TED Talk - Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture

I had an interesting conversation with a young artist this weekend who said that he didn't put his music out online because he was worried people would copy it - that might sound like inexperience talking but Charles Hamilton did try to tell Black Spade to his face last year that he made a beat he in fact copied from Black Spade. Of course the upshot was Black Spade recreated the beat live online and Charles Hamilton couldn't provide the original files as proof he made it so no one believed him.

What's probably the more worrying thing to a new artist is when someone jacks your style, and I think this video is a great reminder of that. There are a squillion Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke clones out there but we still want the real thing. If what you have is truly special there will be a demand for it - maybe not so much as individual digital units, but the things we can't copy (live experiences, unique merchandise and memorabilia for example). If what you're doing is easy to copy maybe you need to be more creative...