Tony Zeoli is Founder and CEO of Netmix.com and Radio Station by netmix.® Originally launched in 1995, Netmix was was considered by Billboard Magazine to be the "innovation and advancement of dance music on the Internet." Tony had launched the world's first Internet mix show website featuring the most influential DJs from around the globe. After two-and-a-half decades, Netmix has since evolved into an online station directory and powerful WordPress plugin, Radio Station, for broadcasters and webcasters to manage their statioon's show schedule in WordPress. Tony has been an innovator at the intersection of music and the Internet for the past thirty years in project management, product development, and digital strategy,. He is also the founder and CEO of Digital Strategy Works, a WordPress web design and digital marketing agency. And, Executive Producer of the Asheville House Music Society, an online House Music mix show. Tony is located in Asheville, NC where he loves to mountain bike, hike, and play golf with his son.
We’ve been looking for a remix of Kiesza’sHideaway, a pop house track with deep house leanings that have every 15-year old girl around the world finding a street corner and shooting copycat Instagram videos of themselves dancing like Kiesza. After surfing around the web, we came up with two that we really loved.
The first is this piano stomper from Zac Samuel, a little known producer out of Brighton, U.K., who brings a bit of energy to the track. Here’s YouTube video below.
Sure that was fun, but we wanted something even DEEEPER! Well, say no more. We got it with this version by the Bixel Boys, who by the way don’t seem to really go this deep. Listening to their other stuff on their SoundCloud leads me to believe this duo from Los Angeles – who make “underground tunes for big rooms” – took a left turn and settled it down a bit from their normal big room electronic sound. Heck, we’re not complaining!
With a subscriber base of over 6.6M on her YouTube channel, YouTube Beauty vlogger, Michelle Phan, is one of the most popular social media stars in the YouTube universe. Two of her most popular how-to videos, a “Barbie Transformation Video” and Lady Ga-Ga video have been viewed a combined total of just under 100M times. Her videos generally make use of popular EDM songs from a variety of artists and that has resulted in a lawsuit by Sony Music controlled EDM labels, Ultra Records and its associated publishing company, Ultra Music International. Filed in Los Angeles District Court, Ultra suit (Ultra International Music Publishing LLC and Ultra Records LLC v. Michelle Phan, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 14-05533) claims Ms. Phan does not have the right to use Ultra Records artists music. They are suing Ms. Phan for $150,000 per infringement plus yet to be determined damages and an injunction against the use of Ultra Record’s artist’s music in her videos. In the past, Phan has used music from the label’s roster of artists, including popular EDM DJ/Producer, Kaskade. One video, “Nightlife Favorites” (1,487,180 views as of 7/20/14) features Kaskade’s 4AM.
Here are both videos from Michelle Phan including these songs, which are both listed in the credits under each video on their respective YouTube pages.
While Kaskade was severing his relationship with Ultra Records, choosing to not renew his agreement after 8-years on the label, Sony Music went on an EDM acquisition mission, acquiring, one of the the longest running independent EDM labels in the world. Ultra’s back catalog, including almost all of Kaskade’s releases on the label, now belongs to Sony Music. In a recent blog post about his frustrations with SoundCloud, the popular music sharing service known as the “YouTube of audio,” taking down both music he has a right to post and mixes and mashups deemed infringing, Kaskade said this:
“When I signed with Ultra, I kissed goodbye forever the rights to own my music. They own it. And now Sony owns them. So now Sony owns my music. I knew that going in.”
While labels like Ultra and Sony continue to control copyright in the digital age, Kaskade has recently been advocating for making music free. He’s taken an alternative position on how music should be distributed in the digital age.
I wrote that all of one month ago. Copyright law is a dinosaur, ill-suited for the landscape of today’s media.
Of course, with hundreds of millions of spins and the profit from YouTube including the above-mentioned songs at stake, there’s not much Kaskade can do about advocating for Ms. Phan, other than supporting her through Twitter.
Summary: I’m not suing @MichellePhan + @ultrarecords isn’t my lapdog. I can’t do much about the lawsuit except voice support for her.
