It is interesting to see what happened after Quit MySpace Day. From the looks of it on Twitter, a lot of people either quit MySpace or had something to say about it. I think that’s more important than people just leaving their accounts dormant or taking it for granted. Perhaps MySpace will notice, though I doubt it. Let’s see what people said.

Steve Lawson explains why he quit MySpace and mentions something a lot of people we’re saying: “Oh you’re just doing it to be cool”. He rightfully point out it’s not about being cool but re-evaluating whether the site has any added benefit or is just a waste of time.

Mr. Tunes is one of the people who thought about it and said “no, I’m not quitting“. Oddly though he lists all the reasons why you should quit, even mentions he hasn’t used the site in two years and continues to say the one reason he keeps his accounts is for the contacts. Honestly, if I wanted to keep a list of contacts, I would not rely on MySpace to maintain that list for me. I’d make one myself. He points out that indeed a lot of promoters and such still ask for people’s MySpace, but that’s a sstupid reason to keep MySpace, if you can just as easily send then to BandCamp or SoundCloud or better yet: your own site.

Andy Derrick seems most fervently opposed to the idea of quitting MySpace. While he seems greatly offended by Andrew Dubber’s idea, he also doesn’t have seem to have read what Dubber has posted.  Apart from the fore-mentioned argument that promoters seem to love MySpace, his argument mostly revolves around “don’t do what some bloke tells you to”. He mentions he has a wide web-presence and I agree, but that doesn’t mean you can be selective about which sites you do and don’t want to be on. Personally I think it’s clever to discover your own place and decide not to invest time in a site that costs you more than it gives back.

Of course you could also go the clever route like Little Things That Kill did. They didn’t delete their MySpace, they simply put up a big warning saying MySpace is dead and you should go look them up elsewhere.

Musformation.com comes with a potentially good reason  to keep your MySpace: Google ratings. For most bands their MySpace will either come in first or second when you look them up on Google. Still that seems like an odd argument, because if you have a good band name and you don’t have a MySpace, wouldn’t your own site make it to the top automatically. Unless you call your band “The Paris Hilton’s” of course, good luck staying on top.

Other site’s mentioning the Quit MySpace Day are DIYMusician (also mentioning the Google & promoter argument), Eerste Hulp bij Plaatopnamen (in Dutch),  Jeroen Mirck (in Dutch), Hypebot, Netwaves and Wayne Meyer (who has written a good piece about it too;  “I can quit any time I like. Honest.”)

I think as far as starting the discussion about the use of MySpace, Quit MySpace Day was a great success and remains to be. The ultimate irony is that a few days after, MySpace announces it’s rolling out an overhaul of the entire website. Not a coincidence I’m sure, but makes you wonder.

For many posts I rely on the site whosampled.com as a reliable source, but I also give back to the site to help improve it. Recently, three entries I made (all Björk-related I might add) got approved and I want to talk about one of them.

You may have noticed I take the definition of sampling quite broad, from literally using a fragment of a recording to taking a small ‘idea’ from a song and making it your own. In 2000 the Queens of the Stone Age did just that. When they released the song Better Living Through Chemistry, there’s one part of it that may seem familiar.

Although most of the song is an original work, the lyric “There’s no one here, and people every where, you’re on your own” that serves as a chorus in the song, comes directly from a track of Björk’s album Debut from 1993; the song Crying. In that song it isn’t the chorus, but it leads up to it.  The Queens of the Stone age creatively re-engineered it into a completely different song and put it to good use.

Today you will quit MySpace. Whether you’re a band, musician or just a fan with a (forgotten) account there, you have to go delete it now.

Why?

Exactly a year ago Andrew Dubber posted his idea of Quit MySpace Day. I posted about it too in May. His statement was simple: MySpace is very crappy as a social website as well as a band platform: it’s ugly & cumbersome (always has been), the music-interface is awful, people overload them with pictures & videos and the only messages we get are friends-invites and messages of unknown, crappy bands who are spamming the whole world about their new tour or album. Not to mention it’s owned by a big corporate news media company that stopped caring about MySpace too. When is the last time you logged in or thought MySpace had really helped you achieve something as a band? I bet you can list more reasons why MySpace sucks and you’re welcome to list them.

Andrew Dubber gave MySpace a year to improve and guess what? They didn’t. So as a signal to MySpace that they have failed us for the last time, it’s time to leave. Not just log off, but delete all our accounts starting today to make sure they understand we have left for good.

