Digging Deeper Lip Dub

When YouTube first appeared, it made it easy for fans to be able to create their own material and post it on the Internet. I think that one of the most entertaining ways fans come up with to spread their ideas is Lip Dub. Lip Dub is when fans create their own music video of a song by lip-singing and dancing to a song. These lip dubs can be filmed by a normal video camera. Lip Dubs are created most of the time by high schools and college students because that is where the new hit songs are heard. Fans make these videos to show their own creativity and own interpretation of a song.

 The concerns and problems that rise from these Lip Dubs videos are the issue of music piracy. These YouTube Lip Dub sensation videos do not have the copyrights to the songs that are being used to create these videos.  Also, these songs that are being used in the lib dub videos can easily be stripped and downloaded illegally.

A plus for record producers and artists is that their songs and music are getting spread to everybody that goes on to YouTube and becoming more and more popular.  For example, The Grand Rapids Lip Dub played the song “American Pie” by Don Mclean and had over 5,000,000 views.  Before the lip dub video Grand Rapids was considered a dying group but not anymore, and the profit that came with the video all went to a non profit foundation. Another example of lip dub video is the US national swim team singing over the song “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen at the London Olympics. This YouTube video made almost every person in the United States know this song and it became very popular.

I believe that music artists or record companies should not be able to sue these fans that are putting up these lip dub videos. Fans that put these lip dub videos up are not looking to get a profit out of the video.

Fan creating lip dub videos make it hard to decide if the songs used are under the copy right laws of these record companies. It is a complicated issue.  On one hand, it can really hurt the record companies with piracy issues.  But, it can also help music artists make their new releases popular. I believe that lip dub videos should stay because it  make our youth creative, as well make high schools and college students become more untied and have more school spirit.  It is a fun, artistic, and harmless activity that is entertaining. 

history, lawsuit, youtube, UBC, Grand Rapids, and US swim team