{"id":15830,"date":"2013-06-04T13:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T17:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=15830"},"modified":"2013-06-04T16:56:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T20:56:40","slug":"music-spammers-outlaws-or-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/06\/04\/music-spammers-outlaws-or-artists\/","title":{"rendered":"Music spammers \u2013 outlaws or artists?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

Is there a point in speaking about original, fake or authentic when it comes to music these days? Before you roll your eyes and look for the exit button, you might want to read this post<\/a>. It led me to realise that some debates which were hot when postmodernism came out of the oven are still relevant. A good take on this matter is Ted Cohen\u2019s reflections on the notorious debate about art:<\/p>\n

Although I have participated in discussions of what are is, I have always been in a negative position, arguing that someone\u2019s attempt to say what art is fails, and until recently it did not seem to me that I had anything to say about what art is. And that was because, although I could think of reasons for denying what someone says art is, I could think of no way to begin thinking about what art seems (at least to me) to be. Now I have begun to find a way, and I am finding it by trying to understand why I (or anyone, for that matter) would ever seriously care to assert or deny that something is art. (Cohen, 1998: 154).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This blog post describes the art of music spammers who operate within the Echonest platform. Throughout the article you will have a tour, inviting you to walk the line that marks undesired and unwanted musical aesthetic and practice. According to the post, these musical spammers are using different methods for various reasons and are portrayed as hazards to the system. For example, they make a \u2018fake\u2019 piece of a hit song that hasn\u2019t been officially released, they change names of various songs, they repeat the same few hundred songs in various combinations, or create \u201ca clone of a song based around a single big riff which gets that big riff completely wrong\u201d. These musical outlaws are then added to a ban list which will consequently mean that they will not receive recommendations from Echonest clients\u2019 services, or in their apps. The main reasons they are banned is that they \u201ccould potentially slow or confuse our system; if it were music we needed to know about, that would mean it was time for some clever engineering to solve the problem \u2014 which we are perfectly willing to do when the situation calls for it \u2014 but for spam, why even bother? We leave most of them out\u201d.<\/p>\n

These allegations sound like all the previous accusations made towards spammers, for example Gy\u00a8ongyi and Garcia-Molina argue that the definition of spam is \u201dany deliberate human action that is meant to trigger an unjustifiably favorable relevance or importance for some web page, considering the page\u2019s true value\u201d (Gy\u00a8ongyi and Garcia-Molina, 2005: 2). Although the blog post indicates that \u201c[t]his isn\u2019t a matter of taste (so Coldplay and Raffi are in no danger). It\u2019s because those banned artists are spammers\u201d, it seems to me that it is very much about what constitutes \u2018proper\u2019 music and a \u2018correct\u2019 musical practice.<\/p>\n

Back in the 1980s, when hip hop and electronic music started to bubble and take shape in accordance with postmodernism aesthetic sensibilities of the collage and remix, many musical purists claimed (some still do) that it\u2019s not music at all but just a copy and paste of original music. Hey, even \u201cBill Cosby publicly criticised young people in the hip hop culture for their use of Ebonics instead of edited American English\u201d (Price, 2005: 56). Hip Hop also brought to the forefront other forms of art such as graffiti which were initially banned (some still are), considered as a crime, and plainly bad style before they were sold<\/a> as legitimate artefacts for $600,000. In both of the art forms we see similar strategies where art is stretching the boundaries of the appropriate place, shape and essence it should be delivered.<\/p>\n