Now, let’s focus on the reality of this situation. On one hand, you have a famous YouTube star with hundreds of millions of views on her video channel. Label video promotion consultants and the departments that hire them certainly ask for placement of these songs in popular online videos to get exposure. No matter whether the fan uses the music in videos or not, Ultra and its parent can claim payment from YouTube and performing rights organizations for those spins. YouTube has the technology to identify songs played in videos and therefore could effectively let Sony/Ultra know what music was used in which videos and how many times each video was viewed. And, we’re going to assume that YouTube has a license from Sony Music – one of the three majors – to play their music on-demand, therefore YouTube might be able to argue that it has the rights to play the music, which is why we aren’t seeing those videos being issued a takedown – just yet. But, that could change in the next couple of days.
Removing those videos would certainly be a blow to anyone hoping to derive revenue from them, so once they come down they don’t earn a penny for Ms. Phan or the labels with music being used in them. According to Ultra, the only thing Michelle Phan didn’t do was obtain a “synchronization license” from the music publisher – in this case, Ultra International Music Publishing – for the right to use the music in her instructional make-up videos. Here’s a helpful description from the ASCAP blog on sync licensing, which is why Sony/Ultra believes Ms. Phan’s videos infringe on their copyright. And, while this example if for television, it certainly applies to on-demand Internet streams from companies like YouTube as well. Todd Brabec, ASCAP Executive VP of Membership and Jeff Brabec write:
“When a producer wants to use an existing song in a network television program or weekly series, permission must, with few exceptions, be secured from the music publisher who owns the song. The producer or music supervisor of the show will decide what song they want to use in the program and the scene in which it will appear, how the song will be used (e.g., background vocal or instrumental, sung by a character on camera, over the opening or ending credits), and the media needed (e.g., free television, pay television, subscription television, pay-per-view, or basic cable).
The producer or its “music clearance” representative will then contact the publisher of the composition, negotiate a fee, and then sign what is known in the television business as a “synchronization license.””
If Michelle Phan and her video producers did not obtain a sync license but have proof that Ultra Records approached them to use their label’s artist’s music in her videos, then Sony Music and the Ultra label and publishing divisions won’t have much of a case. This is where major label interests generally conflict with the interests of independent labels and lesser-known artists who see the value in the exposure generated by being featured in a video series as popular as Ms. Phan’s. On the other hand, if Ms. Phan and her handlers ignored sync licensing rules, then she and her production company could be found liable by the court. Our money is on someone from the label giving them the music for exposure, but what do we know…heh heh!
What this amounts to is major labels continuing to assert control over their catalogs to find revenue where it may lie. With download sales declining and streaming on the rise, major labels look at licensing as contributing to their bottom line. While it’s fair to ask for compensation for music used in these YouTube videos, if its proven that the video consultants gave the music videos to Ms. Phan’s production company for promotional use and they signed waivers in that regard, Sony Music will have a difficult time proving copyright infringement.
Notice that Ultra never filed suit until after it was acquired by Sony. Remember, Ultra’s General Manager, David Waxman (who is a friend of Netmix) is also a DJ and producer. When they were independent, I don’t think Mr. Waxman would have advocated for this lawsuit, because if indies like Ultra started suing music services that give them exposure, they could risk harming those relationships over the long term. There’s not a lot of leverage.
In the indie EDM world, it’s probably not the best form to start suing others who are promoting your music. Once word gets out, you risk losing opportunities to sign high profile artists who may disagree with that position or get your music featured, because no one wants to take the risk of being sued.
We don’t exactly know, but it’s surely something to think about. And, that’s why Kaskade’s view on the music industry is so telling. We’ll leave you with an excerpt from the same blog post referenced earlier in this post.
There’s always been this cagey group of old men who are scared to death of people taking their money. Back in the day, they were upset that the technology existed to record onto cassette tapes directly from the radio. “What! (Harumph!) Why will people buy music if they can just pull it out of the air?!” Yet, people still bought music. Because it was more accessible. Because more people were exposed. Because Mikey played it for Joey on the corner and then Joey had to have it. It’s music, and we buy what we love. We can’t love music we haven’t heard.
