The Reuse of Music
One question that was asked during lecture today was, what do we think about the the appropriation and the recycling of music? A quote that stood out to me most from the slides was, “If a song is good, if a groove is good, people will use it and re-use it and adapt it to different styles.” For years and years throughout the history of music, artist have re-used samples from songs in order to create new bodies of work. I personally don’t think that is a problem as long as homage is paid to the original creator of the music. In sense I think that when artist reuse music that they are appreciating the original body of work, and the original musician should see it as compliment to them and their art. Especially in music because when someone reuses it then that could serve as confirmation that the original piece of work being good enough for other’s to want to put their name on and share with their audience. I do however think that it becomes a problem when artist just slap their names on something that wasn’t originally there, and don’t credit the original which is when regulations should come into play. I don’t think that it should policed so strict though especially when it comes to fans using music. I don’t think that youtubers should have to be faced with getting their videos removed just because they used their favorite artists songs in their “vlog” or “get ready with me” video. They aren’t attempting to receive any type of gain from playing the songs, and really it’s free promotion for the original artist. But I guess when we live in a world that so many people take credit for things that aren’t theirs that artist have to go through great lengths to protect their music. In my last post, I talked about the illegal downloading of music which resulted in artist losing money for their recorded work. In this sense I think that it is right for regulations and copyrights to be in place requiring people who use other’s work to have to pay them for it especially if they use it in way in which they receive monetary gains. For example, Cardi B’s Billboard 100 Hit song “I Like it Like That” sampled the boogaloo song “I Like it Like That” written by Manny Rodriguez and Tony Pabon. In Cardi’s version she added a trap-salsa beat on top of the original, and sampled part of the hook from the original. In this scenario of the reuse of music Rodriquez and Pabon are credited as co-writers and they receive royalties from Cardi’s version of the song which in my opinion is the appropriate way for artist to use other’s work because all of the artist involved benefit from it.
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