
The Economics Of Girl Talk - nthitz
http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/47719281228/the-economics-of-girl-talk
======
joezydeco
If you want to go farther down the rabbit hole, this is an excellent 20-minute
video about the history of the Amen Break, the "six-second clip that spawned
several entire subcultures" and the rise of sampling:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac>

~~~
gfody
fascinating video - curious I searched for Amen Break on whosampled.com and it
returned a list of 789 tracks:
<http://www.whosampled.com/sampled/The%20Winstons/>

~~~
meatsock
i estimate that number to be off by tenfold or more

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lazyBilly
I think you gotta pay the original artist. As an old-school analog musician, I
had to sweat for literally decades to be able to drop that perfect ten second
fill effortlessly. The engineer had to invest thousands of dollars and a
similar level of time to record it and make it sound amazing. And if some kid
wants to use them, great, that should be allowed, but they gotta pay, because
that music didn't just drop out of the sky. And if you want to sample a
gigantic hit that everybody knows (which is going to make your derivative work
much more marketable), then you're gonna have to pay a lot more, no? If I
wanted, let's say, Jay-Z to come in and sing 99 problems on my song, what
would that cost me? Probably a lot, and for good reason.

If it's really worth nothing, then all these DJ's could either produce it or
record it themselves. But it's not, and they can't. This is a classic economic
externality. Writing, performing, and recording really good music costs a lot
of money, and sampling is virtually free. Pay obscure artists a reasonable
mechanical residual and negotiate with samples of huge hits for huge money.

~~~
saidajigumi
> I think you gotta pay the original artist.

That's not going to happen either, under the current system.

> Writing, performing, and recording really good music costs a lot of money,
> and sampling is virtually free.

Here your own argument comes back to bite you. _Really good_ sampling takes
just as much blood, sweat, and tears invested as the other skill sets you
cite.

> If it's really worth nothing, then all these DJ's could either produce it or
> record it themselves.

Black or white or ... gray. Copyright duration has been extended well beyond
the average human lifespan. With an effective lockout of fair-use, there is no
effective recourse for musical collage artists. As TFA cites, this is
completely inconsistent with copyright rulings for other art forms. Why should
the music industry should get to be the special snowflake here?

> This is a classic economic externality.

You're complaining about a minor weakening of a monopoly which was created by
the government at the public's expense! (Cough, externality, cough.) Quoth
Wikipedia[1]: "In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit which results
from an activity or transaction and which affects an otherwise uninvolved
party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit." To use TFA's example,
it's hard to reason that ACDC's revenues suffer because someone samples a few
seconds of one of their songs, hit or otherwise. In fact, many cultural icons
are greatly reinforced by this kind of use. On the other hand, law and
precedent that restricts our ability to work with the cultural artifacts of
our own lifetimes flies in the face of the history of _the entire history of
art and music_. How's that for an externality?

As a professional software developer, I can hardly argue against music and
audio professionals' ability to make money from their skilled work. But the
argument that the pendulum of access and fair use in music has swung too far
is compelling, and hardly new to TFA.

~~~
vacri
_Really good sampling takes just as much blood, sweat, and tears invested as
the other skill sets you cite._

Oh, it's okay to leech off other people's work without compensating them,
because I'm _really good_!

As for 'fair use', using the _signature_ riff of a song is different from "10%
of the prose" of an article. You're talking about the core identifiable part
of a song, the hook itself.

 _In fact, many cultural icons are greatly reinforced by this kind of use._

If it's a fact, can you please cite a couple of examples that have been
_greatly_ reinforced by this kind of use? Because that really sounds like a
throwaway weasel-word line to me.

~~~
Daishiman
> If it's a fact, can you please cite a couple of examples that have been
> greatly reinforced by this kind of use? Because that really sounds like a
> throwaway weasel-word line to me.

It is well understood in English circles that Shakespear, along with many
authors, essentially plagiarized the stories of their plays and and twisted
some parts to their own style but leaving the structure intact.

The entire genre of blues is based off slave songs from the American South,
and the riffs and basic structure is the same for all the songs.

Rock came from the influence of blues, with a large portion of the most famous
songs being straight out stolen from blues songs from the 20s and beggining of
the 20th century.

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masonhensley
Girl Talk and other DJ's, remixers, samplers, whatever you want to call them
make their money from performances. I was kinda hoping the article talked more
about that aspect of their business. Basically all their mix tapes are
promotion for the live events.

When I was a Junior/Senior (2009-2010) at Vanderbilt, I was VP of the
programming board that arranged speakers, concerts, homecoming, comedians and
other campus events and activities. We had Girl Talk come and while the price
was not 6-figure crazy like what Acivii[1] charges these days, I was hit with
sticker shock big time.

[1] [http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201304/avicii-tim-
berg...](http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201304/avicii-tim-bergling-
profile-gq-april-2013)

~~~
hello_newman
"Basically all their mixtapes are promotion for the live events."

