From david turgeon Sent Fri, Oct 8th 1999, 19:00
From david turgeon Sent Fri, Oct 8th 1999, 19:00
> yeah, there might be something important to the evolution of musical > culture that's possible with the easy distribution of mix tapes, but by the > time it comes down to a tape getting sold for real money at a real store, > you gotta have agreements with all the artists whose work you are > reproducing. If they think the "free publicity" is so great, they'll > happily give their permission for you to use it, otherwise, they might want > to be paid their share or at least control the context and distribution of > their work. sounds like a lot of bother, I'm sure, but so is producing > original music. true enough when it comes to pop music, but not for anything pertaining to club/dj culture. think about it: these plates djs buy, what would they be if they weren't being spun in clubs, on mix tapes, etc.? the 'general public' never buys such records. the record labels issuing such records (as well as the artists) would be dead bankrupt if it weren't for djs buying & spinning their stuff. i'd think about it as some sort of a manufacture chain. the artist produces music, which is then promoted & sold by labels through distributors & record stores, & then bought almost strictly by djs, who in turn use this material to build music which the general public will buy into. when a dj spins in a club & gets paid, shouldn't s/he pay back the artists for the music he played? most folks will say no ~ well then, why do the same with mix tapes, which have a similar purpose & reach an even smaller public? i definitely think, however, that it's up to the labels & artists producing the original music to allow some sort of a 'fair use' usage of their material by djs for mix taping purposes. (obviously someone claiming that the track is theirs or making money repressing the original plate could still be rightly sued.) perhaps a 'mixtape-friendly' logo could be pasted on vinyls & cds for that purpose. this wouldn't affect the original copyright, & then maybe the cops could do something productive with their time, like cracking down on cocaine-sniffing managers, for example. of course, i'm just thinking aloud, as i always am. ~ david