live your life out loud
Nominations for Mashable’s 2nd annual Open Web Awards have begun, and MixMatchMusic could really use your help! If you have a minute, please nominate us for the Open Web Awards in both the Music and Embeddable Widgets categories. If you do, we’ll love you for ever (and ever).
Nominate us here.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to remix some serious indie-electro pop! For those of you that read Evolving Music, you’re probably quite familiar with Throw Me the Statue and their debut release Moonbeams. Read our review of it here, or read an interview with TMTS frontman Scott Reitherman here.
Well now, the TMTS boys want you to remix “Yucatan Gold”! Moonbeams is a rich indie blend of textures that range from indie pop, to psych-folk and art rock. Yucatan Gold takes the album into an electronic direction, and proves to be the album’s edgiest track. Full of drum machines, synths, and industrial lap-top layers, parts of the song are reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails, while others are what Weezer would song like if they went electro (do it!). What will your remix sound like?
TMTS recently dropped a video for Yucatan Gold (see below), and they are currently on tour. Be sure to check them out in your town so that you can pick up their new Purpleface EP, which you can only get on tour.
Go here to download the stems to Yucatan Gold, or to make remixes in the online MixMaker. When you’re done, be sure to upload your remix for others to check out! Or, just go listen to, vote on, and share the remixes.
Remix season has begun folks! In the next few weeks, be on the look out for the unleashing of several Remix Wizards that will give you the chance to (legally) remix some great bands. To kick it off, we have a catchy little number by the Bayliens called “Bubble Gum”, which some of you may have heard on Wild 94.9. They released a video for the song last week (see below), and now they want you to get your remix on!
The Bayliens: Enzyme Dynamite (left) & Jay Three (right)
For those of you who haven’t been around the Bay Area hip hop scene recently, it’s safe to say the Bayliens have landed. Since dropping their debut release “Crop Circles” over a year ago, their incessant touring and energy on stage have made them one of the bay’s most loved artists. Now they’re following the footsteps of bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails by releasing stems for others to remix. Click here to download the stems for free, or to make a remix in the web-based MixMaker.
Produced by Dublin Beats, Crop Circles is an accessible mosaic of hiphop sounds fused with an electronic and often futuristic twist. The song features vocalist Cait La Dee, who teams up with Enzyme Dynamite and Jay Three to deliver an instant west coast classic! Get a feel for who the Bayliens are by tuning in to their “Zany 360” radio show on Fuzic.
To check out, vote on, and grab submitted remixes of Bubble Gum, go here. While you’re there, try making your own mix using the online MixMaker.
Recently, MixMatchMusic launched the Remix Wizard, a free widget that any artist can use to host remix promotions on their websites, blogs and social network pages. Artists customize what the widget looks like and provide the stems to a song (the various parts of a song, like the vocals, guitar, drums, etc) for fans to remix, either by using the online MixMaker or by downloading the stems for remixing in any music software. All the remixes are then published to the widget for others to play, vote on, and share. The widget is designed to be flexible, so that artists can sell the stems or give them away for free, set deadlines and give prizes to winners, and set the legal agreement that covers the rights to the stems and remixes made (who owns them?).
I recently recorded a new song, and have embedded the widget on my Myspace page so that y’all can remix it:
The play button next to the left of “A Little Fuzzy” lets you hear the original song. The tracks in the middle of the widget (Dark Sunrise, Now’s the Time) are submitted remixes. When you submit yours, it will be listed there. Then, people can hear it, vote for it, and share it (by making a separate, mini widget).
Click “download stems” to get the stems in your home software, and then be sure to click “upload stems” to publish it. Or, click “MixMaker” to see how the song was made and to create a mix using the online sequencer. You’ll be able to publish it to the widget directly from there. The “wanna remix more tracks” link will take to a gallery full of Remix Wizards deployed around the web!
So, what are you waiting for? Host your own remix promotion today! Or, click here for more info.
As a musician, my biggest concern with releasing my music over the web for others to remix is not that I’ll get paid if money is made, but that I’ll be attributed for my work. This is because, as an unsigned and unknown artist, I am currently more interested in cultivating a fan base than profiting from my art. As I see it, I will find creative ways to profit from my work once I have actually formed something that resembles a fanbase.
A good way of providing artists with attribution, irrespective of the destiny of their art, is through implementing a moral rights scheme that would ensure attribution for authorship, even if ownership of the music belongs to a third party. Originally laid out in Article 6bis of the Berne Convention of Literary and Artistic Works, moral rights were extended to music in 1996 through the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Article 5(1) of that treaty reads: “Independently of a performer’s economic rights, and even after the transfer of those rights, the performer shall, as regards his live aural performance or performance fixed in phonograms, have the right to claim to be identified as the performer of his performances…and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of his performances that would be prejudicial to his reputation.”
Moral rights generally include three rights: the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work. These rights are separate from economic rights, and belong exclusively and perpetually to the original creators of the work, and not any third party who assumes ownership of a copyright, such as a record label.
In the music context, I don’t believe in the right to integrity, as in my mind, a piece of music is never finished, but rather constantly evolving. But, the right of attribution is paramount in the digital context. Since media can so easily be shared today, sharing should be embraced as long as the original authors are always attributed. Creative Commons has embraced this notion since its inception, and it’s time for Congress to recognize that this needs to be added to the Copyright Act to meet the necessities of the digital era. In fact, the United States Court of Appeals held, in Jacobsen v. Katzer, that Creative Commons licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief. This means that if somebody uses a CC work that requires attribution without attributing the original author, a claim for copyright infringement exists.
With this legislative change, the US, a Berne and WIPO signatory, would seemingly be killing three birds with one stone: 1) deal with copyright law’s inadequacy in the digital age, 2) comply with Berne by adopting am adequate Moral rights scheme, and 3) comply with the WIPO treaty by extending moral rights to music. While the US became a member of the Berne Convention in 1989, the US has chosen to narrowly adopt a moral rights scheme and to apply it exclusively to visual arts under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) of 1990. By omitting to do so, the US is failing to comply with the Berne convention and the 1996 WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. So, maybe its time for Congress to actually got off its ass! I mean, are musicians less important that visual artists? Or is it that visual artists have more lobbying power?
An adoption of a music moral rights scheme would greatly tickle my paranoid pickle in the digital era, and it would help me feel comfortable in distributing my digital music in creative and innovative ways. Evolve, damnit!