But I need MySpace!

No. You. Don’t. And you know it. There’s tons of better ways as a musician to spread your music and connect with your fans or for you as a fan to connect to bands:

• Bandcamp
• SoundCloud
• Facebook
• Twitter
• theSixtyOne

Just to name a few. I hear you say: “But MySpace is my band’s website!” For the last frigging time:  MySpace should never be your ‘band website’. Unless you really don’t want the world to take your band seriously.

Ok, I’m in. what do I do?

1. Follow the step-by-step manual to delete your account.
2. Spread the word (Twitter #quitmyspaceday , Facebook or your blog).
3. Enjoy your freedom.

Good luck and thanks for joining in!

Sometimes I use this weekly column as an excuse to point out a song I love. The Sneaker Pimps scored a few hits in the mid-nineties. Most notable of those is the song 6 underground from 1996. The song itself leans heavily on a sample from the soundtrack of the 1964 film Goldfinger by James Bond-composer John Barry, however it’s not the epic main-theme from Goldfinger that featured Shirley Bassey.

The other prominent sample is the “a 1-2, a 1-2”. That comes from De La Soul’s Breakadawn from 1993 and that track contains a ton of samples: A Quiet Storm (1975) by Smokey Robinson, Sang and Dance by the Bar-Kay’s  (1970), I can’t help it (1979) by Michael Jackson and Yes We Can Can (1973) by the Pointer Sisters. Of course the irony here is that the Sneaker Pimps used a tiny part of the lyrics of that song that De La Soul had written themselves.

Went to the Muzikantendag (Musicians Day), an event organised by the Dutch Copyright organisation BUMA/STEMRA (yeah, I know), which again turned out to be quite useful. It was not as crowded as last year and there was less to do, but I guess that’s also cause they split it up over two dates and veneues (there’s one in Haarlem in two weeks). Basically for most starting musicians it’s THE opportunity to give their demo’s to (Dutch) industry professionals for a listen, but I’m there for the lectures and Q&A’s. I’m glad I went this year, cause I was kinda doubting, but it worked really inspiring. I wanna make more music!

Short overview of what I saw:

Opening by Lucky Fonz III
Singer-songwriter who, in my view, isn’t really a perfect musician or singer (or musically appealing to me), but he proves the point that personality is much more important. A lot of musicians for get that. He also gave a great talk.

How do I get gigs?
A booker from Mojo (Jeps Salfischberger) and a booker from local venue Speakers in Delft (Gideon Rozendaal) explained the mechanics of how you get booked, how much you can expect to get paid (short answer: not a whole lot and you’re not gonna get booked if you can’t guarantee a crowd will show up). They underlined a thought that I have been playing with: start small. Really small. And work up from there.

Producing

Dries Bijlsma, the producer of hiphopper Typhoon,  explained exactly how he made tracks from scratch (including this one). When they asked for a bpm to make a song right then and there, I suggested 140 bpm, they were kinda shocked. Sorry, I’m hardcore. ;) Bijlsma gave quite a few interesting ideas I might wanna try out myself to create beats. Had a short talk with him afterwards about rights and people helping out with tracks. Might have a few for crowdsourcing thanks to that.

Ralph Murphy – Murphy’s Law

Song-writer Ralph Murphy, author of Murphy’s Laws of Songwriting, gave a mini-masterclass of how to write not a song, but a hit. Though not geared to writing the kind of music I have in mind, Murphy has some great anecdotes, advices and is generally a pleasure to listen to. I like the fact that he studies music purely out of a certain scientific curiosity, some times even researching songs he doesn’t like. He also managed to make me fill up three pages in my note book worth of notes, the most of any session.

Online Marketing & Distribution

This session was kinda disappointing cause there were a lot of things I there I kinda already knew. Alexander Mooij had a lot of interesting things to say and I guess mentioning Trent Reznor is always cool points, though everyone kinda knows about his marketing ploys, nothing new there.  Bart Snoeren frm 3fm/3voor12 gave some really interesting insights on how to get on Luisterpaal. Andy Zondervan despite being from BUMA/STEMRA showed that their organisation is thinking about the future and more fair systems for online content. Also thanks for point out ‘I want a pony’ Krause. Name-dropping helps discovering new music.

How do I release my own album?

