Everything is Plundered
This post won’t have anything to do with mystery fiction and won’t even tangentially be related to the main purpose of this blog. It’s just something I wanted to get out of my system.
I will bury the lede just a little bit, though. In order to understand the absurdity of what I’m about to show you, I first need to tell you two things about me. I’m aware there’s been some confusion as to the truthfulness of some of the stories I’ve told on this blog so far (from the mundane, like getting shot and killed somewhere in Ireland, to the more extreme, like the idea of me having friends) – so I’ll preface this by saying that this post is entirely sincere. No theme-relevant bullshit, no cutesy meta-narrative. Just plain facts.
The first fact is that I actually went to music school between the ages of 8 to 11 or so. Like most things in my life, I didn’t so much as wanted as much as it just sort of happened to me. When your parents ask you if you want to go to music school, you don’t really know what that’s even supposed to be, but like the good kid you are you sort of nod your head and see what happens.
What happened was that after a short audition I was accepted, and started taking classes. For the first year, you do something called Solfeggio. Basically, it’s a class teaching you on the basics of music notation and discerning notes in general. The point is not just to be able to read notes, but to develop a good enough sense to where you can write down the sounds you hear as notes.
I wasn’t a fan. The school itself was a fancy little building, with its halls covered in shiny white marble. There was always a certain smell in the air; it gave me the same kind of anxiety you’d get if you waited too long at a doctor’s office. It wasn’t sterile – I’d describe it closer to “old”. It made you feel out of place. The fact that the teacher scared the ever-living shit out of me didn’t help, either. She wasn’t mean, not exactly, but she was strict, merciless in critique and all-around no-nonsense.
All that was more than enough to put the fear of God into me, for the very simple reason that I was fucking terrible. I was as tone-deaf as they came. I had no sense of rhythm. Most of my listening practices, I bluffed with middling success. At the end of the year, the two dozen or so students taking Solfeggio were tasked to give a singing performance. During practice, the teacher pulled me aside and kindly asked me that, form that point onwards, I don’t sing, but rather just open and close my mouth along with the song.
I was the only kid she asked that.
After this, I would go on to half-heartedly study piano for the next couple of years, until my parents mercifully asked me if I even liked playing piano, to which I said “no, not really”, leading to the end of my musical career. In retrospect, had I been a bit braver, I could have saved them the money they spent for all the lessons and the giant-ass piano that gave me endless anxiety at the very thought of having to play it.
About a decade later, my girlfriend’s father would – upon hearing me mention I “played” piano – very innocently and in good faith suggest a jam session. While my girlfriend and him carried the whole thing, my modest contribution of playing one key on the keyboard likely brought the whole thing down, simply because I couldn’t carry the rhythm to save my life.
For what little it’s worth, I did try to warn him.
The reason I’m telling you all this is to illustrate that I don’t really know fucking shit about music, and if I did, I’m not very good at it. I cannot – nor should I – be providing commentary on music, nor do I have ears good enough to appreciate tracks on any level beyond “yeah, that’s kinda fire, I guess.”
That was the first thing. We’re now gonna take a hard left turn and talk about my stance copyright and fair use.
I know. Just stick with me.
Put simply, I’m fairly lax on a lot of things. I kind of have to be, since a lot of my presence online has arguably been constructing fanworks that use already-existing assets – not only from the material I’m drawing from, but also when it comes to the inclusion of sound, music, etc. My personal belief is that, if what you’re creating is not for profit (not just that you’re not selling it, but you’re not soliciting donations/merch/etc), if you give proper credit for the materials used, if you respect any explicit conditions set by the artists to use their work and – most importantly – if the material is used to enhance the work and the use of the material isn’t on the forefront of what you’re trying to do; I am personally fine with that.
Obviously, these rules are pretty far from legality and pretty self-serving, but ultimately, I would argue, lax.
What I’m basically saying is that as long as you reasonably incorporate other people’s work into your own – whether we’re talking intertextuality, image edits, putting music in the background – I personally have no real issue with your work. There’s enough leeway to give people the benefit of the doubt; more often than not people just like to add something they like or think is fitting in the background. We can get into the nitty-gritty and start going down the rabbit hole of Dadaism, but I think you understand what I’m trying to say.
That was the second thing.
Plagiarism has been a hot topic as of late, following the recent Hbomberguy’s 4-hour takedown of James Somerton. It’s led to what is (generally) productive discussion on the matter, especially in the wild west that is YouTube. Valuing other people’s work is good. Understanding the boundaries creators should and shouldn’t cross helps educate not only content creators, but viewers. It’s unfortunate, but it’s only by seeing the damage caused by plagiarism that you can understand the effort that must’ve gone into the original work to begin with.
