Innovators or thieves?

As a music lover  it seems like such a cop out, and to be honest pretty lazy, to merely sample someone else’s music and claim it as your own, that’s like taking a photo of the ‘Mona Lisa’ and claiming you as the artist because you added a filter…not exactly breaking new ground.  DJ’s and Mash up artists (the term artist is used very loosely here) should not be considered innovators at all, I even find it hard to believe they are considered musicians when their musical talents derive from the ability to play a song in conjunction with another, neither of which they created.

The sampling and mash up methods were developed in the 70’s where DJ’s would take popular songs and merely extend the most popular part of the song, and according to French intellectual Jacques Attali the listener became the operator (cited in McLeod, K. 2007) where“….anyone could compose music, regardless of whether they fit the traditional category of “musicians” or not. In the composition stage, the distinction between the worker and consumer, the musician and listener, was blurred…musicians no longer had the last word in their music” (McLeod, K. 2007) which seems completely unfair, the original meaning and message behind a piece of music is able to be completely altered in order to reach a new market and sell more copies.

In the  late 80’s digital sampling became a popular method for hip-hop artists and this method managed to change hip-hop music forever, it was for these brief few years that these "mash-up artists" could be considered innovators. however this did not last very long because in the early 90's when “copyright lawyers and major labels realized a whole new revenue stream could be opened up with a copyright-clearance bureaucracy"(McLeod, K. 2007) and hip-hop music would once again be completely changed.

“The minimum threshold one must attain in order to secure a copyright is to produce “an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.”  In the realm of music, this would apply to any tune, lyric, or rhythmic pattern that has been either recorded electronically or written down.” (Varner, K, & Varner, E 2012) so it would seem that any song considered a “mash-up” would fall under this threshold, and because copyright law is put in place to benefit the original author, it would make sense that every snippet of a song used should have to pay royalties to the original creator, otherwise it should, and most likely would be, considered an infringement of the law.

These mash-up “musicians” and "artists" should be considered thieves, to an extent, they are blatantly living off other peoples talents, and they should most certainly be made to pay. The time of mash-ups and remixes has passed and it is now out dated, obsolete and detrimental to the development of new artists and music. 

Franzen, Benjamin 2010, ‘Copyright Criminals’ Independent Lense, PBS, Ford Foundation, University of Iowa

McLeod, K. 2007 Freedom of Expression®, the Book, Doubleday:  New York

Varner, K, & Varner, E 2012, 'ARTISTS "UNDER PRESSURE": COPYRIGHT ISSUES IN POPULAR MUSIC', Mustang Journal Of Law & Legal Studies, 3, pp. 31-41