The Economics Of Girl Talk
blog.priceonomics.com
blog.priceonomics.com
If it's really worth nothing, then all these DJ's could either produce it or record it themselves. But it's not, and they can't. This is a classic economic externality. Writing, performing, and recording really good music costs a lot of money, and sampling is virtually free. Pay obscure artists a reasonable mechanical residual and negotiate with samples of huge hits for huge money.
That's not going to happen either, under the current system.
> Writing, performing, and recording really good music costs a lot of money, and sampling is virtually free.
Here your own argument comes back to bite you. Really good sampling takes just as much blood, sweat, and tears invested as the other skill sets you cite.
> If it's really worth nothing, then all these DJ's could either produce it or record it themselves.
Black or white or ... gray. Copyright duration has been extended well beyond the average human lifespan. With an effective lockout of fair-use, there is no effective recourse for musical collage artists. As TFA cites, this is completely inconsistent with copyright rulings for other art forms. Why should the music industry should get to be the special snowflake here?
> This is a classic economic externality.
You're complaining about a minor weakening of a monopoly which was created by the government at the public's expense! (Cough, externality, cough.) Quoth Wikipedia[1]: "In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit which results from an activity or transaction and which affects an otherwise uninvolved party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit." To use TFA's example, it's hard to reason that ACDC's revenues suffer because someone samples a few seconds of one of their songs, hit or otherwise. In fact, many cultural icons are greatly reinforced by this kind of use. On the other hand, law and precedent that restricts our ability to work with the cultural artifacts of our own lifetimes flies in the face of the history of the entire history of art and music. How's that for an externality?
As a professional software developer, I can hardly argue against music and audio professionals' ability to make money from their skilled work. But the argument that the pendulum of access and fair use in music has swung too far is compelling, and hardly new to TFA.
Oh, it's okay to leech off other people's work without compensating them, because I'm really good!
As for 'fair use', using the signature riff of a song is different from "10% of the prose" of an article. You're talking about the core identifiable part of a song, the hook itself.
In fact, many cultural icons are greatly reinforced by this kind of use.
If it's a fact, can you please cite a couple of examples that have been greatly reinforced by this kind of use? Because that really sounds like a throwaway weasel-word line to me.
It is well understood in English circles that Shakespear, along with many authors, essentially plagiarized the stories of their plays and and twisted some parts to their own style but leaving the structure intact.
The entire genre of blues is based off slave songs from the American South, and the riffs and basic structure is the same for all the songs.
Rock came from the influence of blues, with a large portion of the most famous songs being straight out stolen from blues songs from the 20s and beggining of the 20th century.
Well, the dynamics of who will get paid as a result of the legal recording arrangements are well beyond the scope of this conversation, and I don't believe the terms of somebody's recording deal, whatever they might be, negate wholesale expropriation of someone's artistic output. I find the whole "FAT CAT RECORD LABELS ARE PARASITES, STICK IT TO THE MAN!!!" argument to be kind of disingenuous.
> Here your own argument comes back to bite you. Really good sampling takes just as much blood, sweat, and tears invested as the other skill sets you cite.
This is.... categorically not true. I'm sorry. I have no small familiarity with electronic music and sampling, having transitioned over a while back after seeing the writing on the wall in terms of making music the old-school way, and while I would not hesitate to say that it requires skill and, above all, taste, there is little if any comparison to a singular analog musician, let alone an entire ensemble. I realize I'm going to be called old fashioned in this respect, but I've done both, and I can DJ a heck of a lot better than DJ's can sing, play guitar, bass, keys (live keys), and drums. Each instrument takes a lifetime to master, point blank.
You're right, I abused 'externality' a little. Not completely, but it's a little strained.
All I'll say here is what I said before-- for little songs, kick a small mechanical royalty to the rights holders so they can pay their bills. For big gold record songs, if you want to ride the coattails of AC/DC, John Lennon, Elvis Presley, or whoever, pay the toll that they dictate or write your own hook.
