBO crowd, or indeed McSleazy (we are all quoted from GYBO threads interestingly). Also could cause a few stirs re: quoted comments about some people’s love/hate of GYBO (4 comments? really Partyben? Although I suspect that said Eminem mix is the one DJNoNo purloined the ‘Lose Control’ acapella via LOL…) but a pretty interesting read – includes a lot of the mashup politics, internal schisms, aims and ideas – not really news totally to me, but then I live it don’t I?
Although I disagree with the analysis of one of my writings:
“timbearland: ‘I don’t think you’d find many people here having a problem
with what you’ve said. I mean I’ve even worked for Universal Music and I
agree with you. They seem to usually be one of the better ones, so unusual
if they are doing a Warners. Sony BMG seems best and most flexible,
EMI and Warners historically the worst. UMG are usually in the middle.’It is possible that certain record companies are more permissive of mashups than others,
but there is no discernable pattern. Rather, major labels appear to issue C&D orders based
simply on what catches the notice of the legal department. This may be the result of
media attention, Internet buzz, the objections of a sampled artist, or just random luck.”
I KNOW this to be the case – but it’s the problem of quoting me during a conversation with my peers without past knowledge – I wouldn’t have re-stated the backstory to this info for the 50th time as a long-term GYBO person most people there have heard it before. I’ve spoken to someone within Sony BMG who confirmed that they send out white labels and promos with acapellas and promote DJ remixes as a sort of focus group – at least within the RnB division they did. I know other labels who’ve paid for white label mashups to be pressed. There is a double standard there – some of the labels DO court unofficial remixes and mashups, others don’t, or in the case of EMI put out a Mashed compilation whilst CD’ing most of the mashup community, without understanding the irony. Universal according to one of their staff are ‘pretty clueless’ about the technology and not really aware enough of the internet to start throwing C&Ds around (until NirGaGa that is).
Coupled with the fact that of all the official and unofficial C&Ds out there, they are all mostly EMI, then Warners close by, then Universal – the NirGaGa one being a rare one – and then Sony. In fact only issue I ever had with Sony was ContentID restricting countries that could see a video on YouTube…compared to a C&D I got from EMI for using Kylie (where I had to do what Pilchard did and ‘duck and dive’ for a while) – this is positively benign! Sony being big in the interactive world, owners of ACID and also having a lot of hiphop/RnB/disco remix culture via BMG seem to in small part get it -as much as evil mega corps ever really get it.
That said, next week I’ll probably get a C&D from Sony, LOL.
You might like to try these previous posts...
- Warners Protest - January 18, 2009
- Pay to Play – your digital rights? - January 21, 2006
- CC mixter – legally mashup people’s tracks! - April 28, 2005
- Warners Takedown – EFF want to hear - February 8, 2009
- Legal mashups? Gowers review & Warners - December 6, 2006
