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Remediation of music - Remixing

An interesting way that music can be remediated is the technique of remixing. Remixing is the act of taking elements from an original track and combining them with newly produced elements. There can be multiple reasons for the art of remixing. 

A very popular reason for remixing is to combine one artists style or sound with another. This is popular within the dance music industry. Many releases are released as a three track EP with a remix from another artist that would add some more spice to the overall release. This would be because the remixer would be inspired by the original track. Thus creating additional ideas and creativity in the mind of the remixer that would not have appeared if the remixer was producing an original track and therefore this would come up with some interesting results.

Another important reason a remix is sought after is because some artists have a reputation for taking a single element, such as a vocal, and adding a new genre to the vocal. This would allow a vocal to be appreciated in a different way by people who prefer to listen to a different genre than the genre of the original track. This would not only allow the vocal to be appreciated in a different way, it would also reach a greater audience who would have not listened to the original mix in the first place. This would be because listeners on Spotify may only follow playlists of genres they like. An example of this is the artist MK, who is known for taking vocals and adding his own cut-and-paste house sound to popular vocal tracks. MK is popular for his Storm Queen - Look right through remix.

A third reason that music can be remixed is to rearrange an original track to make a given track more suited for a different environment. Popular ways of doing this is to lengthen a song to be more suited for nightclub play. Longer songs with extended intros and outros allows the track to be mixed easier by DJ’s and therefore makes it more likely to be played by a DJ in a club. Contrastingly songs can be shortened as a radio edit to have a higher likeliness of being played on the radio. This is often done with dance music when the original mix is intended for a club so the intros are already long and intended for a DJ.

A less popular but notable method of remixing is when an original track is remixed by the artist who created the original mix. One of the explanations for this is that the artist may have a new idea for an old track that has been already released. This can often be called a VIP (Variation in Production) mix.

All of the previously mentioned methods for remediating music are for either aesthetic benefits, such as getting another artist to remix an original. Or practical benefits such as making a club mix or radio edit. However, both of these methods would be giving an original track a new purpose or identity.