RIP! A Remix Manifesto

Alright, I’ve been wanting to post this for a cool minute now. I watched this movie “RIP! A Remix Manifesto” and thought it was really interesting. It’s mostly about remix/mash-up culture and breaks down issues of copyright, downloading, creative ownership/intellectual property, etc.—a lot of things that resonate with me personally, and I’d say it’s really worth the watch if you’ve got an hour to kill. It sets a good historical context for the whole concept of remix, and as you’ll see if you watch the film, Disney has basically fucked shit up for everyone. Really tho. Towards the end I thought it got especially interesting and real when they talk about the parallel (copyright) situation going on in medicine, where one company holds a patent on a particular way of fighting a disease, and since they want to profit from it, they don’t allow anyone else to pursue it. So basically, instead of collaborative research, companies just box each other out for a stake in the “market”—less gets done, more people die. Pretty fucked.

But back to the music, I’m really curious what people think about all this—like sampling, remixing, and even downloading. Seems tough to pay the bills with music these days (nothing new, but the game is changing). As for me, I download a whoooole lotta music (a lot of it is up for free download in the first place so it’s not an issue)—but I do try to purchase at least 1 project from every artist who I appreciate and think is worth supporting. I mean, the sad truth is if I really paid for everything I listen to I’d be bankrupt as shit, and I think everyone would agree. I guess what trips me out is how easy technology makes it to get anything, change/edit anything, and put it back out into the world as your own. When you throw money into that equation my head starts to spin. Just seems like the “music industry” is getting flipped on its head and I’m curious to see how it rolls with the punches. I dunno, I think about this shit. Would love to hear other people’s thoughts, opinions, whatever. Peep this movie if you get a chance, it presents all these ideas more clearly than I’m doing it and it really got me thinking.