Music Sharing, Copyright, and our Classrooms
May 16th, 2006 by mabramo
With music sharing, sampling and mashing being a big part of students musical culture, issues of copyright and music sharing have made their way into my classroom. If you haven’t heard of Brad Sucks, check out Garage Spin’s interview. Brad is a one man band who that writes, records, mixes, masters, and sells his own music. He encourages others to “steal” his music, as a way to gain his growing fan base. Many of my students post and share their music via myspace and other sites as a way to not only gain fans, but to exchange samples and gain feedback from other musicians. I have found ccmixter, part of creative commons, to be a fantastic way to engage in the complexities of mashing, sampling and copyright, in a legal way in the classroom. Not only are there samples, acappella files and remixes on the site - all using music licensed by creative commons, but users also comment on each other’s remixes, post samples to be remixed by others, and become part of a legal, filesharing, mashing community. I highly recommend this site for schools as a tool to integrate student’s musical culture into your lessons.