Just Blaze, “What Happened To The Remix?” | SoulCulture TV

“It used to be when there was a remix there was a new beat, new producer, maybe some new rhymes.

Have you ever noticed now with a remix there’s new rhymes, maybe a new artist – but the beat always stays the same?”

Many of us miss “the remix”; we’ve all had conversations about it. Whatever happened to that creative second burst that was more than merely an additional guest feature, but a complete flip on the way you experience a song?

Lazy lack of vision and targeting the mindless ringtone markets are often assumed to be key reasons for the plethora of barely altered edits presented to us as remixes today.  It turns out, for those of us who knew no better, that there is actually some business logic behind the shift.

In conversation with SoulCulture TV in London, prolific Hip Hop producer Just Blaze explains: “The remix became a marketing tool – and a BDS [Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems] spin generator,” [which calculates multi-platform airplay figures] “so the artform got taken out of it and the dollars got put into it… If you change the beat, the computers that run BDS don’t pick it up as the same song.  So the whole point is to get more spins…”

Watch for the full explanation:

Interviewed by Marsha Gosho Oakes, Filmed and edited by RizeOfTheRobotz. Photography by Neil Raja.

After the jump check out Just Blaze’s thoughts on Music Blog Culture…