UPDATE: Music, Ethics, and the Real Life Beta Mix

thanks for the mix, Rekluse, downloaded to iTunes. will sync this to my iPhone :)

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http://www.c4chaos.com

Truly amazing stuff.  A great soundtrack for this, the opening scene of Integral Life's journey into infinity and beyond.  I'd be interested to hear about your creative process in making these mixes, if you'd ever wish to share it.

-The Artist Formerly Known as Fangsz

P.S. I just got to the Morpheus stuff at the end of the first part.  That's awesome!

Sounds good. Diverse mix for sure. Just wondering if you are using Live?

I'll post some of my experimental sounds soon. I have couple up on my profile.

Ev--

Pixel Ink Design

Mixes like these do not detract from sales, they enhance sales by exposing people to new artists they are likely unfamiliar with by juxtaposing them with ones that they are.
And what data do you base that statement on? True, one hears quotes like that one on the net all of the time, but that doesn't make it so. Another statement I hear a lot is that I don't pay for music, because the artist does not get much of the money anyway... I have always thought that would mean that one should steal sneakers and clothes, because the poor sweatshop worker does not get paid adequately.

There was once a time when dj's were the backbone of music promotion, before Clear Channel moved in an stripped dj's of this role of cultural propagation.  Now culture is barely being propagated; it is being manufactured.
ClearChannel and all the other other radio stations pay a flat monthly fee to BMI and ASCAP, money that is then divided among the writers and players of the music that was played on the radio. Every radio DJ has to keep a strict log of the music they play. And, by the way, every club you might perform your DJ mixes in, also pays a flat monthly fee to BMI and ASCAP.

I know that the music industry in the midst of the greatest legitimacy crisis in its history, its own Grand Inquisition, and that makes this a somewhat touchy issue--but all the more reason to actually engage in an Integral discussion of exactly these sorts of issues.  It is another one of those red-hot cultural buttons we should all have our finger on, simply because only a 4-quadrant Integral approach can make sense of this mess.
According to Peter Gabriel musicians are losing 50-60% of their income due to file-sharing. I suggest that it is less a music industry crisis and more of a cultural crisis where people think that because music can be obtained for free that it should be free.

So the mix has been removed, and i am really kind of disheartened, for both idealistic and personal reasons.  It is an art i am extremely passionate about, and i don't get many opportunities to share it with people.  If i were trying to make money off this it would be an entirely different argument, though it would still not be as black-and-white as most people consider it to be.  But i'm not.  I am simply trying to create a node of cultural integration, allowing the past to flow freely into the future, while adding a new layer of novelty.
Use 8Tracks.com to share your music - they will report the writers/performers and pay internet-radio royalties.

If any of you are curious about the mix, send me a personal message and i will be happy to share my inspirations. 

And how is that different from posting it?

Related reading:

Link One,  Link Two  ,Link Three

Ottmar, Corey....

I offer a deep bow to both of you for contributing sincere perspectives on this issue.  This is the start of an unfortunately rare type of blog discussion that directly aims to surface solidly competing perspectives.   This alone gives me a small degree of hope that such discourse may perhaps help us save our asses from ourselves.

Again, deep bow and thanks for contributing.

I don't have anything that could even start to integrate your perspectives, as I'm really quite ignorant on this subject. So, I won't offer anything in that regard.

I will, however, offer this—for what it's worth—to the larger integral community and the hoped-for continuation of the present discussion:

Toward a Truly Integral Discourse: Part 1

[I’m taking this in a slightly different direction, so I’ll leave this comment thread to the original topic. Sorry if i'm breaking blog rules...I don't typically do this blog thing]

Ottmar - thank you for getting involved in this conversation.  I value your perspective on these matters very much, even while i disagree with some of your presuppositions.  This is an exceptionally important conversation, one that can only benefit from a genuine integral approach, which is simply not being done anywhere else in the world.

My comments are in bold.

1) Mixes like these do not detract from sales, they enhance sales by exposing people to new artists they are likely unfamiliar with by juxtaposing them with ones that they are.
And what data do you base that statement on? True, one hears quotes like that one on the net all of the time, but that doesn't make it so. Another statement I hear a lot is that I don't pay for music, because the artist does not get much of the money anyway... I have always thought that would mean that one should steal sneakers and clothes, because the poor sweatshop worker does not get paid adequately.

