Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Radiohead makes it easy to create your own remixes

From Radiohead's Nude Re/Mix:

Radiohead, iTunes and GarageBand are giving you the opportunity to remix the band's new single "Nude".

To make remixing easy, the separate 'stems'* from the song are available to purchase from iTunes _here_. The 'stems' available are bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums. You can mix them in any way you like, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.

If you purchase all five 'stems' from iTunes during the first week they're available, you'll be sent an access code to a GarageBand file ready to open in GarageBand or Logic. However, you don't need GarageBand to do a remix, all the stems are in iTunes Plus format and compatible with several music software platforms. The GarageBand file will be emailed out on April 11th.

Finished mixes can be uploaded _here_ where the public will listen and vote for their favourite remix (voting ends May 1st). You can also create a widget allowing votes from your own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be counted as 'mix votes' back on radioheadremix.com. Radiohead will listen to the best remixes.

Nude is out now in the UK on CD, 7" and download.

*'stems' are the component parts of the song.

2 comments:

Blaise Alleyne said...

This is a ridiculous gimmick. Fans have to pay to get the remixes, and they have NO rights over the remixes they create.

Have you not read the terms of the project?

http://www.radioheadremix.com/terms/

Peter Friedman said...

What do you expect? That recording artists will simply want to give away their music for remixing? Some remixes will constitute fair use and therefore not infringe the artist's copyright, but a whole lot of mashups out there don't come close to constituting original works that stand on their own as creative works of art.

At least Radiohead is trying to do something to respond to one kind of demand created by the Web 2.0. It's a lot more forward-looking than the recording companies that sat back complaining about Napster for years before they figured out they should make their music available for downloading online.