Watching the first half of RIP: A Remix Manifesto sparked a conflict between my business-minded side and my musical side. On one hand, I do agree that musicians and artists should be protected from people stealing parts of their work and they should be compensated one way or another. I remember hearing Marvin Gaye’s family sued Robin Thicke for ripping off “Blurred Lines” from Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up”. On the other hand, however, I believe that musicians should focus on touching people’s lives, not just their pockets.
As I watch through the end of the documentary, I realized that both of my initial thoughts about this subject are either too naive or irresponsible. The “Remix” subject is a lot more complicated than what I assumed. The battle is not always about artists vs. users, but rather, corporations against media consumers. I agree that corporations need to protect their assets from people trying to make money by stealing it. Disney, for example, has a trademark on all of their characters, from Mickey to Elsa. It would hurt their business if a company from China floods the U.S. market with copycat toy versions of it. One, we know that chinese companies could produce them at a lower costs (Although Disney manufactures all of their stuff from China anyway). Second, the quality of these products could hurt their brand since Disney does not have a full control over these copycats. In my management class, I learned that a company’s brand is one of their, if not, the most, important asset. A stain on their brand means bad business for them, which brings me to this question, what about those people who are using their characters not to profit, but to share an idea or knowledge? The documentary perfectly brought up cases where ordinary people were sued by Disney because they are “taking advantage” of their brand. It disturbs me that they are willing to sue anyone just so they could milk profits from Walt Disney’s creations which contradicts his vision of bringing joy to children and families.
This brings me to another question, what would happen if things like this happen in today’s society of social media? Although this documentary came out not too long ago, social media was not at it’s full power until years later. Disney’s actions to sue a daycare center would likely to go viral in today’s age. I believe a lot of people would despise Disney to the point where it will have to retract its actions. This daycare center is more likely spreading the Disney brand to even more people and they are doing it for free. Similarly, people who are remixing or sharing your song is indirectly advertising your song to people who are not familiar with it. Today, we are lucky to have numerous platforms where we could share, listen and upload songs. Corporations have no choice but to adapt to our ever changing technology. Millions of people upload songs with lyrics to YouTube every day which forced corporations to demand that these users put a copyright notice or the video gets taken down. I remember listening to a podcast by one of the founders of Spotify, he said to the music corporations that it was you either have people pirating your songs, or downloading them from YouTube or you could have people listen to your songs for as many times as they want as long as they are paying monthly. It was a win-win situation for both parties. Traditionally, radio stations are the only way you could listen to a song for free, but now you could listen to a whole album before you decide to buy it. The battle between corporations and the consumers will not die anytime soon, but at least now, technology is paving a way for us to keep this fight on our side.