Here i think we are actually having two different conversations.  I draw a very strong line between mixtape culture and piracy culture, and i don't think it is right to conflate the two.  And unfortunately, while there have been lots of case studies on the impact of p2p file-sharing to music culture (from both sides of the argument) there have not been very many about the role of dj mixes.  They are usually lumped together, as i think they are in your response, and i don't think that it is at all accurate or fair to do so.  In one case, you are uploading an entire album and making it available for free.  So if i download that album, i have more or less the exact same product than if i walked into a brick-and-mortar store and purchased the CD.  So unless i have an interior code of ethics that motivates me to put money into my favorite artists' pocket, there is very little incentive to actually purchase the album after downloading it for free.

But this is entirely different for DJ mix.  One of my favorite dj's, DJ Z-Trip, has a live mix that freely downloadable (the Live in L.A. mix, and at the risk of offending anyone, i encourage you all to download and listen right now), in which he mixes Janice Joplin with DJ Shadow.  It is an amazing synthesis of two vastly different artists, resulting in something that is markedly new and innovative.  He cannot sell the mix, of course, but he can distribute it for free.  Why?  Because if i am in the mood to hear Janice Joplin, i am going to put on a Janice album, not fast forward 20 minutes through a dj mix to hear it.  If i don't have the album, chances are i will buy it.  By the same token, when i was consciously trying to explore as much old-school and golden-age hip hop as i could, dj mixes by people like Z-Trip were absolutely indispensable.  I must have bought at least twenty new albums because of the tracks that were mixed into two or three different dj sets.

But despite the lack of hard data around the role of the dj, i will say this--just about every truly underground scene depends upon dj mixes for promotion.  This is true of underground Hip Hop, House music, Drum & Bass, Dubstep, Indie Rock, etc.  I know this is especially prevalant within the genre i mostly identify with--underground hip hop--which is composed of artists you will never hear being promoted through mainstream media.  DJ's and mixtapes have always been the backbone of Hip-Hop culture, and i know the same is true for most electronica genres. 

And i have also heard the "the artist doesn't get any money, so i'm not going to pay" justification, and i think you will notice that nowhere in my arguments do i represent that perspective.  As always, it is a question of altitude.  That argument obviously comes from what Ken Wilber would likely call Boomeritis, which uses sophisticated pluralistic reasoning to justify ego-driven behaviors.  That is not a part of my argument.  However, i do believe the reasoning has some merit--artists are being horribly underpaid by a bloated industry that has been completely unable to adapt to the new cultural and technological landscape we are all currently standing in. 

In terms of the attitudes and altitudes of the consumer, i make the following hyper-simplistic predictions:

Red will always do what it wants to do, download what it wants to download, without any consideration of the ethics behind it all.  This will always exist, and needs to be taken into account in exactly the same way shoplifting is accounted for in music stores.

Amber is disgusted at the idea of piracy, because in a black-and-white world, piracy=theft, and theft=illegal.

Orange listeners will often use p2p to preview new music before they buy, thus being able to get a sense of value, cultivate a multiplicity of musical tastes, and better decide where to send dollars.

Green will often use sophisticated justifications for reinforcing their red underbellies.  They tend to believe all information should be free, no way around it.  But i think even this is a bit of a strawman argument, as many greenies are also legitimately concerned about the way artists are being treated, and would voluntarily give money directly to the artist if they could.  This usually accompanies a radical underappreciation and deconstruction of the conventional industry, without understanding the vital (albeit increasingly limited) role it continues to play for artists and audience alike.

Teal is something new entirely.  It strives to cultivate a system in which the listener retains some level of ownership, the artist retains some level of ownership, and the culture retains some level of ownership--without reducing ownership to any of these three alone--and seeks to create new production and distribution systems, as well as new opportunities for spending behaviors, that support artist rights, listener rights, and cultural fluidity alike.    

Oh and there was a recent Canadian study that concluded that the people who were filesharing the most were also spending the most on music.  So it is absolutely not as simple as counting every download as a lost sale.

