Wrist-Slapped by the Hand of Fate

Thursday I was getting ready to go to bed. Those of us still up late enough to chat in poundsqueeze were saying goodbye as a message popped up from hotmail. I had mail from You Tube.

I read it. "Oh, shit," I said. Again.

I'd said, "Oh, shit" some months earlier for the same reason.

When I made my little movie "The Great Houndini," I wanted to use "That Old Black Magic" for the background music. I headed to iTunes and found a copy by someone named Errol Garner. It was the cheesiest version I'd ever heard, the length was perfect, and so I scooped it up for 99 cents and let the good times roll. And they did, for a while, till I got the "Oh Shit" email. I'd been hand slapped for using the song.

That email was snippy, but benevolent. You Tube told me they knew I was using someone else's music, but they were so nice and appreciated the creativity I was using that they'd let me continue to keep my little video up there, provided they could put Google ads on the video's page. I was a little pissed off about the whole thing, but hey, what's an ad or two between friends.

After 2 months, the video mysteriously disappeared without so much as a by your leave.

The "Oh Shit" email of Thursday was a little different. It was in regards to one of my two personal favorites, "Wind-Ups on Parade." They didn't give a shit about my creativity, they didn't like that I was using Brian Setzer's "Sabre Dance," and my video had been yanked.

Now, don't give me that look. I know you are, but I don't need it. I'm no rube, I know that someone owns every piece of music out there, even "Happy Birthday," and that using someone else's music isn't exactly legal, even if I was nice enough to credit the piece of music and can't help but feel even a tiny bit like Brian Setzer might have gotten a little giggle out of seeing the flipping tomato trying to flip to his song.

When I use music in a video, if it's not from my personal LP or CD collection, I rerecord it with another program. Thing is, with "Wind-Ups" I was still very new in the moviemaking business and it never occurred to me to do that. With "That Old Black Magic," I was probably so happy finding that cheesy version I just forgot.

In either case the mistake was mine, and so shed no tears for me, after cussing a blue streak I was OK. That's not really what all this is about. Much.

What it's about is that in this last "Oh Shit" email, there was a small addition to the oh shit part. Those You Tubers were telling me that I could actually use a little program of theirs called Audio Swap and put new music over my flipping tomato. Audio Swap contains music from You Tube's "growing library of fully licensed songs."

Well, this I had to see.

And so I went to Audio Swap. It's pretty much what you might imagine. I went through about 16 genres of music and saw two artists I'd heard of.

Let's see, how about watching the flipping tomoato flip to "A Touch Too Much (Short Edit)" by Phonjaxx? Well, you can't, because that track is zero minutes and zero seconds long, which is one hell of a short edit. So how about watching Mr Burns and Smithers in a swan boat putting along to "Fixing My Brain" by mattfatt73? Well, that song weighs in (no pun intended, well maybe a little) at 6 minutes. That's a lot more putting than the swan boat putts.

As for artists I knew, I guess Huckleberry Hound could perform feats of magic to Andy Williams' "The Look of Love," if I played it twice, the song being under 3 minutes.

If I want to use folk or country, I mean, Huckie's a country dog, I could always go with "Sonny Sunny" by Liam Neeson. Oh, wait. That's Liam Nelson. When I first saw that I was amazed - Liam Neeson sings? Well, apparently he doesn't.

Anyway, you get the idea. I'm really tempted to take one of my videos and find one of their "growing library of fully licensed songs" just to see what it would look like. Probably not tempted enough to do it, but I might have a slow weekend sometime.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have acrowinners. So, what did you all have to say about the scary seafood mousse in the picture below?
- Runner-Up was LilyG, with her "Happy and dead. Behold the terrine!" Tureen? Terrine? I don't know, the "happy and dead" was what won me over.
- And this week's winner is the DeepFatFriar, with his "Have a dab. Beats tater tots." Which is hilarious, but I'll take the tater tots, please.
- Thanks to all who played - you've all done very well!