Remixing and the Music Industry

For project two, I believe that I will be turning a song into a story and creating a book. Since I have decided to choose this as the subject of my project, I believe that my audience would be music lovers. Even though I am turning a song into a story, I think most of the people that would be interested in this book would be the people that are familiar with the audience and the people that follow that artist. However, this remediation would also introduce a new audience, those that do not know the song but read the book, to the artist and song as well.

Remixing is extremely common for my primary audience, which would be those that love music and people in the music industry. Often when you people think of remixing that think of a song that has been remixed or music in general. In fact, according to the Everything is a Remix video, remixing originated in the music industry. Since remixing is common in the music industry and common to the audience that I will be targeting my remediation to I believe that this community has mostly positive attitudes towards it. However as with everything that we create, some people do not like remixes. They feel as though the original piece of music is superior to the remix. The reception of a remix can vary from person to person. Since remixes are common in the music industry, there can be numerous found, just by typing “remix” into Google. Remixes can also be found in most genres of music, including rap, R&B, pop, electronic, and country. In fact, in recent years it has been a common trend for people to remix and mash up popular songs from the year to create an end of the year mashup.

Copyright and Fair Use play a major role in the music industry. Since artists sample and remix other songs on a regular basis, it is not uncommon to hear about an artist being taken to court over their song that sounds like a song that has already been made. In this case, the trial will determine if the artist that has sampled or remixed the song is at fault or not. In recent years, Robin Thicke, Taylor Swift, and Ariana Grande have been sued over copyright issues.

My audience could evaluate whether the music they are listening to has been remediated enough so that it is not just a rip off of the original song that it uses to decide if it is an ethical assemblage. My audience could also ensure that the music they are listening to is not appropriating a culture.