if you have a nice track but it is on a mixtape what do you do?

[Sigma]

That whole sampling law argument is bogus. Once hip-hop artists started getting hit with lawsuits and crazy fees were involved to clear samples, the music changed for the worse. Chuck D has said in interviews that P.E. had to change their whole sound because of it, for example. Had today's laws and sample clearance fees always existed, there would be no It Takes A Nation of Millions...

The arguments of "legitimacy" and "right and wrong" in this thread are kinda like those put forth by religious extremists, but you have no Bible to quote from. Instead you say "it just is like this!", cos any time you try and explain it your arguments fall flat. If DJing is about "promoting music" then you wouldn't care about any of this. You're trying to draw a parallel between sampling and paying fees to clear samples and some unwritten rule amongst DJs, but those attitudes towards sampling and the laws that sprung up around it are part of what made hip-hop worse, so that's not a good comparison to use at all. Besides, by buying a record, using a portion of it in a mix, then distributing that mix online for free, you are breaking the very rules you are trying to lay down. You don't own the rights to a song cos you bought the vinyl, otherwise a hip-hop producer could say "but I bought it on wax!" when the lawyers come sniffing for their sample clearance fees.

As for the art of DJing, the art of hip-hop DJing has been dying a slow death for years. You've got hip-hop DJs now that can't even scratch or do the most basic of trick mixing. If it's only about music discovery, then I could give all 20 records I used in one of my past mixes to an 8 year old kid and say "here, make a mix with these" and whatever they come up with should be as good as what I've made. Look at the argument on the last page about someone making a mix of Japanese prog rock by ripping the tracks off YouTube videos - that would automatically make the mix wack, yet if a person discovered all of the tracks via YouTube and went on Discogs and bought the lot for £20 used and then made a mix - that's fine! They have the vinyl, so that somehow legitimises the piece of art they created, much like paying a fee to clear a sample legitimises a hip-hop track......... but then again..........

I think you have to be careful with the kind of slippery slope arguments being made in this thread. I am saying "if the circumstances dictate it, I'll take from anywhere", but that's being portrayed as if I would make every mix by just listening to other DJs and saying "I'll take this track from this mix, and this track from this mix" and so on. That isn't how shit works. Who is doing that? Who would even want to do that? I have never cut anything out of another DJ's mix for use in my own work, but I am saying that if I felt that I had to, I would.

Taking one song here and there I can live with.

Hmmmmm.........

[Hamza21]

It's extremely rare that a track is only available on some other DJ's mixtape.

Whether I would play it or not depends on the circumstances. If it had another DJ's drop over it then I wouldn't play it. If the sound quality was pretty poor I may include it in a mixtape of my own if there was a good reason to, but I wouldn't play it out live. If the sound quality is good and there are no drops, or I can edit them out, then I would play the track live if there was no other way to get it.

I didn't read all pages in this thread but I agree with Sigma. I jacked Heaven seeds of Blackness by Nas from a mixtape and added to one my mixes (Here since I couldn't find anywhere else. The into had a drop but the outro was left untouched. So I made intro out of the outro. Other that time I can't remember hearing a song on mix I couldn't find and I listen to alot of mixes!