The drummer of The Tunes and Lucky Fonz III talked about how and why to release your own album, without outside help. Short story: you make more money, but you also have to do a lot of (tedious) work. And as long as you’re a small artist, that’s okay. Also, you don’t have to sign with a record company to get your album out, just getting a distributor might be enough. And lets you keep your own rights. Got some good ideas and tips out of this session, especially with what I have in mind.

There were a few more sessions after that (about/by BUMA/STEMRA), but since I’m too cool for school, I skipped those and went home earlier for a good meal. After all I wasn’t there to drop off a demo or exchange business cards, but just for industrial espionage. LOLZ Please remind me next year, when I doubt if I should go, then I SHOULD go.

Today in the comments of an article about illegal downloading in the free newspaper DePers.nl I found the best mataphore that explains what’s wrong with current entertainment industry. I just had to translate it for you:

Let’s say you’re an artist. You paint beautiful abstract artworks that are respected by many and are eventually displayed in a gallery.Woops, turns out the gallery is a very profit-driven organisation. They sell posters of your artwork for ridiculously high prices and most people just decide to buy them because it’s all they can get.

But there are a few sneaky visitors who stand in front of the artwork, take a picture and then print them out at home on high quality photo paper, completely for free. How can they do such a thing?! The gallery should have posted guards next to your artwork, pity.

But the gallery is getting angry at the fact the sales of their posters is dropping, so they whine through organisations that say they are protecting your rights, that they want these protesting ‘thieves’ to pay for their posters. The consequence is that the police kicks in doors and rips the illegal posters down, fines the ‘thieves’ and sees to it the gallery profits once again.

Does that sound like justice? The artists produce, they don’t distribute. That’s the record company’s task.

I too get frustrated anyone pulls the ‘theft’ argument. As a musician, I really don’t see why I should let people pay to copy files from me or even if they copy it from their mates. They can throw a tip in my hat (or buy me drink) or pay me to put it on a disc for them as a service.

Music is something abstract in the air, cd’s are a physical product. And as far as I’m concerned copyright laws should be mainly concerned with preventing other people from pretending they made the music you made or music being abused against the specific wishes of the creator (for instance if neo-nazi’s decide to use your music as a theme song). And even then, there’s room for debate. Just see my posts on the origin of samples. As long as no one else is making money off your work, who cares?

But let’s face it, right now copyright laws are being used not to protect the rights of the creator, but the person selling it. And they are trying to argue with people who have no financial gain themselves by spreading the music. They’re spreading the love.

Usually a famous sample gets used over and over again by a range of artists, but occasionally, multiple samples from the same track find their way into very different tracks by other people. Take Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three’s classic hip hop track from 1984: The Roof is on Fire.

If I say “the roof is on fire” you’ll either chant along with the original, sing the mopey version in Fire Water Burn by the Bloodhound Gang from 1997, bounce to the 1998 song “Follow the Leader” by the Soca Boys, remember you danced to the 1989 dance track The roof is on fire by Westbam (which features a ton of other samples too), you may have headbanged to Sway by Coal Chamber from 1997 or if you’re really hardcore you remember Atari Teenage Riot using the lyrics in their 1999 track Anarchy 999. That or you heard the lines “the roof is on fire, we don’t need the water, let the motherfucker burn” in any other song that the Wiki article on the song mentions.

And that’s kinda ironic, since The Roof Is On Fire was actually the B-side of the single that was intended as a hit song: Request Line. You may recognise the intro to that track as the same as that to Missy Elliot’s Work It from 2002. Somehow the simple but effective lyrics of the B-side found its way into pop culture and became just as standard for MC’s as “put your hands up for Detroit“.

Even more ironic is the odd’s you will know yet another sample from The Roof is on Fire even though it completely ignores the famous lyrics involving lack of a fire department. Hey Girl Hey Boy by the Chemical Brothers from 1999 directly samples the opening of this original version of The Roof is on Fire.
So hey girls and hey boys, we don’t need no water despite that The Roof is on Fire:

Sigur Rós get their fair share of requests for lending their musical for commercials, but they always say no. Yet, their music always pops up in these ads anyhow … as clone songs.

Read what they have to say about it plus some video examples.

(Thanks Ditte for pointed that link out to me)

I’ve talked about clone songs; when artists copy the style and sound of a song without using the actual notes and lyrics, for quick financial gain because of instant-recognition by the audience. Taking that up a notch is when it’s not other artists borrowing the sound, but the same artist makes nearly the same song twice.