2) There was once a time when dj's were the backbone of music promotion, before Clear Channel moved in an stripped dj's of this role of cultural propagation.  Now culture is barely being propagated; it is being manufactured.
ClearChannel and all the other other radio stations pay a flat monthly fee to BMI and ASCAP, money that is then divided among the writers and players of the music that was played on the radio. Every radio DJ has to keep a strict log of the music they play. And, by the way, every club you might perform your DJ mixes in, also pays a flat monthly fee to BMI and ASCAP.

Yes, i am aware of all this, but it doesn't get to the heart of my argument.  The monopolization and homogenization of American radio by Clear Channel has utterly eroded music culture.  Cultural fluidity has long been the enemy of the music industry, which is much more interested in hedging their bets by determining what the next cultural trends are going to be, rather than reacting to the ever-shifting cultural intelligence and taste.  There are mechanisms in place to ensure that the music industry will never again be so blindsided as it was during the Seattle explosion of the early nineties.  This is bad for artists, bad for consumers, and bad for culture.

Closer to the point, we need to get a clear look at the actual role of the dj in music culture, as opposed to the role of the pirate in music culture.  DJ's are usually looked to for their cultural expertise, as they are typically the ones who are most passionate about music and music culture, and therefore the most knowledgable.  They tend to represent some form of LL mastery, and are looked to for this expertise, in much the same way that listeners form kinships with certain music reviewers who are trusted for their meta-perspectives on cultural trends and innovations.  In this sense, dj's are rather like the "Mavens" in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point, acting as trusted cultural experts to help expose people to artists they would never have been exposed to by the mainstream industry-controlled channels.

This is why you could listen to the radio for an entire year without so much as getting up to take a piss, and never once hear artists like Blackalicious, Immortal Technique, Talib Kweli, Lupe Fiasco, etc.  The only place you will find artists like that in rotation is in college radio, which still largely uses the dj-as-cultural-propagator model, which allows such undefinable traits as "good taste" to determine what music people get exposed to.  Without the dj/mixtape culture surrounding them, none of these underground artists would even have a chance to make it.  

3) I know that the music industry in the midst of the greatest legitimacy crisis in its history, its own Grand Inquisition, and that makes this a somewhat touchy issue--but all the more reason to actually engage in an Integral discussion of exactly these sorts of issues.  It is another one of those red-hot cultural buttons we should all have our finger on, simply because only a 4-quadrant Integral approach can make sense of this mess.
According to Peter Gabriel musicians are losing 50-60% of their income due to file-sharing. I suggest that it is less a music industry crisis and more of a cultural crisis where people think that because music can be obtained for free that it should be free.

I have no doubt that artists like Peter Gabriel are earning less.  But i think it is a dramatic oversimplification to point to filesharing as being solely responsible for this.  The fact of the matter is, Americans are spending just as much money on entertainment as they ever were, if not more.  But the entertainment market is also MUCH more robust than it used to be--in other words, there are way more options for your media dollar than ever before.  DVD sales have been astronomical (though it is a format bubble that is beginning to burst), the video game industry now makes up a much larger portion of the entertainment market than ever before, etc.  Plus, let's not forget the brand-spanking-new ringtone market, which pulls in billions per year, revenue that is never included in industry reports of declining music sales.  Accordingly, much of the decision around signing new artists is hinged around ringtone marketability, which results in a decline in innovation, authenticity, and artistry.  Finally, the ideology of cultural manufacturing (as opposed to cultural fluidity) results in both a qualitative decline of the music being put out, as well as a quantitative decline of how many artists and albums are being produced.  Right now, fewer artists are being pumped into a mainstream that is more controlled than ever before.  So the quality is lower, the quantity is lower, and therefore the overall sales are lower.  All while the total money spent on the entertainment industry-at-large continues to rise. 