To take the 'sampling' debate into another realm, consider taking the likeness of a famous actor and CGIing it into some other, derivative work. This isn't so farfetched, really. Didn't 30 Rock do a bit a couple years back where they tried to CGI Jerry Seinfeld into NBC's flailing lineup?
And according to the ideas proposed in that article, wouldn't that be ANY derivative work, any time? Like some technicolor nightmare of a porno where James Dean bangs Elizabeth Taylor? Do they have a right to say 'no thank you'? Do they have a right to say 'yeah, but it'll cost you'? What about somebody like Tom Waits, who's consistently declined to make his work available in commercials? Can Girl Talk sample him and then put it in a Doritos ad? I think he'd be a little taken aback.
Weird when moral relativism takes hold in technical fields. "Some guy who has mastered copy-and-paste is just as able as actual composers and musicians. Including those they've robbed!"
Right.
I don't mean that as a pat answer: that's the actual formula I'm proposing. Usually laws are written in dollar amounts for infringement which then affect the licensing fee charged. I think that assessing infringement or licensing on a percentage basis is much fairer, and that way artists who sample can do so without worrying about big licensing or legal fees, because they won't be liable until such time as they start seeing profits, at which point some fraction of those are shared with the other 'contributors.' This isn't a perfect system (I can think of many reasons against compulsory licensing, and the idea of price controls for copyright holders is also problematic), but at least it means that there's some linkage between clearance fees and actual economic benefit.
And for big songs, call it gold-record hits and above, whatever Jay-Z (or equivalent) demands. If you want to sample a big band's big hit, you are arguably getting the better of the arrangement, and they ought to have the right to charge you whatever the market will bear. Or tell you to shove it if they don't like the song they're getting shoved into.
When I was a Junior/Senior (2009-2010) at Vanderbilt, I was VP of the programming board that arranged speakers, concerts, homecoming, comedians and other campus events and activities. We had Girl Talk come and while the price was not 6-figure crazy like what Acivii[1] charges these days, I was hit with sticker shock big time.
[1] http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201304/avicii-tim-berg...
I think that is a great model, personally. I want artists to not care about getting rich off of downloads. I think it's great when artists ranging from Deadmau5, Lil Wayne or Wiz Khalifa, release mixtapes for free. That seems to be the "artist" mentality, fuck getting paid; I'm doing this (making music) because I love doing this. It shows passion, commitment to their craft, and a true level of artistry. You could even argue the same thing for developers who release their apps for free because they want everyone to enjoy it regardless of price.
I obviously want artists to make as much money as possible, so releasing great mixtapes does make me, personally, want to go see their concerts. It seems to be a great way to market yourself and with labels taking so much from artists anyway, the place where most new artists make money is touring and live shows. I don't want to go to a concert wear essentially the artist is just playing their latest CD to a crowd of people.
Which is to say nothing about the idea of creating a structural requirement that professional musicians have to live an itinerant lifestyle.
You can want artists not to care about their recording rights as much as you like, but wanting recording rights not to matter is not the same thing as them actually not mattering.
"You can want artists not to care about their recording rights as much as you like, but wanting recording rights not to matter is not the same thing as them actually not mattering."
I do agree with that. I want them to be compensated for their creative efforts, which means the artist, not necessarily their label, holds those rights. I wish they didn't matter as much as they did so everyone could enjoy their music much easier, but you cannot have your cake and eat it too I suppose.
But it turns out, most major-label albums never recouped, and the artists kept the advance regardless. Labels served a similar function in commercial music as VCs serve in startups: they'd subsidize near-market wages for 9 money-losing bets in exchange for large proceeds from one breakout success.
I do have to agree with what you said, though. Most mainstream successes really are puppets of the big labels. If you notice, all the songs sound (about) the same sound, same shitty lyrics about whatever, ego-stroking, and bits of flamboyance to flaunt how much money they are making. They all even have the same career trajectory of talk shows, scandals, dating habits etc. Makes me wonder if the labels are, indeed, behind this or if these new "artists" are all just really damn similar.