True, most artists have a recognisable ‘sound’. You can instantly recognise a U2 song, even when Bono isn’t singing. You might notice a gradual change in that sound making it easier to discern a song from the 80’s or 90’s. But most people will argue it’s not the same songs, unless you really hate the artist.

But some times when an artist scores one hit single, the pressure is on (usually from the record company) to replicate that success and as fast as possible too. In the rush, the same song that brought success earlier is grabbed, some notes are rearranged and some new lyrics are written and hey presto the new hit single that sounds very recognisable.

A very good example of this are Technotronic, because they didn’t do it just once but twice. Technotronic is a Belgian producer Jo Bogaert and an assortment of rappers who have lended their vocals for the tracks. In 1989 the hit Pump up the Jam came out of nowhere. For the video they used a girl to lip sync over Ya Kid K‘s vocals. Interestingly though a year before in 1988 one of the grand masters of house music, Farley Jackmaster Funk, released the track, The Acid Life. Undeniably, the music from Pump up the Jam is borrowed heavily from The Acid Life and should be considered ‘The Original’.

Since Pump up the Jam did so well, a string of single was released in 1990. The first two following Pump up the Jam were Get Up! and This Beat is Technotronic. If you listen to those three songs in sequence and ignore the lyrics, you notice the instrumentation, the buildup, nearly everything is identical. So much so, that there’s a video on YouTube that is labelled as Pump up the Jam but is ‘clearly’ Get Up! . And even though This Beat is Technotronic contains a male vocalist, you can still hear a female singer sing ‘Get Up’ in the song. Confusing innit?

With the track Spin That Wheel, there finally became some variation in the music, but Technotronic was now named Hi Tek 3 (same vocalists, same producer). When they went back to using Technotronic, they finally used a totally different sounding song: Rocking over the Beat (all still in 1990!). But by now, Technotronics triumph parade was over. Technotronic has kept releasing singles well until 2005, including a Megamix and a remix of their Greatest Hits every few years. Or should I say Greatest Hit?

Still, a lot of artist are considered one hit wonders. At least Technotronic became a one hit wonder with three songs, including this one: Technotronic – Pump up the Jam:

Today a real whodunnit mystery in the series The Origin of Samples that seems to be forgotten by the internet, judging by the fact I can find very little info about this minor scandal in the world of pop music.

In March 2003 R&B trio Mis-Teeq released the first single off their second album. The single was Scandalous (wiki) and was produced by the Stargate production team, who are also responsible for a ton of hits by Rihanna, Lindsey Lohan, Beyoncé and Ne-Yo. The song went on to become Mis-Teeq’s the biggest hit.

Also in March 2003, the final of the first Dutch edition of Idols is held. The contestant coming in second is Jim Bakkum, who then still used ‘Jim’ as his artist name. Despite being the loser, he is quickly signed to Wilde Productions (owned by Phil Wilde, one of the creators of 2Unlimited) and releases a a few singles and an album Impressed. In July 2003 he releases his second single This Love is Real on BMG records.

The song this Love Is Real is a cover of CB Milton‘s version of the song on his 1998 album From Here to There on Byte Records (owned by one of the men behind 2Unlimited: Jean-Paul De Coster). CB Milton got most famous for his songs Send me an Angel and It’s a Loving Thing produced by the guys behind 2Unlimited. CB Milton’s version was never released as a single, nor was the album it was on a major commercial success. The writers credited on the CB Milton version are Peter Bauwens and Phil Wilde of the production team Soundsational … and of Wilde Productions, the men behind 2Unlimited. On the Jim version Joey Balin is also credited as one of the writers, besides Wilde and Bauwens. If you listen to the CB Milton version, you’ll notice only the lyrics were covered.

If you listen to Scandalous and This Love is Real (by Jim), you’ll notice than other than a slight pitch change, the instrumentation is nearly identical. In fact, this mashup might convince you:

This scandalous love is not real (Mis-Teeq vs Jim) by The Nevis DJ

So it looks like not only are the lyrics not original in the Jim track, neither is the music. Then again, if the music industry wants to quickly push out a hit single for their newest star baby, I guess this is what happens.  Now I do remember when this ‘scandal’ made it into the Dutch press back in 2003 someone did indeed find a link between the writers of both songs and that indeed someone had recycled some one’s idea, but nowhere on the web can I find a record of this. Tips are welcome. For now this remains a whodunnit ‘mis-teeq’ mystery.