Great discussion of George Clinton and Hank Shocklee at the Future Of Music conference in the USA.
A sample (ha!) of the discussion –
arguing for the sampler-as-instrument, shocklee wanted to stress that a particular performance–the presumably ‘original’ materials for which one might hold a copyright–is not always what sample-based producers are looking for: “sometimes we sample because we just want the sound.” he offered an example to clinton: “you’ve done some incredible things with the moog synthesizer in terms of filters, effects [etc.] … in order for us to get those sounds today [is impossible].”
To hear the original conversation you can grab it from here.
The rest of the conference panels are online here. There are some great topics being discussed incluidng blogging and podcasting as well as the future of distribution.
Anyone running a record label should listen to them all . . . the content is pretty excellent and the quality of the recordings is great.
My flight back from UK to Sydney was pretty much filled with listening to the recordings back to back.
Pitchfork has just commentary about the conference which includes this –
That Memorex ad is a thing of the past. Charles Bissell of the Wrens commented that people rarely sit down and just listen to a record. He evoked the “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” ad from the 1980s as an example of exactly what people don’t do anymore: sitting in an armchair, eyes shut, knuckles white, while some album blows their minds.
Instead, music is everywhere. Veteran rock manager Peter Jenner (Billy Bragg, Pink Floyd) said, “Music is becoming more and more a soundtrack of our lives.” It’s a constant background presence in our cars, at our workouts, and on our cheapo workplace computer speakers. And the kids today are cycling through songs on their iPod between classes, and checking out new songs via ringtones.
We may not consume music for its own sake, but music permeates our lives. So licensing music– to movies, television shows, advertisements, whatever– has become a huge source of revenue for artists, small and large. Magnatunes’ biggest revenue stream comes from their easy-to-license library of music by largely unknown artists. And George Clinton has made less money from download sales than from licensing “Loopzilla” to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
