In a recent tidal wave of political fighting, the new flavor of the day has been aimed against the entertainment industry by greedy lawmakers. There has been a great deal of talk recently about how to fight against online piracy and illegally downloading music and movies. File sharing is nothing new, and I find it hilarious that these lawmakers are making it seem like it is.
I think many people must have forgotten that file sharing started much earlier than in the 1990s, and bands that had created a following as a result of it like Metallica must have suffered amnesia as a result. The original file sharing has been going on since the days of Jimi Hendrix and Woodstock, when people would record the shows on cassette tape and share it with other music lovers. Companies like Sony, Maxell, and others made probably billions of dollars from the sales of blank VHS, CD, and DVD discs.
None of these items were sold with the intention of a music or movie fan just sitting at home enjoying it in solitude. Music and movies were meant to be shared with the public and it is absurd that the government now wants to crack down on online piracy. All of us have downloaded or obtained music and movies legally or illegally at one time, or another. Where do people think mix tapes originated?
I had read an article on the website Mashable (www.mashable.com), where the topic of course spoke about this very thing dealing with online piracy. The interesting thing about the article was that it mentioned that countries like China have been illegally downloading music and movies for decades. I am sure that everything that has happened in the United States has already blown over in other parts of the world.
According to Christina Warren, first run movies hit the streets of China before they are ever seen in the local theaters (Warren, 2012). This has been going on since the beginning of the Entertainment industry. The real pirates that are downloading and selling intellectual property illegally are going to continue doing so regardless of what our country feels about it. Most of the people that are complaining about this stuff has already made their millions of dollars, so there really isn’t any harm being done to them.
The real harm is to the consumer who suffers from non-accessibility to their favorite band or actor. The result has always been the same whether the material was received legally or not. The consumer has always been the backbone of this industry and we all need to remember that. There has not been one musician or actor that has had success in entertainment without some illegal file sharing of some sort as an added help.
Source: http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/sopa-and-pipa-wont-stop-piracy/
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Vinyl vs. Serato Scratch Live Debate
There has been a
long standing battle in the hip hop dj world between what’s been considered
“real djing” versus “digital djing”, and there are djs who stand on both sides
of the fence on this decade long issue.
Vinyl records have been equally as important as the turntable itself in
the hip-hop world. Ever since the
inception of the Technic 1200 turntable in the late 1970s, hip-hop djs have
used only vinyl for their amazing party rocking events for years.
That all changed
around 2004, when a New Zealand company called Rane introduced a digital dj
software program called Serato Scratch Live Serato Scratch Live.
Serato had already been around since the late 1990s, but the Scratch
Live element brought a completely new twist on how djs manipulated sound with
vinyl records. I remember first hearing
about this program around 2006 when I was an undergrad at the University of
Colorado-Denver.
A fellow dj
classmate of mine told me about a program that uses mp3 files in the same way
vinyl has been used. I came from the
vinyl area and this sounded too good to be true, because of how new and
innovative that this idea was at that time.
I remember my friend taking me to his house so I could see this “Serato”
for myself, because I was just too skeptical about djing with mp3s on
turntables. In a dj’s mind, playing with
anything besides vinyl was absolute blasphemy in the highest form, and I was
determined to never let digital take over my dj talents.
Once I had overcome
my prejudice about this program, I eventually bought my own and began
experimenting with it at home. This was
a phenomenal experience for me, because I had been used to vinyl records all of
my life. I had only dealt with mp3s for
a few years before this on my home computer.
I also had been used to carrying 6-8 milk crates full of records up and
down stairs, hallways etc. for 10-15 years anyway.
To make a long
story short, this program actually made djing fun again for many people, and it
made travelling with your equipment much easier to haul around. Now all you need in order to dj a gig is to
have your turntables, mixer, laptop, and Serato itself.
There are still
some djs who refuse to use it, and even some that feel you have to earn it
through using vinyl records first. I
have included a video by a famed hip hop producer named DJ Premier who started
off with vinyl, but has since began using Serato Scratch Live as well. I agree 100% with the comments that he had
made in the video and I hope that others will understand vinyl’s importance in hip-hop.
At some point,
audio and digital would have had to meet in the music world, but I think
overall that this program was a blessing to djs worldwide. At the same time, there has been some
backlash from purists (myself included), who felt that “new school djs” needed
to know the history of djing before using Serato. There is unfortunately a misconception about
djs now, and that all you need to dj is a laptop and headphones.
Serato has been
both a blessing and a curse at the same time, but regardless of others views on
its worth, I am happy to now be a digital dj more than ever.
Sources: http://serato.com/about
http://hiphopwired.com/2011/10/20/dj-premier-breaks-down-vinyl-vs-serato-video/