I think that is a great model, personally. I want artists to not care about
getting rich off of downloads. I think it's great when artists ranging from
Deadmau5, Lil Wayne or Wiz Khalifa, release mixtapes for free. That seems to
be the "artist" mentality, fuck getting paid; I'm doing this (making music)
because I love doing this. It shows passion, commitment to their craft, and a
true level of artistry. You could even argue the same thing for developers who
release their apps for free because they want everyone to enjoy it regardless
of price.

I obviously want artists to make as much money as possible, so releasing great
mixtapes does make me, personally, want to go see their concerts. It seems to
be a great way to market yourself and with labels taking so much from artists
anyway, the place where most new artists make money is touring and live shows.
I don't want to go to a concert wear essentially the artist is just playing
their latest CD to a crowd of people.

~~~
tptacek
No, it's a model that works only for the very most popular acts. Independent
artists who compose original music and tour clubs make McDonalds wages (or
often less) doing that.

Which is to say nothing about the idea of creating a structural requirement
that professional musicians have to live an itinerant lifestyle.

You can want artists not to care about their recording rights as much as you
like, but wanting recording rights not to matter is not the same thing as them
actually not mattering.

~~~
hello_newman
It does and it doesn't. I see a lot of similarities with the recording
industry and the current start up "scene". In the music business, you get
noticed by labels for having an awesome mixtape, much like developers getting
noticed by VC's for having a popular website/app. Touring clubs makes a couple
bucks, probably on par with a "McJob", but more often then not even small acts
have a sponsor or some backing so they don't have to work full time and can
fully commit to performing. My cousin got popular the same way; performing in
small clubs, his record got noticed, hacked is way into a radio Christmas Show
which got him noticed again, got a couple acting gigs, a movie roll, and now
he's actually pretty big in the Midwest and overseas. Here he is;
Tylerhilton.com

"You can want artists not to care about their recording rights as much as you
like, but wanting recording rights not to matter is not the same thing as them
actually not mattering."

I do agree with that. I want them to be compensated for their creative
efforts, which means the artist, not necessarily their label, holds those
rights. I wish they didn't matter as much as they did so everyone could enjoy
their music much easier, but you cannot have your cake and eat it too I
suppose.

~~~
Retric
I don't think reducing the number of small acts out there is a bad thing.
Let's face it the overwhelming majority of bands suck, and plenty of people
are going to do it for free as a hobby or just to get laid. So, IMO convincing
the vast majority of starving artists to move on with there lives is probably
a good thing.

~~~
tptacek
You know what sucks even more overwhelmingly than the majority of indie acts?
The mainstream successes.

~~~
hello_newman
Continuing the music industry to start-up scene analogy as used above, the
same could be said for start ups.

I do have to agree with what you said, though. Most mainstream successes
really are puppets of the big labels. If you notice, all the songs sound
(about) the same sound, same shitty lyrics about whatever, ego-stroking, and
bits of flamboyance to flaunt how much money they are making. They all even
have the same career trajectory of talk shows, scandals, dating habits etc.
Makes me wonder if the labels are, indeed, behind this or if these new
"artists" are all just really damn similar.

Lots of good Indie Music out there (in every genre), but too much of it sucks.
Surprisingly in the last year or so, T.V commercials have been a decent source
for finding good Indie Music. Sam Adams, Sprint, and Cigna commercials all
turned me on to great artists that I would have otherwise had no idea existed.

------
peter_l_downs
I love this series of analyses — they're always interesting and well-written.
I'm not sure who at Priceonomics made the decision "Yes, let's spend time
writing about interesting things", but I think it's great.

~~~
anigbrowl
It's a great analysis, but I do take issue with some parts of the argumet:

 _The result is a broken system that impairs the ability of young producers to
make music without taking huge legal risks._

Music based heavily on sampling others' work, for sure - sample clearance is
an expensive nightmare and should be cheaper, perhaps compulsory, and more
transparent and accessible.

But you don't have to make music that way. You can sing and play a regular
instrument, for example - and don't get started on the argument that there's
nothing new under the sun, and that all basslines, drum rhythms etc. consist
of ripping off someone else's idea. Musical quotation _is_ widespread, but
there is a huge different between coming up with your own riff that sounds a
bit like your favorite band and just sampling the original. Furthermore,
there's no special reason that sampling has to involve others' work. My main
tool is a sampler but I hardly ever sample other people, and when i do it's
usually a line from a movie or something, and done more for personal
amusement. I would never, ever sample another musician's track and use it in
my own music. It's not that it makes me morally superior, I just don't want to
do that, because it would feel like I was just surfing on what they did
because I couldn't come up with something cool on my own. I don't even care
for using royalty-free sample loops of drum breaks or pead sounds for the same
reason, although I will use one occasionally.

What I _do_ sample is going into the kitchen and making recordings of
household implements as percussion, my cats' miaows, sounds in my
neighborhood, or my own voice or snippets stuff I'm playing out of
synthesizers. For me, it's a lot more fun to come up with my own drum beats or
suchlike, sample those, and then start warping the audio to my heart's
content.

