15 Mar
2006
15 Mar
'06
2:31 p.m.
I have this idea:
We could have an organized community where volunteer musicians
make music similar to the top commercial songs. When the idea
works, one may get top pop music for free.
-*-
Making similar music purposedly is nothing new. Many top
commercial songs generate a row of similar commercial songs
which then end up to the top as well.
We need this kind of alternative way of making free music.
For example, the recent free music CD announced here at LAU
simply sucks. I don't know why.
-*-
As how to organize the Free Music Factory, we need volunteers:
singers, lyrics authors, musicians of different styles, etc.
We also need volunteers who know technical details: effects,
cool synth sounds etc. The commercial songs need to be musically
analysed as well.
Juhana
--
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15 Mar
15 Mar
2:51 p.m.
On Wed March 15 2006 13:30, Juhana Sadeharju wrote:
We could have an organized community where volunteer
musicians
make music similar to the top commercial songs. When the idea
works, one may get top pop music for free.
I don't mean to be mean, but this idea makes me throw up a
little. You may have noticed that a lot of free software
designed to copycat popular proprietary software has been paid
for by corporations (the most obvious example being Openoffice,
but also Mozilla during its time as an AOL property, Linspire
nee Lindows, and Xgl at Novell.) I think the same is true of
commercial music; corporations pay for copycat songs, and the
performers and producers do it for a paycheck, not to scratch
their own artistic itch as producers of free music do. The only
function I could see this serving would be "Look how close to X
my music is without infringing upon it.... hire me and I'll do
more of it for you."
That, and I don't think most free musicians have bimbos and
Autotune at their disposal, both necessary for the creation of
generic soundalike pop music. (I would mention hip-hop too, but
that's way too personality-oriented to try to copycat.)
Finally, if your scheme were to succeed, it would only be
competition to unsigned "house musicians", not pop stars or the
recording industry, because companies that needed pop music for
use in their TV shows or commercials would just use the
CC-licensed stuff rather than keep paying the house musicians.
We need this kind of alternative way of making free
music.
For example, the recent free music CD announced here at LAU
simply sucks. I don't know why.
While I haven't heard anything on the free music CD, I don't
really think you'll make a lot of headway by telling people
their music sucks. I'm just saying.
Rob
3:09 p.m.
On Wed, 15 Mar, 2006 at 08:30PM +0200, Juhana Sadeharju spake thus:
I have this idea:
We could have an organized community where volunteer musicians
make music similar to the top commercial songs. When the idea
works, one may get top pop music for free.
I think it comes down to a question that was discussed earlier on the
list: why do we make music?
All of us are pretty much in favour of CC-style licenses, so we're not
doing it for money.
The two main reasons seemed to be:
1. you feel the urge, you have something in your head, you want to
express yourself
2. you want people to hear your music, it's satisfying to know people
like your output, you enjoy listening to music and want to give
soemthing back
All of us appear to have both reasons, with varying epmphasis one each
one.
The problem is, your Free Music Factory idea doesn't really scratch
either of those itches very well.
Reason 1 is obviously at odds with it. Reason 2 I think doesn't fit
the factory plan because if you're after pure emulation it's not
really *your* music. You might as well just turn on the radio.
This isn't really meant as a flame and I'd hate to be seen as trying
to squash creative thinking. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of the
idea and I'm just adding my opinion to the pot.
-*-
Making similar music purposedly is nothing new. Many top
commercial songs generate a row of similar commercial songs
which then end up to the top as well.
We need this kind of alternative way of making free music.
For example, the recent free music CD announced here at LAU
simply sucks.
Hmm. I missed the CD announcement and can't find it. I have to say
it sounds a lot more interesting than this project, though.
I don't know why.
Maybe if you tried to work out why, you could feed it into the
project. By reasoning through your doubts, you could actually make
the CD idea into something better rather than just asserting that it
"sucks".
On a completely unrelated note, things "sucking" is one of my
favourite Americanisms. Why is sucking bad? I can think of many
contexts in which suction is important, useful and even, dare I say
it, pleasurable :)
James
-*-
As how to organize the Free Music Factory, we need volunteers:
singers, lyrics authors, musicians of different styles, etc.
We also need volunteers who know technical details: effects,
cool synth sounds etc. The commercial songs need to be musically
analysed as well.
Juhana
--
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated
Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)
4:25 p.m.
Quoting james(a)dis-dot-dat.net:
On Wed, 15 Mar, 2006 at 08:30PM +0200, Juhana
Sadeharju spake thus:
Isn't this how Robbie Williams got popular? Seriously. I try hard to avoid chart
music and his in particular (and lately I seem to be succeeding), but what I
have heard of his always sounds rather more than half familiar and it annoys me
that I can never put my finger on what the original was -- it's enough to
_almost_ make me wish I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of chart music and a
musicology degree so that I could wipe that smug grin off his face...
Of course, he has already been successfully sued once for plagiarism -- although
he got away with not having to hand over all the income from the song to the
original copyright holders because, according to the Judge, his song had no
particular "staying power"! Ha ha!
I suppose this just goes to show that it's a very fine line between clever and
stupid, or between imitating and plagiarising.
I have this idea:
We could have an organized community where volunteer musicians
make music similar to the top commercial songs. When the idea
works, one may get top pop music for free.
On a completely unrelated note, things "sucking" is one of my
favourite Americanisms. Why is sucking bad? I can think of many
contexts in which suction is important, useful and even, dare I say
it, pleasurable :)
James
And then there are those things that are so bad they deserve the obligatory
Simpsons quote: "I never thought it was physically possible, but this both
sucks AND blows!" Digeridoo perhaps? Or anything else where cyclical breathing
is a benefit.
3:59 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Free Music Factory
Hi Juhana!
This is a GREAT idea :)
One could even put a little subversive content in the songs... like
"Hey, listener, you're a really wonderful person!"
I'm working on making my music not suck (well, actually I'm working to
get some music out at all) and I'm not entirely hopeless some of will
actually become quite listenable.
As for some top ten music I like... "What's your Flava" by Craig David
comes to mind :)
Let's keep in touch about this if you like!
Carlo
6830
days inactive
6830
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
4 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Carlo Capocasa -
james＠dis-dot-dat.net -
Juhana Sadeharju -
qb＠f2s.com -
Rob