More on mash-ups

In response to Steve Hochman’s “Taking the Music to the Mashes” (Nov. 28), I believe mash-ups fall into two categories: sanctioned and unsanctioned. For the sanctioned mash-ups, a record label has made a specific decision. They say to themselves, “We have a new artist, or an artist that has a catalog we want to exploit. We’ll go to a DJ, let him have the masters of these tracks, ask him to do a mash-up of the track, and then let him do his thing.” These DJs have the ability to cleanly pull lyrics off of the original tracks of one song and music from the original tracks of another song. It’s a very specific commercial ploy, sanctioned by the record company, and sanctioned by the artist.

In the case of unsanctioned mash-ups, DJs often come up with great ideas to create something new. They have the digital tools to make their music, and they know that they don’t actually need permission from anyone to produce mash-ups; they would only need permission to sell them.

Because these artists don’t have the original master tracks, all they can use are the CDs. Therefore, they have to be much more clever in finding ways to make the different tracks work together.

In regard to the future of the mash-up, if a new piece of music is created, I believe you should be sanctioned to use any music, whether the copyright is there or not. What is imperative is to define “What is a new piece of music”? My opinion is that most of the mash-ups that we’re hearing are not unique enough to constitute “new music.”

I believe the controversy here is more a legal than an artistic one.

Trying to get people to stop creating mash-ups now is impossible, the genie is out of the bottle. Our industry needs to have a discussion to determine: What makes something unique, new and original? What is derivative? We need to start defining this, finding a balance between the artist and the public. We need a big discussion about overhauling our copyright laws.

Jeff Elmassian

Santa Monica

Jeff Elmassian is the creative director and founder of Endless Noise Music, a music production company.