I'm not saying that this makes me a better musician or a better person than
people who build records entirely out of samples - I'm not into Girl Talk but
there are quite a few artists who work mainly with samples of others' stuff
whose work I admire and enjoy. I'm just pointing out that that you can in fact
go nuts with your sampler without ever having to deal with copyright clearance
or infringement issues.

~~~
vacri
Yeah, it's hardly a broken system just because you want to make money from the
cool riffs that other people came up with, all without paying them a cent.

If you're sampling someone else, then you're effectively making them a co-
author of your material - and they should be due royalties for that, just like
if you covered their song. How many mixes have we heard where the signature is
the sample and the chaff is the stuff surrounding it?

In any case, if the samples really were trivial and not worth kicking back
money... then they wouldn't be sampled in the first place :)

~~~
anigbrowl
_How many mixes have we heard where the signature is the sample and the chaff
is the stuff surrounding it?_

That's a great point. One song the article mentioned that epitomized this was
the Puff Daddy 'Missing you' song. The sentiment was worthwhile, and I can
also see it within the musical tradition of rap and the soundsystem aesthetic
where musicians develop their MCing skills by rapping over over a sampled loop
in their bedroom/the garage etc. so to build a whole song over a single looped
sample with a minimum of additional production elements actually served a
musical function of evoking nostalgia for 'the way things used to be' when the
people in question were young and just learning how to rap. But it ended up
sounding like a complete lift of someone else's song, and while the licensing
was probably taken care of in this case it's spawned thousands of imitations
with even less musical novelty.

------
lifeisstillgood
I'm a little old fashioned here - but sampling is about as simple copyright
breach as you get - its cut and paste.

However, if I were a record company and the top google search for a day was a
skinny kid who has audiences full of screaming target demographics, no amount
of cocaine on prostitutes would be too great till I had him signed in a
contract Fautus would consider a bit on the restrictive side.

Mumbling about how unfair it is to not be able to copy other people's work
without paying them is a bit disingenuous, but if I owned those copyrights
then this guy is a great way to get more out of the back catalog.

~~~
nthitz
> In the UK, one producer sued the dance group MIAIRIRIS for sampling his
> work. Although the song was a top ten hit, he had no idea it sampled his
> song until a member of MIAIRIRIS mentioned it on the radio. It had been
> manipulated beyond recognition.

I don't think it's always a simple cut and paste. The article mentions Puff
Daddy's "I'll Be Missing You" sampling the Police, or The Beastie Boys
sampling Led Zeppelin or the Beatles. You might listen to some of these songs
and have no idea about the original. One time I was at a party and Kanye's
'Harder Better Faster Stronger' came on. I remember saying "I didn't know
Kanye sampled Daft Punk" and someone replying something along the lines of
"nah this is all original Kanye"

~~~
rdouble
_One time I was at a party and Kanye's 'Harder Better Faster Stronger' came
on. I remember saying "I didn't know Kanye sampled Daft Punk" and someone
replying something along the lines of "nah this is all original Kanye"_

And Daft Punk sampled the hook for Harder Better Faster Stronger from unknown
Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wals6HONqxk>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJPdVVOmbz4>

~~~
nthitz
Crazy, didn't know that, thanks for sharing! It's samples all the way down!

~~~
8ig8
If you want to get a sense of all the samples that go into a Girl Talk song, I
recommend the following which provides real time info of each sample as the
song plays:

<http://readyrickshaw.com/toob/node/63> -and- <http://alldaysamples.com/>

~~~
dublinben
I think this is presented much better on MashupBreakdown. They also have more
artists.

<http://mashupbreakdown.com/>

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gsabo
Girl Talk is considered the poster child for musical sampling, but in my mind
his output is uncontroversial because it's actually just DJing. No one ever
sues a DJ for playing their track.

These copyright issues only become interesting when you consider works which
assert more transformative power on the samples.

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joshontheweb
We're hoping to address this issue at Soundkeep. Copyright reform is
definitely needed, but creative commons is a great work-around.

<http://alpha.soundkeep.com>

Beta coming soon!

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mikecane
Keep in mind while reading this the takedowns of YouTube videos that just
happened to have music playing in the background incidentally to the subject
(Baby doing something cute, Mom grabs cellphone while radio is playing a song
in the background in her otherwise real life, and begins taking a video of the
kid).

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rlu
Ah, funny coming to HN and clicking and then reading this article while
listening to Super Mash Bros's 20 minute "Pure Fix Mix"[1].

Anyways, only half way done with the article but quite good so far.

1: <https://soundcloud.com/super-mash-bros/pure-fix-mix>

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swombat
Cory Doctorow's "Pirate Cinema" is a great book to read on the topic. Very
well written and engaging, too. Great story.

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wazoox
There are several chapters on this in Lessig's "Free Culture".

