Ian Smith's Final Reflection (Sami's Presentation)

Ian Smith

June 6, 2011

Final Reflection / Dr. H

Final Reflection

I was most impressed with Sami’s presentation on sampling, mashups, and property rights. Indeed, shifting technoscapes in recent years have dramatically altered the way musical artists are able to express themselves. The advent of digital music has empowered multitudes of people to influence and shape current soundscapes across all genres of music. But issues with property rights in the music industry have accompanied the digital revolution. One of the great points in the presentation was how, thanks to sites like Napster, people now have thousands of songs readily available. However, not all of these songs can be downloaded legally. I was definitely amused that 95% of recent music downloads have reportedly been illegal, but I was not surprised. The Internet has provided a means through which people can exchange almost any piece of information, including songs, and people would prefer to obtain songs for free instead of paying for them (obviously).

These free and seemingly endless music libraries, in conjunction with free software available via the Internet, has enabled the creation of different versions of songs. Whether these new songs are authentic depends on the point of view. If we define the original song that has been sampled in a mashup, for example, as the authentic version, then the portion of the original song included in the mashup should not be considered as truly authentic. This is because the excerpt of the song, even if its pitch and tones remain the same as the original version, is not the entire piece of art; just as a random square inch on the Mona Lisa cannot accurately be described as an authentic representation of the overall painting, the segment of the original song included in the mashup does not authentically represent the original version. On the other hand, the fact that the mashup artist blends these music fragments and synthesizes a new piece of music is certainly noteworthy. This new mashup should be considered as authentic as a whole, but not as an authentic representation of any of the individual components.

But Sami’s presentation also brought us the issue of property rights. For example, he claimed that Girl Talk would owe millions of dollars in retribution to the many artists whose music was included in Girl Talk’s mashups. I am generally opposed to any action that would restrict the flow of information, so I think this sounds quite absurd. I realize, however, that everyone should not be entitled to every informational datum, but I see no great reason for restricting the flow of music information from one person to any other. Having said that, I certainly understand that the economics of the music industry simply cannot be ignored, and that to totally dissolve musical property rights would totally wreck our current system. As a human population, greater gains in all spheres of knowledge will result if people are able to draw on as many sources as possible. Just as Isaac Newton’s quote about standing on the shoulders of giants indicates, intellectual progress depends on the ability of our current thinkers to draw from the great ideas of the past.

To address these issues is to delve into the “tradition vs. transformation” discussion. Though a number of music purists, such as John Philip Sousa, lamented even the simple dissemination of recorded music, many more must be enraged at the availability of digital audio files on the Internet. Indeed, the ways in which music is shared have changed greatly in the past 150 years. The argument can be made, however, that the only tradition is transformation. Even before recorded sounds became available, people invented new instruments or new melodies. In the present time, music has the ability to change with unbelievable speed. Composers like Bach and Beethoven would be astounded to hear that a song, once written, can be spread all over the globe with the single click of a computer mouse.

Disputed territories in this discussion obviously start with property rights. On one hand, the musicians rightly feel they should be credited for their work. On the other hand, the interested people feel like they should have free access to the musicians’ works. These sides become more unclear when someone takes a part of an artist’s work and incorporates it into another art project; deciding to what extent the original artist should be credited for the new work is often a difficult situation. What is interesting to me is the thin line between what constitutes “plagiarism” in music and what does not. After all, no musician can patent a single chord or rest. But if he or she used every single note from a song, then he or she would likely get in significant trouble. Therefore, a point that divides plagiarism from non-plagiarism must exist. However, the location of this point would seem to depend on the musical piece in question.

As someone who is quite unfamiliar with mashups in general, the take-home message I extracted (or seemingly inferred, at least) from Sami’s presentation is that mashups should exist as a form of musical art; I greatly enjoyed the excerpt he played that included music by the Beatles and by Jay-Z (“What More Can I Say?”) and would certainly regard it as art. I would greatly enjoy seeing a scenario where artists are compensated for their work but to not have such exclusive rights to the material, though I realize such a situation is highly paradoxical given today’s musical landscape.