Innovation helps the music industry. The industry only needs to make the effort to keep up and adapt. Make no mistake: exposing as many people as possible to music – all music – is a good thing. Everyone wins. The artist, the audience, even the old guys who just want some more cash.
The laws that are governing online music share sites were written at a time when our online and real-life landscapes were totally different. Our marching orders are coming from a place that’s completely out of touch and irrelevant. They have these legal legs to stand on that empower them to make life kind of a pain-in-the-ass for people like me. And for many of you. Countless artists have launched their careers though mash ups, bootlegs, remixes and music sharing. These laws and page take-downs are cutting us down at the knees.
Finally, somebody got smart and listened to reason, instead of trying to hide behind an obscure clause in the DMCA that covers mashups (but not mixshows) as derivative works. I just went to check out my latest DJ mix on MixCloud and here’s what I got. A pop-up that said scrubbing back through tracks is disabled.
MixCloud disables scrub function and displays warning that featured disabled in USA.
You can see my admin here to edit this mixshow, but notice the track listing is not displayed. You have to click “Show Tracklist” to see it. This should, at the very least, allay the concerns of labels for now, unless they want to make even more of a stink over MixCloud. I have to give it to MixCloud on this one. They finally owned up to it and made the change, which makes the service more legal than SoundCloud, which could not implement this for fear of locking out users from being able to scrub through tracks actually owned by their copyright holders featured on that site. You can’t do this for some tracks and not all. It’s very hard to manage. So we’re finally moving in the right direction, MixCloud. Good stuff and congrats on making these new changes. I think they will go a long way to keeping you guys from getting hit by the labels down the road.
Well before SoundCloud,MixCloud,MixCrate, Podomatic, TheFuture.fm,Play.fm and others (I’m sure are out there, but I’m not yet familiar with) inherited their spots as the most popular services where DJs can upload their DJ mixes then share them in social media, or have them pulled up in smart phone apps for on-demand listening over mobile, there were earlier attempts at bringing the DJ mix online.
In December of 2015, some 19-years ago, I registered this domain, Netmix.com, and launched the first organized DJ mixshow website in the world. Many of the DJ sets I encoded, uploaded and streamed in Real Audio 1.0, where from the world’s most sought after DJ/Producers at the time, including Armand Van Helden, Paul Oakenfold,Lil Louie Vega, Tony Humphries, Frankie Knuckles, Jody Wisternoff, Frankie Bones, Richard “Humpty” Vission” and the list goes on.
Shortly after I launched Netmix, other services began popping up, including Swedish Egil’s Groove Radio in Santa Monica (which had already been broad, CA; GrooveTech from Seattle; The Womb in Miami; and the folks at Streetsound Magazine in NYC, a subsidiary of legendary pre-1.0 bubble Pseudo Networks, which released DJ mixes as streamed live video sets. That was well before today’s UGC (user-generated content) services like LiveStream and Ustream were born.
In the early days of the Internet, there were few rules. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 had yet to be passed into law. Streaming music online was certainly a Wild West. You could get away with just about anything – as long as you kept things under the radar. In this pre-Napster era, web servers and bandwidth weren’t powerful enough to stream MP3 over HTTP, let alone allow people to download them. If you were in the streaming game, you had to either buy or lease space on a Windows Media, Real Audio or Apple streaming server. Real Audio being the most popular, albeit the more expensive of the three.
Labels were experimenting with music promotion online and Netmix was part of those early online marketing efforts, making some of its revenue by building artist landing pages on Netmix (like shown in the home page image below). We’d send feedback to each label on unique visits to each single or album. We were responsible for some of the first Internet marketing efforts on behalf of dance/electronic artists for Sony Music, Atlantic Records, Roadrunner Records, Profile Records, Tommy Boy Records and Arista Records, as well as a number of smaller independent dance labels. We’d also started managing DJ producers and commissioning remixes. We signed records to Defected UK and Perfecto UK for artists on the Netmix roster.
