mixed by ariea film by sydney sibilia (our review here), one of the Italian wonders of this early 2023, finally arrives in streaming Netflix From 22 June. this is a movie Not to be missed, for the great soundtrack, for the actors, for the direction. And specifically for the story: mixed by arie The first great record in Italian history is dedicated to pirates. Enrico Frattasio, for all Ari, wanted to be a DJ in discos since childhood, but to do so he needed a certain look, a name and an international outlook.
So does the deejay with cassettes, both by making his own compilations and by copying original albums. This work grows more and more until it becomes something industrial: in the early nineties, Mix By Aerie, it is his trademark, becomes the first Italian record company by turnover. At the Roman preview of the film, in the first days of March, one thing was clear: Mixed by Eerie was a well-known “brand” for those who grew up in Naples, and it was well known in Rome. Not in northern Italy. There are people who grew up with other myths. because it wasn’t just Erie and there record theft It has gone through other phases as well.
cans of san marino
Well, the Mixed By Arri box didn’t come to northern Italy. And so kids who wanted to hear music, and couldn’t afford a lot of original records or cassettes, had another source: box from san marino, Late in the morning there were some friends who went to visit this city above, on Monte Titano, which, as you know, is an independent state with its own government, its own laws. And also the national football team. Therefore, copyright laws were not enforceable outside Italian borders and were easy to violate. Then that friend would come back with the cassettes, which were outwardly identical to the originals: the cover had been rearranged to be like the original cassette. Admittedly, it was white on the inside, and the cassette also clearly appeared to be a duplicate. San Marino’s narrow streets had entire shops dedicated to these cassettes, lined up as perfectly as an actual record shop. San Marino factories, in their golden age, produced about 2 million boxes a year. At that time, we are talking about the 80s and 90s, each costing 5,000 lire against 15,000 for an original cassette. Like say 3 for the price of 1. No big deal, after all. Also, if the sound quality wasn’t bad, it was the tape’s resistance that wasn’t the best. The author still remembers the disappointment for a tape of 101, Depeche Mode’s live album, with the tape badly mutilated. Result: buy original cassette again 101With the result of the expenditure, a total of 20 thousand lire …
Aerie, mixed by Sydney Sibilia: “The real Aerie is a human algorithm”
cd rental
Gradually recorded cassettes went out of fashion. But immediately – we are talking about the years around 1992, 1993 – another trend flourished. let’s talk about cd rental, with many temperate shops that began to spread. Stores I buy from regularly Compact disc and made them available to customers: to be rented for a few days, after which they could be returned. Stores featured displays in which CD covers hung in plastic bags, while the packaging and original CDs lay behind the counter. The complete product was also given once the disc was selected. In principle, the action was not illegal: it was what had been happening with videocassettes for years, and which would later go on with DVDs. The fact that, in practice, no one in the audience had recorders to copy VHS (usually they were only professional machines), whereas every stereo now had a CD and cassette player, so that everyone could play that CD. Can copy and listen to it forever without seeing it. ever bought it. in a sense, it was an activity that supports piracy, And because of this, after a few years CD rental shops disappeared as quickly as they appeared.
napster revolution
But then things changed again, and that was a real revolution. In the late 1990s, personal computers and Internet connections began to become technologies within everyone’s reach. And with the network that gave us the opportunity to open up to the world, came the possibility of having everything at hand. Music, above all, but also movies. Not immediately, because, we remind you, the connections were with 56K modems, very slow. and, above all, connected to the telephone line, which was often unique. Result: something like 40 minutes to download a song, which might have been interrupted by a handset when it was seconds from completion. The ability to download music for free was due to a system called peer-to-peer, i.e. file sharing between user and user. felt the sean parkerproducer of napster, But other pioneers or pirates followed: eMule, utorrent, pirate bay, Record companies, and the artists themselves (the case of Metallica is famous), have filed lawsuits worth billions, and, in principle, they have won. But, in this sense, the speech between Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) and a girl in The Social Network, which indicates that Napster has lost the case, is illuminating. ,Napster wasn’t a failure, it changed the record industry for the better and forever. It may not have been a good deal, but it pissed off a lot of people“. And it’s true. Since then, no one listens to music in the same way. Record companies bet on legally downloading files, joining forces with platforms such as e tune, But then came streaming.
And finally comes Spotify…
The square of the circle, then, came along Spotify (and others that followed, such as Deezer, Timmusic and others). Spotify is a platform that has made available not the ownership of intellectual works, but a service, the possibility of listening to them: not physical media, but the fruit of a work. Spotify seems to have got everyone to agree: record companies, artists, the public. You access a service by registering and you access a huge database, unlimited or almost: free, and then you listen to commercials, like in commercial TV, or you pay a subscription, and you watch without interruption can listen to music. Here too an audiovisual work is illuminating, this time a TV series: it’s called The Playlist, it comes from Sweden and you can find it on Netflix. It tells the story of Daniel Eck, a programmer who wanted to create a pirate bay that was legal, and without waiting for time to listen to a song; But solving the copyright problem and persuading the record companies to trust him was not easy. One found himself against them and had to work hard to establish himself. Everyone’s happy, then? Not really: Streaming earns artists very little, next to nothing, compared to selling records. And it becomes very difficult for budding artists.
Mixed by Aerie: All (Wonderful) Songs from Sidney Sibilia’s Movie
Does Music Still Have Value?
However, the problem of piracy has not been solved, it’s just content. And so is the case with audio-visual material. With Netflix subscriptions that cheap, in theory people no longer download movies like they used to, just like they don’t download songs with Spotify. But illegal download platforms are still there, as well as illegal streaming sites to watch movies. But with this new age, we’ve also lost – let’s talk about music – that romantic aspect of choosing a record, weighing its purchase, and marrying it. Anton Corbin, the famous rock photographer and director of the film, told us about it a few years ago Control About Joy Division “today music is available everywhere“He told us.”I think what made music special in the 60s and 70s was that it was not available everywhere, it was the language of a generation and that aspect is gone. What makes music less special today is this. And I believe music is an art form, it should be chosen, appraised: I’ve never downloaded anything for free, it’s against everything I believe in. If everything is free, how can you put a price on it? If it’s not free, you have to make a choice: spend your money on one disc instead of another. I think that’s why people give less importance to music today,