But thank God for those ringtones, eh?  And thank God for all those RIAA lawsuits, nobly protecting artists from their fans by suing the pants off children, the elderly, and the deceased, and returning the money lost in piracty to the artists who deserve it.  Oh but wait--if the RIAA sues me for $40,000 for sharing a single song online, the artist doesn't actually get ANY of that money!  So it's all in the name of protecting the artists--but these same artists do not see a single penny generated by these (ridiculous) lawsuits.  Oh, and they are now even beginning to attack "personal use"--if they have it their way, if you want to put a song on your iPod that you already have on CD, you will need to buy a new license for the song.  Burning and ripping cd's will become illegal.  It is a war against the consumer, all in the name of protecting artists who are being treated just as miserably by their labels as they ever were.  

The RIAA is broken, corrupt, and a full techno-economic stage behind the rest of the world.  It is a business like any other, in that it's main objective is to maximize profits for shareholders.  Which is not a bad thing in itself, it's how the world goes round.  But it is most certainly in the throes of a massive legitimacy crisis--and rather than adapting to the changing world around it, it tries to re-entrench itself using the same "Dick Clark" model it has perpetuated since the 50's.  And in so doing, it fails to take certain cultural, economic, and technological trends into account--for example, after CD's became the new medium of choice in the late 80's and early 90's, it created a massive spending bubble as people upgraded their music from one format (vinyl and cassette) to another.  The same happened with the advent of mp3's when the iTunes model came on the scene, but to a much lesser degree, since people could easily convert their old CD collection to mp3 format.  But the industries did not act as if these periods of intense spending were temporary, and tried to sustain the revenues once the format bubbles began to burst, to the detriment of the artists and consumers alike.  In order to coninually match the revenues from these years, the industries had to place much more emphasis upon fewer artists that could appeal to the "lowest common denominator," which is almost entirely responsible for the pitiful condition mainstream hip hop currently finds itself.

Right now technology is forcing the music industry (and the entertainment industry at large) to move away from scarcity economics, and toward economics of abundance.  And it is my contention that, as painful as piracy is for the industry and for the artists, this sort of digital anarchy is precisely the system shock the industry needs to make this sort of transition.  I think Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails represents this extremely significant transition better than anyone else out there, as he accepts filesharing, piracy, and p2p networks, while certainly disruptive to the status quo and detrimental to some artists, is nonetheless completely inevitable and must be acknowledged, understood, and integrated into whatever new model might arise out of this.  And rather than remaining in denial about our changing world, he is actively experimenting with different ways of innovating this new model.

But again, most of these arguments are revolving around the role of filesharing in music culture, not the role of the dj mix in music culture, which absolutely cannot be perceived as being the same.  And by posting a mix like the one i created to a community such as this, which implicitly carries a minimum of orange world-centric values, i would be willing to bet a shiny nickel that it would generate more album sales than it would detract from.  You have most likely never heard of Lupe Fiasco, but who knows--after listening to my mix, 50 people might absolutely fall in love with him as i have, possibly generating 50 new album sales that would have otherwise never existed.

a few quickies:

I don't think any model that relies on suppressing the flow of information is going to work anymore. Nor do I feel that the music industry needs to be an intermediary between me and the music I want to listen to (or the artists that produce it).

Do you consider charging money for one's work suppressing the flow of information? Maybe you should tell Wilber to make his books available on the net lest he suppress the flow of information.

Actually, there is a really good case to be made that releasing free eBook versions of soon-to-be-released titles can increase overall book sales by something like 12-15%.  And Ken is considering it for upcoming books.

But i don't think this translates directly to the music industry--with music the gap between content and packaging is widening more and more--in a sense, music has been "freed" from physical location--while books still retain much more value than their eBook counterparts, simply because people tend not to enjoy reading lengthy publications on a screen as much as they do on paper.  So the publishing industry is in a better position to benefit from "free culure" than the music industry is, at least in its current form.     

Knowledge or expertise has always cost money, whether they are the thoughts of a philosopher or the work of a film crew. True, making mixtapes has been made very easy, and recording techno music or anything that doesn't require a studio... but the expertise of a recording engineer, for example is still a premium. Which microphone (and they can cost $1,000-5,000 each) should be placed at which angle and distance from the instrument or amplifier...

Totally agree--but at the same time, isn't it true that technology really is taking a lot of middlemen out of the industry, and making it much easier to self-produce? 