Netmix.com Home Page circa 1999-2000
When the Digital Millenium Copyright Act was finally passed and the later Small Webcasters Settlement Act of 2002 came into play, webcasters like Netmix were required to pay ASCAP and BMI a percentage of income, so they could pay out artist royalties for the public performance of the music in the mix shows. Given the costs at the time of streaming and bandwidth, it became less profitable for a webcaster like Netmix, without the backing of a major company, to survive on mix shows alone. There’s a lot more to it, but for the purposes of this post, that should suffice.
In June of 2000, Netmix because the third (after Streetsound and Groove Radio) to be acquired by a larger concern, yet left to run our Internet broadcast outlets under our brand names. By October of 2000, our parent company folded under the weight of the dotcom 1.0 and couldn’t raise any more money for operations. The company’s staff was laid off and Netmix went out on its own, but struggled to survive when labels were cutting budgets and the economy had tanked.
For the 5-years Netmix was running full-steam, our mixes were primarily broadcast as non-interactive streams. When I relaunched the site as a blog in the 2004, for a short time we paid for live streaming services using Live365.com, because they had figured out a way to allow broadcasters to stream archived shows as live webcasts, while factoring part of the subscription fee and pre and midstream advertising as payments to the performing rights organizations.Live365 was one of the first companies to advance this type of arrangement and others soon followed. This was legal and generally fit the requirements of the DMCA. These are the rules as published here by Live365 today:
DMCA Rules
The following is a partial list of the rules with which Live365’s Internet broadcasters must comply under portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. ß 114, given the nature of the licenses Live365 has obtained from the owners of the copyrights in sound recordings. Please note these licenses only cover personal broadcasters and do not necessarily cover PRO broadcasters on Live365. We have abbreviated these rules to include only those that likely would be relevant given the manner in which you are able to use the Live365 system. The relevant rules which you must carefully review are as follows:
Your program must not be part of an “interactive service.” For your purposes, this means that you cannot perform sound recordings within one hour of a request by a listener or at a time designated by the listener.
In any three-hour period, you should not intentionally program more than three songs (and not more than two songs in a row) from the same recording; you should not intentionally program more than four songs (and not more than three songs in a row) from the same recording artist or anthology/box set.
Continuous looped programs may not be less than three hours long.
Rebroadcasts of programs may be performed at scheduled times as follows: Programs of less than one-hour: no more than three times in a two-week period; Programs longer than one hour: no more than four times in any two-week period.
You should not publish advance program guides or use other means to pre-announce when particular sound recordings will be played.
You should only broadcast sound recordings that are authorized for performance in the United States.
You should pass through (and not disable or remove) identification or technological protection information included in the sound recording (if any).
As you can see, the published rules above are very restrictive and that is for a reason. During the DMCA negotiations, the labels were very concerned about things like playing an entire album by one artist or looping the same shows excessively. They fought to prevent Internet broadcasters from pre-announcing track names, which can only be published in a player during playback and never before. In the world of DJ mixes, one company, Digitally Imported Radio (di.fm) stands out, because the station adheres to the DMCA and broadcasts online non-interactive streams. While it is most likely operates under a compulsory license with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC to pay songwriters their performance royalties, it also has a direct deal with SoundExchange to pay the artists themselves royalties as well.
SoundExchange is an entity created by the government to collect payments from Internet broadcasters for non-interactive Internet broadcasts of music that is then paid to the artists themselves, unlike terrestrial radio, which has not had this requirement, but may be forced to do so in the future as hearings are taking place now with the Senate Judiciary Committee. This may result in a change to the law.
Di.fm stands in stark contrast with all the services listed at the beginning of this article, because all of those services allow for upload of user-generated content and playback as an on-demand stream, which is interactive by nature. What’s the difference? According to the DMCA, an on-demand interactive broadcast requires a mechanical license from the copyright owner. Spotify, Apple’s iTunes Radio and Beats Music services pay tens of millions of dollars in advances to record labels to get rights to play music on-demand – that is, when the listener requests to play it at that moment.
