Richie Hawtin: “All music is version 1.0”

Richie Hawtin: “All music is version 1.0”

5 September, 2008 | 2.02AM

• Section: Music News Topics: Beatport Blog
• Written by: Industry Boy

Beatportal chatted to Richie Hawtin recently, and he had some interesting thoughts on music copyright law.

With digital technology having opened up the creative window for DJs and producers, Hawtin feels the current copyright laws are out of date.

“Every track these days should be considered a work in progress,” he says.

“Everything is version 1.0, and anybody should be allowed to take your ideas and add their own ideas to it.

“We need to be more open about music, ideas and ownership.”

On the face of it, it sounds like Hawtin is advocating the abolishment of copyright altogether.

“Artists and labels should still be able to make money from their music when it gets sampled, but there should be a way of tracking how far down your samples go,” he says.

“We should be able to scan a track and say 50% of this is original, 20% is from this record, and 30% is from this record.

“Or maybe a sample is only allowed to be regurgitated five times before you lose ownership of that sample or groove.

“For electronic music to progress we need to be more open-minded.

“I believe a producer should be allowed to reuse and resample anything they want, in a reasonable manner.

“At the moment, a producer creates a track and then this song is supposed to be left like that forever, like a rock in a field… everything changes with time, and I believe that each song should be allowed to have a life of its own after it’s released to the public.”

And believe it or not, in the near future Richie Hawtin may put his money where his mouth is.

“We’re thinking about opening the Minus catalogue up to the public so that anyone who buys a release can have more creative options to manipulate and transform it.”

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