Lots of good Indie Music out there (in every genre), but too much of it sucks. Surprisingly in the last year or so, T.V commercials have been a decent source for finding good Indie Music. Sam Adams, Sprint, and Cigna commercials all turned me on to great artists that I would have otherwise had no idea existed.
Isn't that true of every single model out there?
That seems to be the "artist" mentality, fuck getting paid; I'm doing this (making music) because I love doing this.
It is part of the artist mentality, but it's also great marketing. If you go to Soundcloud or similar sites, loads of artists are giving music away for free (not least to conduct musical conversations with their peers and get feedback etc.), but that doesn't mean they're all getting gigs out of it. The artists you mention are all already famous and can write off the time spent on doing free mixtapes as a promotional expense.
True, they are famous now, but all of them used mixtapes to become famous. Wiz came up as a rapper through mixtapes. Lil Wayne released "I'm Me" as a mixtape, which was supposed to be "The Carter 3" but it was leaked so he released it for free. Not to mention, he pretty much invented the "free mixtape to use a marketing tool" which I think he did by accident. His music sucks now, but The Carter 2 is a great CD and I don't think I would have found out about him at 16 unless it had been for his mixtape work.
I find this assertion hilarious, but that's probably because you're 24 and I'm 42. People have been doing this sort of thing for ages.
If there's cool software that doesn't exist because the universe lacks an equitable way to compensate you for its creation, then that sucks.
And it also shows that they're either already successful, already rich, or somehow able to avoid any kind of steady expenses. I'd love to do research in software. I don't care about making CRUD apps over and over, there are tons of things I'd like to experiment on and I bet at least one of them would end up benefiting others. But I'll likely never get to do any of this stuff because work demands the monopoly of my time and my wife and kids fight over what's left.
The result is a broken system that impairs the ability of young producers to make music without taking huge legal risks.
Music based heavily on sampling others' work, for sure - sample clearance is an expensive nightmare and should be cheaper, perhaps compulsory, and more transparent and accessible.
But you don't have to make music that way. You can sing and play a regular instrument, for example - and don't get started on the argument that there's nothing new under the sun, and that all basslines, drum rhythms etc. consist of ripping off someone else's idea. Musical quotation is widespread, but there is a huge different between coming up with your own riff that sounds a bit like your favorite band and just sampling the original. Furthermore, there's no special reason that sampling has to involve others' work. My main tool is a sampler but I hardly ever sample other people, and when i do it's usually a line from a movie or something, and done more for personal amusement. I would never, ever sample another musician's track and use it in my own music. It's not that it makes me morally superior, I just don't want to do that, because it would feel like I was just surfing on what they did because I couldn't come up with something cool on my own. I don't even care for using royalty-free sample loops of drum breaks or pead sounds for the same reason, although I will use one occasionally.
What I do sample is going into the kitchen and making recordings of household implements as percussion, my cats' miaows, sounds in my neighborhood, or my own voice or snippets stuff I'm playing out of synthesizers. For me, it's a lot more fun to come up with my own drum beats or suchlike, sample those, and then start warping the audio to my heart's content.
I'm not saying that this makes me a better musician or a better person than people who build records entirely out of samples - I'm not into Girl Talk but there are quite a few artists who work mainly with samples of others' stuff whose work I admire and enjoy. I'm just pointing out that that you can in fact go nuts with your sampler without ever having to deal with copyright clearance or infringement issues.
If you're sampling someone else, then you're effectively making them a co-author of your material - and they should be due royalties for that, just like if you covered their song. How many mixes have we heard where the signature is the sample and the chaff is the stuff surrounding it?