Services like Pandora and 8tracks (disclosure: I am an adviser to 8tracks) do not fall in this category as they are strictly non-interactive and adhere to the terms in the DMCA. However, all the above mentioned services at the beginning of this article have not negotiated similar deals with the labels in regards to on-demand streams. At a New York Technology and Music Meetup a few months back, Nico Perez from MixCloud claimed that their attorney (who he said was also Pandora’s attorney) says they are operating under a specific clause of 17 U.S. Code Section 114 (b), which talks about a derivative work.
(b)The exclusive right of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clause (1) of section 106 is limited to the right to duplicate the sound recording in the form of phonorecords or copies that directly or indirectly recapture the actual sounds fixed in the recording. The exclusive right of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clause (2) of section 106 is limited to the right to prepare a derivative work in which the actual sounds fixed in the sound recording are rearranged, remixed, or otherwise altered in sequence or quality. The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clauses (1) and (2) of section 106 do not extend to the making or duplication of another sound recording that consists entirely of an independent fixation of other sounds, even though such sounds imitate or simulate those in the copyrighted sound recording. The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clauses (1), (2), and (3) of section 106 do not apply to sound recordings included in educational television and radio programs (as defined in section 397 of title 47) distributed or transmitted by or through public broadcasting entities (as defined by section 118(f)): Provided, That copies or phonorecords of said programs are not commercially distributed by or through public broadcasting entities to the general public.
This clause protects fair use of musical works as a derivative work for a variety of reasons, including political or artistic. This is the same clause cited by mashup producers who know they cannot sell their work, so they give away their mash ups to increase their profile resulting in paid gigs to perform the mashups as artist or DJ in a live performance. As long as they don’t sell or monetize their mash ups, these mash up producers are protected by Section 114 (b) . But, for MixCloud to claim that DJ mixes are akin to mash ups is a stretch of the imagination, because often times, while a segment of a DJ mix may be a new composition rendered when the next song in a playlist is cued and beat matched over the previous song, the following minutes of playback of the new song surely cannot be considered a mashup. There is nothing unique about that excerpt, except for maybe the pitch was adjusted and the song is a little faster or slower than originally intended.
Shortly after that episode, MixCloud changed their terms and conditions and we are now hearing reports from DJs uploading new content that MixCloud is issuing takedowns of mixes they may consider infringing. This follows SoundCloud’s lead, which I previously wrote about here. I am not writing this because I hold any grudges against MixCloud for succeeding where Netmix was, well…not so successful over the long term, despite its pioneering status. I’m proud of that team for building a unique service and getting it to this level. It’s a great service and I even use it to publish my Netmix Global House Sessions Podcast. They’ve done an excellent job, but at the end of the day, what they are doing still does not adhere to the letter of the law.
Remember, MixCloud is fully interactive. In the mobile app, you can start a mix show on demand and skip through the full mix. This requires a mechanical license for each song in the DJ mix. There is no blanket compulsory license that covers this and until there is one, MixCloud is skirting the requirements of the DMCA. And, this is the very reason I don’t get into this business, because the DJ mix simply cannot be controlled by the DMCA, but if you start a music service based on the DJ mix, you’re surely going to run into this issue – time and time again. It’s not worth it. That document doesn’t take into consideration the value of a DJ mix to the artists and labels how use them as promotional vehicles. Until the DMCA is updated or some new compulsory license for an interactive performance comes into play, then all mixes that are interactive are simply not legal. Podcasts are another story and those have to be licensed as well.
That bring us to our last issue with TheFuture.fm, a service that claims it pays all artists royalties for songs played in DJ mixes. First, it’s impossible to accurately pay artists anything without exact meta data. How TheFuture.fm can be absolutely sure that every DJ mix uploaded has the exact per track meta data is beyond me, because that is simply not possible – unless, of course, a human being opens every MP3 used by the DJ in the mix and checks the ID3 tag to ensure the meta data is accurate.
Second, even if TheFuture.fm pays artists royalties through a compulsory license, that’s still circumventing the mechanical license needed for every song that is included in an on-demand, interactive stream. I checked some of the mixes today and yes, they are on-demand and interactive – I can skip through the mix. As I said before, there is no compulsory license for on-demand interactive streaming and it would cost tens of millions of dollars to pay to the entire recorded music industry to allow for this. Even then, what is played is sometimes not known and if it is known, then the meta data may not be accurate anyway.
