I was pretty intrigued by Kelsy’s comment in class about the reasoning behind the creation of Gotye’s video- Somebodies: A Youtube Orchestra. There definitely is a difference between creating the video for the sake of just sharing creative covers and creating the video in spite of the artists who made the covers- kind of giving them a taste of their own medicine.
I was pleasantly surprised when I revisited the youtube video on my own computer and noticed this: “Reluctant as I am to add to the mountain of interpretations of Somebody That I Used To Know seemingly taking over their own area of the internet, I couldn’t resist the massive remixability that such a large, varied yet connected bundle of source material offered.” This is a quote from the description of the video signed from Wally (Gotye) himself. Although at first he comes off a bit negative, towards the end of the quote his tone changes to be more lighthearted. He goes from sounding annoyed and offended to sounding happy to spread cool music around. Thus, I’m not exactly sure what his official motives were behind making this video. However, at least they do not come off as all bad.
I was thinking about that too. Since he made a spoof of his original on college humor I would lean to thinking he made it in a lighthearted spirit.
When I went to watch that video on my computer, I saw that quote also. I thought it was funny how he knows how much it bothers him how many remakes of his song there are online, and he made a video remixing them all together anyway.
Given this quote, I wonder if he is in favor of remixing and looser copyright laws. During Tuesday’s class, I would have thought that he would be adamantly opposed to such an idea. He, however, then created a spoof using other people’s videos because he saw the opportunity it presented. Perhaps established artists would like looser copyright laws because it could benefit their careers just as much it does emerging artists.