In any case, if the samples really were trivial and not worth kicking back money... then they wouldn't be sampled in the first place :)
That's a great point. One song the article mentioned that epitomized this was the Puff Daddy 'Missing you' song. The sentiment was worthwhile, and I can also see it within the musical tradition of rap and the soundsystem aesthetic where musicians develop their MCing skills by rapping over over a sampled loop in their bedroom/the garage etc. so to build a whole song over a single looped sample with a minimum of additional production elements actually served a musical function of evoking nostalgia for 'the way things used to be' when the people in question were young and just learning how to rap. But it ended up sounding like a complete lift of someone else's song, and while the licensing was probably taken care of in this case it's spawned thousands of imitations with even less musical novelty.
However, if I were a record company and the top google search for a day was a skinny kid who has audiences full of screaming target demographics, no amount of cocaine on prostitutes would be too great till I had him signed in a contract Fautus would consider a bit on the restrictive side.
Mumbling about how unfair it is to not be able to copy other people's work without paying them is a bit disingenuous, but if I owned those copyrights then this guy is a great way to get more out of the back catalog.
Go look up Soundcloud and see that most likely a third of the tracks being uploaded are remixes and edits of existing tracks, all of them innovative in their own ways.
There are entire genres of electronic music that exist due to sampling. Dub, Drum n' Bass, Electro, Latin American EDM, electronic Balkan, way too many to mention here.
There are literally millions of hours of recorded music; its market and creative value are far, far lower than what the big recording groups claim on the simple basis of the volume of production out there. Ironically, I have never heard of any of the (tens of thousands of) independent labels bitching about people remixing their tracks or uploading edits or playing them at gigs.
You sound like a person that purchases his or her music and listens to it mostly from radio or commercial sources. That's less than 1% of all published music, and its a world of great much depth and complexity where copying samples the a social norm. That copyright law in the last twenty years has favored the large, visible majority has little effect on the ethical implications for the rest of the artists.
And seriously, if a sample is so egreriously illegal as you claim, then I hope that in your world half of all rock music, R&B, and the entirety of blues be declared illegal, since the song structure and chord progressions are in general less creative than the spins electronic produces make on their samples.
Really, I see nothing particularly special in a 4 or even 40-second section of music to warrant an unusually high level of protection. Most samples are completely unrecognizable, and when present and recognizable they are honestly a minimal fraction of the creative output in a song.
And really, what makes samples so special over riffs, or even FX?
The fact that you agree with him doesn't change the fact that current situation is a historical anomaly that greatly limits the publication of creative content, and that the negotiation rates are basically a form of economic oppression as they stand.
No, I don't know that. I think it's a far smaller percentage (you should probably see my longer post upthread for some additional context, though).
And really, what makes samples so special over riffs, or even FX?
There's a huge difference between lifting something and making it yourself, even if you are working in an imitative style.
Another difference is that manufacturers do not assert copyright over the preset sounds that their instrument makes (although they can and do patent the sound-generation method). On the other hand, creators and publishers of a recorded work do assert copyright over the content of the recording, while not asserting any sort of IP in the methods employed to make the recording.
This appears to have two interpretations, one that the cost of licensing would be prohibitive. This seems reasonable - if there is a desire to remix then I see no reason why society should not say we will allow this at a reasonable cost. It encourages reuse and original creativity. It's a licensing issue.
The other, that it is too difficult to remember which tracks you sampled, seems invalid and is down to the professional musician upping their tools.
Overall, I have missed the last 250 years of musical progress, but I still think copyright is a good way of rewarding creativity.
Top charting hip hop tracks have used samples of other songs as the entire basis of the song, for two decades.
Track selection in itself is an art form which makes many genres of music actually listenable; no one ever plays House or Breakbeat songs back-to-back without the expectation of them being played in full. So do DJs get 50% of their earnings taken away by the producers? Do they get denied the right to play tracks because that's taking away control from songs? Skilled DJs make songs come alive and have a creative value that may surpass that of the original producers, and I have yet to find anyone who would feel that anyone's rights are being violated for that. I may agree with limitations where the artist might be defamed by the playing of the music (in the case of "Born in the USA" being played in political conventions), but really, when you release a song the ethical expectation that the artist still has full control of the original work in impractical and I have yet to see anyone who claims that, actually be consistent with their thinking.