I guess you have never been part of the music industry and you don't know what a traditional record company does for an artist, yes? True, the traditional record company made great profits, but only about 10% of all artists ever made a second album - such is the risk involved.

I don't listen to remixes a lot anymore, but to my mind such work is a new, creative work in it's own right. I'm thinking, for example, of the (sometimes) amazing work of Negativland. And I've been exposed to great new music by listening to remixes.

You are introducing a new element into the discussion. That's fine. I think a DJ-mix is basically a collage using other people's images, a remix is a collage with a few new paint strokes. Or, if a DJ-mix is a compilation of other people's poetry, then a remix is such a compilation with a few new comments added. That does not mean that I don't think that making a great compilation is not an art - it is. But, let's please not confuse that with practicing a musical instrument for 10,000-20,000 hours.

There are, of course, many different levels of depth when it comes to djing.  Some djs do not invest a lot of artistry into their mixes, and they are little more than human iPods.  Others perform radical deconstructions and reconstructions of music, to the point where it is barely recognizable from the source.  The turntable is absolutely capable of being a musical instrument--if you want evidence of that, i highly recommend you watch the documentary Scratch, which traces the history of the hip hop dj.  To some, the turntable can almost be played like a guitar, with records as strings, the crossfader your rhythm hand, your scratching, beat juggling, and mashups your fret hand.  Most people consider it a percussive instrument

As for me, i am nowhere near that level.  But i do what i do.  But this mix took many many hours to pull off, a project that spanned several weeks to compose and execute.

But seriously, go watch Scratch.  It's incredible. 

I draw a very strong line between mixtape culture and piracy culture, and i don't think it is right to conflate the two.

Fair enough. But, isn't a mix-tape just piracy with a new context? Instead of sharing a Beatles tune and a U2 tune, you connect them.

I am wondering if you listened at all to the mix that started this whole conversation--those two bands in particular were both on there, but neither of them were just "connected" like a playlist.  They were both mashups--meaning two songs played simultaneously in such a way that the lyrics and music of one song are mashed together with the music of another song, creating a unique blend.  One was U2 mixed with Tosca (With or Without You/Honey) and the other was the Beatles mixed with Eminem (Come Together/Lose Yourself.  There was something very poetic about bringing those two titles together for me.)  And, again, the biggest reason for me why mix-tapes such as the one i offered is not just "piracy with a new context" is because having a mix with a particular song in it does not substitute for actually having that song in your collection.  As i've said, you aren't going to fast forward 20 minutes into my mix just because you are in the mood to listen to a Blackalicious song.    

Look, I went to artschool and know that collage is valid fine art form, but the problem is always: what have you added that makes it truly unique.

Narrative, for one.  That mix i posted told a story--all the songs were chosen very deliberately, with an underlying theme of "a day in the life of the human condition."  The lyrics were all intentionally selected, and the music was supposed to feel like it was moving from waking up early in the morning (brief intro/dream fragment, followed by Queen's "Is this the real life?"--a very poetic introduction for the new portal, i thought.) to afternoon, to late evening.  And toward the end it gets very dark, both in tone and in intention, as i tried to create transitions that reflected a "dark night of the soul," before ending with the non-dual loudness of Lupe Fiasco's Hello/Goodbye, which is also meant to recycle the mix and bring it back to the beginning.

God, i hated writing that.  Trying to put words on it kind of cheapens what i was going for in the mix--it's like when you have to explain a joke.  But i just want to mention this potential narrative aspect of the dj mix, and wanted to submit that this is something new that is added.

Also, as i mentioned earlier, a mashup is certainly something completely new, while being entirely composed of something old.  It's really not as simple as pressing play on one turntable then play on the other--there is a tremendous amount of precision, skill, composition, and trial and error that can go into a good dj blend.

And novel context is often added--for example, my deliberate attempt to pull off a "trans-genre" synthesis--trans-pop, anyway.  In a sense, the entire remix culture can be labelled "trans-pop."

There are rules to the game. If you don't like the rules, you break them as you are doing - but, I suggest you are being very irresponsible because I-Life could get into serious (or at least expensive) trouble for hosting your mixes - or you make your own music.

