#Music mashup maker archive#

As samples often feature copyrighted music, sampling is also tethered to copyright law.

#Music mashup maker archive#

1 As a vehicle for expression, sampling enables creators to ‘articulate a personalised “aural” history-an archive of sounds that can be employed to express specific musical and political statements’ (Rodgers, 2003, pp. 134–138) and more broadly in popular music (Schuster et al., 2019). Music sampling is an established music appropriation practice with roots in dub, rap, hip-hop and electronic dance music (Demers, 2006, pp. Introduction: mashup music as expression displaced and expression foregone Mashup music as expression displaced and expression foregone. Keywords: Copyright, Music rights, Music, Freedom of expression, Content moderation Citation: Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist that have influenced the text. Received: OctoReviewed: FebruPublished: NovemLicence: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany Funding: This work was supported by the Norwegian Research Council under grant number 262762 (RITMO Centre, through the Centres of Excellence Scheme) and grant number 275441 (MASHED project, through the FRIPRO program). Drawing on empirical research with dozens of mashup producers that the author and his colleagues in the University of Oslo’s MASHED project conducted in 2019, this article sets out how copyright regulation and content moderation on platforms have caused mashup producers to forego their would-be expressions. Despite this uncertainty regarding the lawfulness of unlicensed mashups, content platforms have blocked and taken down mashups, and suspended and terminated user accounts.

However, it remains possible that unlicensed mashups are lawful under other copyright exceptions. While there is case law from US and EU courts concerning music and unlicensed sampling, unlicensed sampling has never been found to qualify for US or EU copyright exceptions. It explains how platforms often regulate, displace and silence mashup producers, through a combination of content identification and content moderation, in spite of copyright exceptions. This article focuses on mashup music, a form of sampling expression combining samples from two or more recognisable and popular music recordings into a new whole.