I read on Laidback Luke’s forum that if you remix a track, without the artists permission, then you have to call it a bootleg, not a remix. He said remixes are only allowed to be called that when the artist has given you permission to ‘officially’ do it.
So my question is this. If i make a track and use the melody an old 80’s song used, but never officially sampled the song, just played the same notes/keys in my synths etc do I need to credit the song, or call it a bootleg of the song who’s melody i used?
Not true. if you don’t have permission from the copyright holders to publish,transmit,record, or release their material what you call them is irrelevant. It’s still technically illegal. Calling it a bootleg rather than a remix is not going to help you in any legal way. So call it what you want (Re-edit,Remix,bootleg,revision,re-drum) it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter whether you credit the copyright holder or not it’s still illegal. Do want you want you’ll either get in legal trouble or you won’t.
its all strictly speaking illegal (like the above guy said), but don’t worry too much, just do it all sensibly. stealing/copying has been the backbone of art since art started. picasso, mozart, they all copy, you just have to do it with etiquette so people don’t get pissed.
1st rule: (learnt the hard way) just don’t try and sample/cover/remix any track from a major label, they are super dicks who don’t understand the way the world works and will just cause you major hassle.
2nd rule: credit the original in an appropriate way.
e.g. you can use a melody from an old track, but credit them. and the normal way seems to be, say, if you used a melody from a track call ‘fire’ and and you are called ‘awesome dude’, you would call your new track ‘awesome dude - fire’.
You are right, but I’m afraid Mr. Luke can be considered one of the senior authorities on this matter. Legally, call it what you want. But if you want to not step on anyone else’s balls, not irritate someone with more money than you, and not risk having your professional name dragged through the dirt by anyone with industry credibility or cultural influence, just follow an accepted convention like the one Laidback Luke mentioned.
The word “remix” is known by everybody, it isn’t just DJ jargon anymore. As such it carries with it the assumption that you were somehow granted full permission to do whatever you want to someone else’s work, whether that is legally binding or not. Most listeners see it that way, most labels see it that way, and most people who make a living remixing and DJing definitely see it that way.
Unless you got clearance you can’t release it for sale and I would be careful with free downloads too. The most important part, ALWAYS give credit to the original artist.
He can be as much as an authority as he likes, however it doesn’t change the meaning of the work ‘remix’, which is “to mix and re-record the elements of a musical recording in a different way”. The legality or level of permission obtained for the ‘remix’ has absolutely no bearing over the term whatsoever.
Not in this dojo!
A remix is a remix, regardless of whether it is a bootleg remix, official remix, unofficial remix, good, bad, indifferent etc. By all means, call your remix a ‘bootleg’ if you want. It doesn’t stop it being a remix though.
A tribute band is still a band. A reconstruction is still a construction.
+1
I can vouch for what you said about soundcloud. Calvin Harris occasionally puts up the acapella’s to his songs on his soundcloud page, so for fun i decided to remix Flashback, and I didn’t even post the full song, I just posted a preview of what I was going to release, and it got removed for copyright infrigement.