During the years I have spent time on several online communities offering remix contests. Sites like Peter Gabriel’s Real World Remixed as well as Indaba Music are now history, leaving the field to such actors as Splice.com, Blend.io and lately SKIOMusic.com as well as the Native Instruments spinoff Metapop.com. A more restricted service is available at MixTheMusic.com, a site that requires users to work in Presonus Studio environment as well as pay for the stems without the option for exporting tracks and thus releasing one’s own work anywhere in public.
What I’ve noticed in general as of late is that many of these sites have either none or very limited opportunities available for users. Gone are the days when one could choose between remixing Snoop Dogg and Christina Aquilera: nowadays the original track is more likely made by an aspiring EDM producer and the 1st prize is a Skype call.
So what happened? Music production has all but gone viral in the last decade, enabling people to come up with good-sounding stuff on their phones. By all means it should make sense for record companies to offer some of their b-roll music to get free widespread publicity for their artists.
One possibility – a likely one – is that these remix contest sites really don’t have plausible business plans. In the end they will have to pay compensation to be able to distribute remix stems according to existing copyright laws. To cover the costs these sites should sell something, whether it’s ads or third-party deals of music software and hardware. After all the people remixing music do buy stuff and are often very enthusiastic by nature.
Yet none of these sites seem to last very long when it comes to being a vibrant actor. After the startup phase they all sooner or later transform into static sites with nothing or very little to offer. My educated guess is that they simply run out of money and eventually become obscure because of lack of user activity.
Then again, the limited MixTheMusic.com approach means that the primary reason for making music is effectively erased. On MixTheMusic there’s no chance of anyone else ever hearing what you just did. Isn’t that why the original artists started making music in the first place?
To put it mildly, there are gazillion obscure artists and albums in the world. Just check out any store selling old vinyl: there’s most likely an album by an artist you’ve never heard of. Very little or no revenue is currently coming in from those releases. So why not bulk buy rights for re-releasing some this music if there are meaningful master stems available? An excellent club remix might give a forgotten artist a totally new life: after all the artist would still get his or her share from public playing of the new mix.
However there is a much simpler solution: get rid of the middle man i.e. the remix site altogether. So please, record company giants as well as smaller labels: open your vaults of auditive obscurity for remixers (instead of letting the old floppy discs/tapes rot or even burn up in some warehouse). That Dutch pop act from 1980s you once signed to one album is most likely making zero money right now, creating only legal and storage costs.
Let the remixers help, won’t you?
Missing Sample 