Over the past 9 months, writer, director, and editor Kirby Ferguson has been releasing episodes of Everything is a Remix, a video series about how appropriation, borrowing, and adaptation are inherent in, well, everything we as a culture create. The third installment of the four-part series just came out last week, so we thought we'd ask him a few questions about the project and his personal opinions on copyright and fair use.

 

A frequent refrain in the music industry is that the future is not about selling CDs, but about creating relationship between musicians and fans. If it's true, musician Amanda Palmer is a good case study. One half of the band The Dresden Dolls, she explains that

The music charts have traditionally relied on album sales and radio plays to rank songs and albums. So what do the charts mean today when there are so many other ways to listen to music? OTM producer Mark Phillips reports that charts as well as the very notion ...

Recorded music might be easier than ever to get for free, but seeing live music is getting more and more expensive. Veteran concert promoter John Scher says this is due to a decade of consolidation. He says not only does it hurt fans who can’t afford tickets that ...

Twenty years ago a series of lawsuits criminalized the hip-hop sampling of artists like Hank Shocklee and Public Enemy. And yet, two decades later, artists like Girl Talk have found success breaking those same sampling laws. OTM producer Jamie York talks to Girl Talk, Shocklee and ...

For 10 years, music execs have waged a war against digital file sharing -- and software like Napster and websites like The Pirate Bay -- which have decimated the industry’s profits. But recently, there are signs from Europe that the battle over free music may be changing.

A frequent refrain in the music industry is that the future is not about selling CDs, but about creating relationship between musicians and fans. If it's true, musician Amanda Palmer is a good case study. One half of the band The Dresden Dolls, she explains that

The music charts have traditionally relied on album sales and radio plays to rank songs and albums. So what do the charts mean today when there are so many other ways to listen to music? OTM producer Mark Phillips reports that charts as well as the very notion ...

A recent Pew Internet survey found that three out of every four teenagers who download music agree with the statement, "file-sharing is so easy to do, it's unrealistic to expect people not to do it." We spent some time this week talking with high school students in Manhattan ...

Recorded music might be easier than ever to get for free, but seeing live music is getting more and more expensive. Veteran concert promoter John Scher says this is due to a decade of consolidation. He says not only does it hurt fans who can’t afford tickets that ...

Twenty years ago a series of lawsuits criminalized the hip-hop sampling of artists like Hank Shocklee and Public Enemy. And yet, two decades later, artists like Girl Talk have found success breaking those same sampling laws. OTM producer Jamie York talks to Girl Talk, Shocklee and ...

For 10 years, music execs have waged a war against digital file sharing -- and software like Napster and websites like The Pirate Bay -- which have decimated the industry’s profits. But recently, there are signs from Europe that the battle over free music may be changing.

By some estimates for every 1 legally downloaded song in the U.S. another 40 are pirated. But in China some 99 percent of digital music is stolen. So last week Google announced a collaboration with the music industry to give the Chinese people what has long been anathema ...

This week, the Supreme Court declined to review a case about whether it was legal to play Enya under a video montage of a murder victim’s life. Such "victim impact statements" serve as testimony submitted during the sentencing phase of a criminal trial. Public defender Evan ...

In February of 1968 the Beatles traveled to India to study transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the spiritual leader who died early this month. New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn says that – despite its abrupt ending – the trip was a creative inspiration ...

The tradition of “bards” has its roots in the Soviet Union of the 1960’s. Singer-songwriters wrote metaphorical protest songs that represented subtle opposition to the government. One of the best bards of the new generation, Timur Shaov talks about how the genre has evolved.

Judges and law scholars appear to have a penchant for dropping music references into their writing. But a close look at their opinions and journal articles reveals that to them, not all music is created equal. Alex Long, associate professor at the Oklahoma City University School of Law, tells Brooke ...

Rock & roll was once the music of rebellion and the currency of youth. Eventually, that youth grew up and became music critics. Today's critics of yesterday's bands might be accused of being driven more by sentimentality then by quality. But as WNYC's Brian Wise reports, concerns about nostalgia may ...

"We don't just entertain racist kids.... We create them." That statement appears on the website of Panzerfaust Records, a white supremacist music label based in Minnesota. This fall, the label launched "Project Schoolyard," an effort to distribute its music to kids through methods like direct mail and bus stop handouts. ...

How do you get to Nashville's famed Bluebird Cafe, the launch pad of dozens of country music's biggest stars? If you're Bob Garfield - and you're trying to make it big in country music in less than 36 hours - "practice, practice" is not an option. Luckily, Bob has chutzpah, ...