C|Net posted an article yesterday, ‘Copyright criminals’ look to remix the noise–legally, which took a look at a recent documentary, Copyright Criminals, which details the growth of sample and remix based culture. In addition is discusses the recent efforts of Creative Commons to create an environment where artistic appropriation is not only legitimate but encouraged pointing to a contest that the documentary’s creators are running where artists are being asked to submit songs that re-purposed content from the film. Overall it is a cursory peak into what the current state of affairs is with regards to sample based musics.

The article raises an issue for me, and one that should really be under consideration by the DJ culture at large, how sustainable is sampling? Appropriation and re-purposing of content is a valid expression and should be encouraged as it opens a dialog about culture but the trouble is that often is does not return anything new to the canon, rather it introduces only variations that contain increasingly subtle differences. At its best remixing can create new perspectives on existing work and even draw attention to contemporary issues but at its worst remixing can approximate some of the worst written fan fiction, though both suffer the same problem: nothing new was created.

Certainly, the fiscal squeeze felt by independent artists has resulted in a renaissance of sorts with regards to beat making, particularly in light that the use of a six second loop could cost you upwards of $100k USD. Beat creation moves the art out of an evolutionary dead end as it forces the artist to create new works and thereby actually adding to the cultural canon. Possibly, Creative Commons could create an environment where new music is created to be consumed in various manners, be it sample or remixing, but the question is whether or not culture, by and large, has the inertia to move in the direction to create anew.

Being the curmudgeon that I am I think that it will take more than just a handful of artists working on the periphery to change things. It is more likely that industry groups like the RIAA will play nice only so long until they push for more changes to the current copyright law and in turn create even more artistic consolidation and maybe at that point people will tire of Kayne West mining the same old tired samples from the Seventies and clamor for some thing new. Then again, perhaps not.