I just started making mashups a few weeks ago. I’m not a DJ and I don’t make dance mixes. I just enjoy taking the instrumental and vocal tracks from different songs and mixing them together. I add in a few decorations and maybe extra bass or drums if they need a little more kick but nothing fancy. My only tool is Audacity. When I make a mashup I also make cover art and then a video mashup to go with it. I was putting my videos on YouTube and somebody suggested I put my songs on SoundCloud. Within 4 hours of uploading my songs on SoundCloud one of them was flagged with a take down. And just yesterday when I uploaded a new video to YouTube it was flagged and blocked, and when I went to check my stats HALF of the videos I uploaded over the past few weeks are now blocked. So I deleted all of my videos on YouTube and SoundCloud.
I have read several legal papers on fair use and from what I can tell what we are doing is legal, and organizations like the EFF are just waiting for someone to be sued by the record companies for what we do so they can represent them. But unfortunately everyone is scared to death of the record companies so nobody wants to take even the smallest chance. It’s a shame. Copyright laws were meant to encourage creativity and reward those who create content, but instead they are used to punish people for being creative and forcing them to be slaves to the corporations.
For every take down notice a puppy dies, the world is a colder place, creativity suffers. Long live mediocrity!