The funny thing about many of these services is that they start over in London and for a reason that I can’t yet figure out, they are allowed to thrive, even though some of the same rules apply there. They attempt to cross the pond and break into America, where they are absolutely 100% aware of the DMCA restrictions, yet somehow they raise money and try to circumvent the rules (ala Uber or AirBnB), only to have to capitulate as SoundCloud has done and MixCloud is now starting to do.
One of the other services I mentioned, Play.fm, happily operates in Austria and has cast no aspersions on entering the U.S. market in the same way. When I first met the Play.fm team at a Winter Music Conferece in the mid-2000s, I learned they get funding from the Austrian government, so they wouldn’t be able to get seed funding from investors in the U.S. anyway, because they’re not set up like more traditional start-ups who are self-funded or investor funded. I also believe Austria is not as restrictive regarding streaming rights and licensing (but I could be wrong.)
At the end of the day, I want to see these service thrive and survive. I love DJ culture. It’s in my blood. I’ve been involved in the scene for over 30-years. Plus, I want to be in the game and I want my DJ mixes on these services. However, there is a reason that Netmix is a blog today and not a DJ mix service (although I do host my mixes as podcasts that remain unlicensed). Those reasons are clear – the DJ mix should be an on demand format. For that to happen, DJs need a compulsory license for the mechanical, which does not exist. Until that exists, we are all operating in the grey area and not one of us can bring a DJ oriented music service to market that is innovative and allows interactive, on-demand performances, until the rules change.
That means, until that happens, I’m sitting it out. I’m not going to waste investors time and money running up against the music industry, which will sue me out of existence or have artists and labels issuing takedowns and ruining the service’s reputation while frustrating users. Should artists and labels fight back? Yes. As long as these are the rules, they have every right to issue takedowns and make life hell for all the DJs out there. Now that DJs are getting paid big money in Vegas or these huge festivals to spin, some artists are saying they want a piece of that pie too. But, those artists have to remember that the festivals and clubs are licensed by the PROs, so they are still getting paid when their music is played. A few things that would go a long way toward helping artists get the money they deserve would be technology that accurately tracked the public performance of DJ sets in live environments and the adoption of ISRC by DJs attached to their mixes. But, those are articles for another day!
Yes. BAD dance music is too repetitive. We hate repetitive music too. That’s why you listen to the good stuff, like this live set from Kraftwerk at MOOGFEST 2014, and you don’t have to deal with the insanity! It’s really the way to go.
Unless the artist is going for a theatrical or moody effect, it is best to keep moving along. If an artist or DJ plays the same track, the same noises for too long…you raise an eyebrow. What’s going on? Keep it moving! Not in every scenario, of course, but if you just find yourself standing there wondering what they heck the DJ is doing, that may be indicative of a slack DJ set. We hate slack DJ sets and we hate repetitive beats, too. Enough said! Enjoy the electronic music you love!
But, dig deep. Research. Understand the layers and the nuances. Look for artists and songs who push the envelope and don’t just hit you with 4 on the floor for hours on end. This is supposed to be a journey, not a moment lived over and over and over again. You can learn a lot from watching the pioneers.
Reaching a consumer market, particularly a youth consumer market, is clearly a great challenge. The challenge is also exciting to no end: this is an incredible opportunity to form a mutually beneficial relationship with the target audience. What if I told you that your target audience wants, actually quite urgently, to engage with you?
Consumer-facing companies have the opportunity to empower and inspire our creative, ambitious, informed, and entrepreneurial selves. Give us tools to advance our craft and we will listen to your message; this is sincere support. Give us a platform and we will tell you how we feel; this is transparency.