Which is why I want to talk about Macroblank and other channels like his. You might’ve come across Macroblank’s work if you’ve ever wanted to put on some chill beats while you work. The “albums” get a decent amount of listens on YouTube, are fun to listen to and generally work in what they’ve set out to do.
The problem is that it’s basically all stolen.
Now, Macroblank himself doesn’t hide this fact. Go into his channel description or any of his uploads, and scroll down into the description to see the fine print:
i take no credit. everything is plundered.
Essentially, what Macroblank does is take existing works – tracks from generally unknown artists – slows them down, adds a little reverb, changes the titles of the tracks and packages them together into a mixtape that he calls an “album.” Some people are aware that’s what he’s doing. Others – judging by the comments – are likely unaware they’re listening to the mixtape or are unware about the extent of originality in the tracks themselves.
Macroblank has been active since around 2021. Credits or even mention of the original artists have only begun appearing as late as August of last year. And while this is good, I would argue it’s not the actual root of the issue. Sure, we could discuss the fact that actually seeing the list of credits requires checking the description (which, I’m willing to bet, a lot of people don’t do – in fact, I KNOW they don’t, because he originally wrote the sources in a Pastebin, which only about 0.8% of viewers actually checked out, based on the views on the Pastebin vs views on the video). We could certainly bring up the fact that the sources he’s taken these tracks from are far smaller and ultimately unknown – we’re taking the ranges of a few thousand views on YouTube, if not less. We could even point out that, in spite of the “I take no credit” line, Macroblank welcomes and endorses comments that are in praise of him and his work.
But what I really want to point out is just the lack of change on display here.
When I tell you – in my limited, tone-deaf expertise – that these tracks are basically just slowed down – I sincerely mean it. You can have a look for yourselves. Go and have a listen to his newest album, entropy, and do a little taste-test: pick any of the tracks on there and compare them with the source he’s listed in the description. You may have a moment where you feel like “oh, this sounds a little different, feels like he’s added something” – but then, as you continue to listen the original track, you’ll realize that, no, that was on the original to begin with; the order was just slightly altered.
The extent of this is so bad that you can actually see YouTube automatically detecting a good portion of the tracks on any given album. I suspect the ones it doesn’t, it simply doesn’t because they’re not registered in its copyright detection system.
It is actually absurd, and the fact that even someone like me can see it from a mile away says a lot.
The point is that there are no new ideas here. All we have is a vague vibe born through the vaporwave aesthetic. And you can tell me that this is basically what vaporwave is all about – just taking tracks and slowing them down (this is how I had seen it described in defense of these kinds of works) – but I respectfully don’t really care, nor do I think such a description does vaporwave any justice. You can reach the same aesthetics through your own original ideas or work. Or – fuck – actual remixes.
The originals are always referred to as “samples”. But they’re not. They are the tracks. There is no escaping that.
But, look. I wanna be realistic. This is YouTube, it’s a mixtape. It’s ultimately harmless in the grand scheme of things. In that fine print I keep bringing up, Macroblank even says:
this channel is non-profit.
Which is true. But I want to note that although the YouTube channel is non-profit, Macroblank himself is still generating some profit – modest as it probably is. He has a Patreon. He has a website with his merch. He creates limited runs of vinyls with the music on it. Up until recently, he also had a Bandcamp. (I am not sure whether or copyright dispute left him leaving it or something else, but it is worth noting that a majority of other channels that do this exact same thing do have Bandcamps and which do see a certain amount of support). As far as I can tell, he even organized a live show which also had merch drops.
To be clear. We’re not talking about fat stacks. He’s not making thousands upon thousands of dollars here. In spite of his views and subscribers, he’s basically small-time. This feels like a fun little hobby that has let him meet a lot of cool people, and I’m sure that he’s not being actively malicious in what he’s doing. I’m not trying to piss on this guy’s parade. Nor am I trying to get anyone to stop listening to him.
I just want him and other channels doing this kinda stuff to… be better! If you’re actually going to base your music off of other people’s work, then do something with it – transform it! Even if slowing a piece down gives a different feel, it’s still nowhere near enough to be different from the original work! Mix it up! Put another sample on top of it! Add a big-bong every two seconds! Just something! And if you don’t want to or can’t put something better than that, then don’t change titles of the tracks and put the original artists right at the forefront!
I’m trying to put myself in shoes of the people whose works he used. If I made a track – genuinely put my time, effort and dedication into it – and then saw it appear on one of the “albums”, and watching all the praise go to Macroblank (regardless of how much they understand of what they’re actually listening) – I would be pretty hurt, to say the least!
Alright. I’m done.
Mostly just wanted to get that out of my system because every few months I remember, get annoyed, and forget.