On the question of sampling, I love Aphex Twin, especially this song, "Avril 14th" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBFXJw7n-fU . Kanye West's "Blame Game" samples it and it accounts for 80% of the melody. But it's an entirely, completely different song; the sample selection is different, tempo was altered, extra sounds were added, a lyrical component was added. It's a different song, and while it might be reasonable that a small portion of profits from the sale of the song might be attributable to the use of the sample, it is an order of magnitude or two below what content industries demand, which is ridiculous and a form of cultural oppression. This argument is further strengthened when, again, there are millions of songs that can be sampled and can be purposely mangled to not resemble the original.
And really, the argument is about as valid as the author of the Amen break going after the entirety of the UK Bass scene, or Roland going after a third of all music ever made in the last 20 years because everyone uses the 808 drum kit without licensed samples.
Culture is built on its own past and until 50 years ago its sharing was permitted freely, even if the extent of copying the mediums allowed was more limited. In the past 4 years electronic music has evolved more than in the past decade, more people are listening and becoming involved in music than ever before, and more culture can be absorbed today by anyone than ever before, and becoming an artist is easier today than at any other point in history. I see no redeeming value in the preservation of an antiquated business model which supports a very small minority, whose role in the determination of culture becomes ever more diluted every passing day.
If you ask me, our obligation towards cultural heritage is subtantially stronger than the maintenance of a market built on an artificial monopoly that was never even considered to be in the interests of society at large (because, as you know, most of the copyright legislation was written by lobbyists representing the largest media conglomerates).
I do compose music and am actively involved in several musical communities. While I publish very little of it I've had plenty of time to think about the process differences. The weakness in your argument is that you claim sampling generally results in a completely different song, as if a remix was equivalent to a completely fresh work. If this were the case, you could pull the primary samples out and just replace them with something else, and it would have no impact. Since this would be so much easier than dealing with all the headaches of sample clearance or possible lawsuits, you have to ask yourself why people don't do it if the original sample is as unimportant as you claim.
So you have over 10,000 tracks of electronic music. Big deal, I accumulated thousands of tracks on CD, vinyl and DAT when I was spinning goa trance back in the 90s. If you think the beginning and end of creativity is in the selection and mixing, then I invite you to try doing it with individual notes or drum hits for a while and learn the difference between sampling riffs, breaks and so forth and building them yourself.
Then it shouldn't change the character of the derived work to switch it for something else. This seems to be a self-defeating argument.
While being able to physically reproduce the exact sound is reasonably new, there are large numbers of examples from classical music that are explicitly and on purpose borrowing themes from other composers and altering them.
E.g. Bach's Canonic variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm'ich hier" from 1747 (based on a hymn written and composed by Martin Luther).
"Theme and variation" is a formal technique in classical form, that while it does not require borrowing (the theme could very well be your own) has also been extensively used by classical composers to borrow other composers themes for at least 250 or so years and weave it into their own music.
I don't think it's always a simple cut and paste. The article mentions Puff Daddy's "I'll Be Missing You" sampling the Police, or The Beastie Boys sampling Led Zeppelin or the Beatles. You might listen to some of these songs and have no idea about the original. One time I was at a party and Kanye's 'Harder Better Faster Stronger' came on. I remember saying "I didn't know Kanye sampled Daft Punk" and someone replying something along the lines of "nah this is all original Kanye"
And Daft Punk sampled the hook for Harder Better Faster Stronger from unknown Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby"
http://readyrickshaw.com/toob/node/63 -and- http://alldaysamples.com/
That's not 'I', it's '|' -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARRS
Alter copyright law is probably never going to happen in time, but market driven compromises will fix a lot of things
These copyright issues only become interesting when you consider works which assert more transformative power on the samples.
Beta coming soon!
Anyways, only half way done with the article but quite good so far.