Fortunately no one is cracking down on dj mixes.  Z-Trip, for example, has a big label contract, but is allowed to put his live dj sets online for free--even though they are composed entirely of other people's music.  But you cannot listen to one of his mixes and not hear the tremendous novelty being added.  So they aren't going after dj mixes, because they pose a different legal question than simply creating a playlist of free music that doesn't belong to you.  But you are right--if they can start going after transfering a song from a CD to an iPod, then they can go after dj mixes.

In one case, you are uploading an entire album and making it available for free. So if i download that album, i have more or less the exact same product than if i walked into a brick-and-mortar store and purchased the CD. So unless i have an interior code of ethics that motivates me to put money into my favorite artists' pocket, there is very little incentive to actually purchase the album after downloading it for free.

When everybody steals, stealing should become legal? It's not just an interior code, it happens to be the law. You don't like the law, go find yourself a congressman who will help you change the law.

I am not saying that stealing should become legal.  But i will say that if everybody is stealing, and you need to label a huge portion of your customers as criminals, then that is a clear sign that something is systemically broken.    

However, i do believe the reasoning has some merit--artists are being horribly underpaid by a bloated industry that has been completely unable to adapt to the new cultural and technological landscape we are all currently standing in.

Please don't repeat internet platitudes if you don't know the industry well enough. Before starting my own label I was on Epic Records/Sony Music and well taken care off. I had to consider only my music and not much else. It was sweet while it worked and before the record companies missed a turn. I wrote about this here.

I'm glad you've had a good experience with the big guys--i am just saying that i have heard a LOT of mixed reports from artists who have been put through hell by their labels.  Albums recorded but never released, no ownership over their own art, horrible percentages per album sold, no cut of the ringtone market, etc.  I'll have to try to compile some artist impressions of the labels sometime, on both sides of the fence.

According to Peter Gabriel musicians are losing 50-60% of their income due to file-sharing. I suggest that it is less a music industry crisis and more of a cultural crisis where people think that because music can be obtained for free that it should be free.

I have no doubt that artists like Peter Gabriel are earning less.

He was speaking about most artists and suggested that people at the top of the food-chain (like himself) are actually doing just fine. It's the musical "middle-class" that has been hit the hardest.

Huge issue, i totally agree.  So far most experiments with alternative distribtion models have been good for the ultra famous (Radiohead, Prince, Nine Inch Nails) and for the deep underground (non-commercial hip hop, electronica, etc.) but not so good for the "middle class."  This is definitely a really big question, though i would suggest that part of the problem is the role of the commercial "mainstream" and how controlled and manipulated that mainstream is.  One of the exciting prospects of the digital music age is the creation of multiple mainstreams, all forming organically from the collective tastes of the world, rather than being as manufactured as it is today.

I think Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails represents this extremely significant transition better than anyone else out there, as he accepts filesharing, piracy, and p2p networks, while certainly disruptive to the status quo and detrimental to some artists, is nonetheless completely inevitable and must be acknowledged, understood, and integrated into whatever new model might arise out of this. And rather than remaining in denial about our changing world, he is actively experimenting with different ways of innovating this new model.

Trent Raznor also suggests an ISP tax in this recent interview:

For me, I choose the battles I can fight. In my mind, I think if there was an ISP tax of some sort, we can say to the consumer, “All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up your a– if you want, and it’s $5 on your cable bill or ISP bill.”

I am fine with that. Everybody pay $5 per month into the pot and let's make music free. Now that's a revolutionary idea. What might happen if kids all over the world can listen to any music they want to?!

Oh man i would absolutely be down for that.  Hell, make it 20%, as long as there are no DRM time-bombs.  But it has to touch the underground too, which is a problem Amazon and iTunes currently has.

BTW, the music I have released on my own label SSRI since 2002, uses a

Sampling + Creative Commons

license, which allows sampling for profit, mashing and even file-sharing to a certain extend - also see ListeningLounge.org. I do not believe in file-sharing (as if you couldn't tell), but I also don't want people to go to jail for that offense. I do think that allowing people to sample one's music should be a musician's choice and respected.

That is truly awesome.  CC is a huge step in the right direction.

Thanks again, Ottmar, for participating in this discussi