Everybody Get Their Hands in the Air. This is a Mashup!

(Sorry about that).

I read a book, recommended via Boing Boing, a while back called "Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling" by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola.

It was a bit long winded, but the gist of the book is that, essentially, it's become almost impossible to use sampling as a way of creating music commercially without breaking copyright in some way shape or form. An example given was that "Paul's Boutique", a Bestie Boys album, has so many samples in it that, because of restrictions in copyright law, it would now cost far too much to make. So artists have three options:

1. Make the music and wear a pair of brown trousers, hoping that you, your lawyers, the sampled artists lawyers and whoever else is interested can come to some agreement;
2. Restrict the music to only a few samples and pay the fee for those;
3. Make it for free. This way, although you don't make any money (and might be able to avoid paying for the copyright, under fair use), you can increase your reputation and get some practice at the same time.

The Kleptones do this quite well, with their Queen mashup, "Night at the Hip-Hopera", as have Girl Talk, and now djBC has mixed the Beasties with The Beatles (The Beastles) and produced "Ill Submarine".

I don't pretend that mashups are particularly creative or have much artistic merit, although it does take a lot of skill to make them, but they are fun.