R.E.M.’s upcoming album Collapse Into Now is coming in March, but the band is already getting the buzz going with a little crowdsourcing experiment. A couple days ago, the album’s producer released some tracks from the song “It Happened Today” in files that can easily be imported into Garageband, the music mixing software that comes on new Macs. Fans are invited to remix the song and upload their new versions under Creative Commons license to SoundCloud.
The individual tracks were also released under Creative Commons license so that anyone can download and remix them as long as it is not for commercial use. Producer Jacknife Lee writes:
We ended up with over a hundred tracks with all the percussion, brass, three pianos, celeste, glockenspiels, vibraphone, eight acoustic guitars, two drum kits, bass synths, banjo, mandolin, dulcimer, electric guitars, bass and all the voices.
So far there are already 41 tracks. This one is the best so far, IMHO, and this one plays the vocals backwards How long before a band lets fans remix an entire album?
