Just in case you haven’t read or seen Larry Lessig talk before then here’s a nice video from TED. The book that the talk is pretty much based on is called ‘Remix’ and you can get a free PDF copy here: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/remix.htm
NB. it’s actually been a massive pain reading the PDF on my iPhone (if someone knows a good app for this please let me know). In retrospect maybe it would have been worth purchasing the book
Someone passed me the link to this really great wedding video. On the surface it’s pretty dumb (like a lot of YouTube videos). But I think there’s a deeper, underlying point to be made here.
It struck me in particular as I’m currently reading Larry Lessig’s “Remix” book in which he talks about the value of ‘Read/Write’ culture. ie. the culture of adding to, participating in and remixing. The couple at this wedding have effectively created their own video for this track. And it’s captured enough people’s imaginations to get 12m+ views.
Maybe I’m overstating this, but this video is a really good example of Read/Write culture, especially in terms of the value it has added for the rightsholder of the music in the video (in this case Sony Music). Instead of issuing takedowns and/or suing the people for not having the rights to use the music (which is what some labels would do), Sony have used YouTube’s content management tools to claim the song and overlay a click-to-buy ad on the video. Apparently the track is also now quickly moving up the download charts.
There are probably better examples. But if you’re a rightsholder, just stop for a moment and think about what value you could create by giving up some control, embracing the power of the web and the read/write culture that it empowers.
I’ve just been reading this nice little interview with Henrik Berggren, all round nice guy and co-creator of http://citysounds.fm - a mashup of the SoundCloud and Flickr API’s which makes a really cool city centric jukebox. It was one of my favourite apps to come out of Music Hack Day so it’s nice to see it getting some exposure.
I’ve only just fully recovered from Music Hack Day (yes it took all week!). Taking a few hours out to check out all the pics, tweets, and blog posts that have come out of the event. Stumbled across this nice little video which was taken from the perspective of one of the guys in the Tinker.it workshop room. Provides a nice little snapshot. Which I’d taken some video too, maybe next time…
I absolutely love this picture, a really cool mashup of the SoundCloud logo. Would love to see some more people do the same!
What’s also cool is that it’s for an article on Vienna producers who use SoundCloud. This includes one of my favourites… Peter Kruder (of Kruder & Dorfmeister fame). If you’ve never checked out his K&D Sessions mix compilation then you must track it down. It was pretty much _the_ soundtrack to my more hazy university days.
