Overview
In the 21st century, the modes of music creation and distribution changed quickly and drastically. With the advent of the internet, file sharing, and affordable music production software, aspiring musicians could create their music at home without a huge or expensive recording studio, and they could distribute their music online via free downloads or YouTube videos. These new means of creation and distribution furthered the careers of many musicians. At the same time, traditional mediums such as television remained important ways for musicians to be recognized. As we will see in this lesson, although the means of discovery and creation have changed, the ultimate goals of fame, recording contracts, and respect have remained the same for many musicians in the 21st century.
Objectives
- Recall the significance of American Idol and the role it plays in both American popular culture and in the careers of the musicians who perform on it
- Examine how YouTube has offered opportunities for musicians to be “discovered”
- Define the term “mash-up”
- Identify several significant examples of “mash-up”
- Recall the significance of The Grey Album and its relationship to art and to copyright law
The Mash-Up continued
The Grey Album by DJ Danger Mouse is one of the most famous and notorious examples of a mash-up. Released in 2004, The Grey Album includes the vocal components of New York rapper Jay-Z's 2003 The Black Album and the Beatles' eponymous 1968 album, often called The White Album because its cover was plain white and did not have any graphics or text except the band's name. In The Grey Album, DJ Danger Mouse blended hundreds of sound fragments sampled from the Beatles' songs to create a new accompaniment for Jay-Z's rapped lyrics. Danger Mouse extracted slivers of the Beatles' sounds and recombined these microscopic fragments of guitars, clapping, voices, drums, and harpsichord.
For example in the remix "99 Problems ", the vocal line of Jay-Z's "99 Problems" is now underlain with hard-driving guitars and vocal "ah" sounds from the Beatles' "Helter Skelter ♫." In Danger Mouse's version of "What More Can I Say?", the message is softened and dramatized with the distinctive acoustic guitar riffs and the descending bass line from the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps ♫."
Danger Mouse only pressed three thousand copies of The Grey Album, which he distributed to friends and family and never released commercially. The album became an online sensation almost overnight, however, and it was downloaded thousands of times on file-sharing networks. EMI Records, which controls the Beatles' sound recordings, served Danger Mouse and any websites on which The Grey Album was available with a cease-and-desist order. Although Danger Mouse did not release the album commercially, EMI argued that he had infringed copyright by sampling the Beatles' music at all. (Jay-Z's record label did not take any action against Danger Mouse.) According to Danger Mouse, "It was not my intent to break copyright laws. It was my intent to make an art project." In protest of the cease-and-desist order, on Tuesday, February 24, 2004, over 170 different websites—each of which risked their own lawsuit by hosting the album—offered free downloads of The Grey Album. This online sit-in came to be called "Grey Tuesday." On that day alone, people downloaded over 100,000 copies of The Grey Album. To date, The Grey Album has been downloaded over one million times, enough for the Recording Industry Association of America to certify it platinum had it been released commercially by a record label.
Many people who made The Grey Album available on Grey Tuesday claimed the album was a prime example of the disconnection between copyright law and actual music creation in the 21st century. In 2003, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Copyright Term Extension Actalso known as the Sonny Bono Act or the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. According to this act, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 year , which is also known as the Sonny Bono Act or the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. According to this act, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Those who oppose the Sonny Bono Act argue that it only benefits corporations and that it inhibits both creative production and the dissemination of new music. To opponents of the Copyright Term Extension Act, The Grey Album was a textbook example of a work of art whose potential commercial success was blocked by outdated intellectual property laws. Supporters of the Copyright Term Extension Act argue that copyright laws protect the original artists (such as the Beatles) from having their music used in ways that they might not approve.
"I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people."
