Music Remix Sites and Electronic Music

Music remixing is something that I would really love to have more time for. I came across this interview with Divya Bhat of Jamglue on the Creative Commons blog recently and thought to make a post on this remixing site and some others that are around.

JamGlue, launched in December 2006. In establishing an online community inspired to create and share music, the site provides tools for remixing within a browser and a vast library of tracks to work with.

CCMixter is another music mashup site, developed by Creative Commons. It also offers easy to use tools for uploading and remixing music. A preliminary study has been conducted into the use and reuse of material on CC Mixter: Giorgos Cheliotis, Remix Culture: Creative Reuse and the Licensing of Digital Media in Online Communities (10 January 2008) <http://pml.wikidot.com/local--files/working-papers/Remix_Culture_Web_Version.pdf> at 31 March 2008. At the time the data was collected there were just under 8,000 full tracks uploaded to the site.

Splice is another excellent website for remixing music. Beta released in 2006, it now hosts 43336 users, 33825 remixable songs and 30670 free sounds.

All of these sites use creative commons licenses to enable users to mix and remix tracks freely without the need to pay the large amounts of money most major labels would demand for the right to use small amounts of music. The sites also have a social side to them with regular contests, discussion forms and other ways for artists to get together and collaborate.

And... if that is not enough to get you motivated you should read the tutorial on the history of electronic music on techno.org – Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music v2.5 (*** Language and Rudeness Warning ***) Despite the colourful language and tone, this provides an excellent history of the development of electronic instruments.

Links/Articles:

http://www.jamglue.com/

http://www/ccmixter.org

http://www.splicemusic.com/

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

Creative Commons, Featured Commoners: Jamglue (2 November 2007) < <http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7760> at 31 March 2008

Wikipedia, CCMixter (December 2007) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CcMixter> at 31 March 2008

Giorgos Cheliotis, Remix Culture: Creative Reuse and the Licensing of Digital Media in Online Communities (10 January 2008) <http://pml.wikidot.com/local--files/working-papers/Remix_Culture_Web_Version.pdf> at 31 March 2008