What platform? Take as an example the Blue Cross Blue Shield NC twitter account. The theme of the account is one that aspires to inform its subscribers and to engage in open conversations with them about the costs involved with the healthcare insurance system. Because inefficiencies of the American health care system are widely known, this is a smart move. They aren’t trying to hide from the debate. Instead, they are positioning themselves as authorities on the topic and facilitating open conversations with their customers via the very conversational social media site, Twitter. This is very inspiring! I want to hear what they have to say. I want to join the conversation and let them know what I think. The internet has brought with it the age of transparency. It really is beautiful.
What tools? Reverting to the most obvious example ever, Red Bull is it. Really the product is crap sugar and wack chemicals, but you better believe if I was at one of their awesome free events I would drink one. That is power. I love your brand so much I will drink that stuff. By throwing awesome events, and by sponsoring and supporting artists and athletes, they make our dreams come true. The great thing about making a dream come true is that then the “sharing” and “publicity” thing is all taken care of. Make a dream come true and earned media value is a given.
Optimally with a consumer marketing campaign, both sides win. When we empower and inspire an audience, they become brand advocates. If using influence only, we don’t even need a huge budget. The relationship is mutually beneficial. It’s up to us as marketing managers to seize the opportunity.
The moderator of the panel was Karl Sakas – @KarlSakas, President, Agency Firebox (@AgencyFirebox)
This one needs no introduction. We’re going to let Dee-1’s words speak for themselves. If you don’t get it…well, we can’t help you with that. Go ask someone to explain it to you.
One of the most prolific songwriters of disco and dance music, Niles Rodgers, is responsible for over 40 #1 singles, including classic records by Sister Sledge, Chic, Madonna, David Bowie and INXS, as well as more recent hits in collaboration with Daft Punk, Avicii and other EDM producers. Nile appears in this video at Canadian Music Week about where and how he first heard “Rappers Delight,” which samples his classic Disco hit, “Good Times” and inspired generations of Hip-Hop artists to riff off of breaks from other artist’s records.
As a young DJ growing up in the 80’s, I used to do exactly what Nile talks about. Bring turntables and a mixer out to the street or set up a boombox and blast the music so my friends could breakdance on a sheet of linoleum we’d put down in a parking lot or basketball court. It was the early days of Hip-Hop and we had no idea both Good Times and Rappers Delight would spark a new genre that is now a multi-billion dollar global business.
In an era before sampling became popular, “Rappers Delight” was one of the first controversial records that pitted musicians against DJs and studio producers. After some discussion back and forth after learning about the record, Niles was credited with a co-songwriter nod, which now appears in the liner notes of re-releases.
Here’s the original. Listen for the break at 3:05, where it just breaks down to the bassline, kick drum and clap.
Now, here’s Rapper’s Delight in its entirety, which mostly consists of that break and the Sugarhill Gang rapping over it.
In today’s world of social media at hyperspeed, where videos are thrown up every second and promoted incessantly without much of a message, this new series form Complex TV and DoAndroidsDance?, an online dance music magazine, seems somewhat promising. The first episode finds two incredible electronic musicians in a simple conversation out of it comes a few gems from a relaxed conversation between these two legends. While it’s an interview and Photek is probably not the best interviewer in the world, he does ask good questions and gets into MOBY’s thinking and process.
Converted to black and white, this first video in the series feels artsy yet intimate. It’s refreshing to see MOBY pick up a bass to play some Joy Division licks toward the end of the interview and this plays as a reminder that musicianship – even in EDM – is important. In its simplicity, it teaches upcoming producers that MOBY doesn’t just program music in computers – he’s also a true musician, having learned to play instruments and mapping that early learning to his current productions. We hope the scene will inspire a young EDM artist to pick up a guitar or a bass and play around with the sound. To not be so reliant on Ableton, Logic and software synths to make electronic music. Bring in different acoustic sounds into an EDM production to differentiate.
We invite you to check out the 1st episode here and we’ve posted the embed below. We’ll be watching to see what comes of The Drop. So much media to consume and so little time to consume it, but these conversations are important nonetheless for upcoming producers and music fans to learn a little something from the leaders in the music industry. What the audience metrics will be and how this program will air remains to be seen. In a competitive Internet video landscape, you have to have something really special to monetize it and keep it going.
