The Music Obfuscator will hide your music from YouTube copyright Stormtroopers

I’m very happy to share that my proposal to develop Music Obfuscator was awarded a Rhizome Net Art grant! There were a number of great proposals, so I’m honored to be amongst the awardees. The first cut was made by member vote; the final selection was by juror Kimmo Modig.

Here’s the abstract I submitted for Music Obfuscator:

Music Obfuscator

At the behest of corporate copyright holders, media sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo have implemented listening algorithms designed to identify uploaded music. However, these “Content ID” systems are designed to presume all use is illegal use; every match is automatically flagged, muted, and/or removed. The Music Obfuscator will enable users to hide music from Content ID. Each audio track submitted to the Obfuscator will be altered using a variety of signal processing techniques. The degree of alteration will be adjustable in order to accommodate changes in detection systems over time. How drastic will the changes need to be to evade detection? What kind of an aural world can exist on the edges of computational listening? The Music Obfuscator will help us understand the answers to these questions. The system will be web-based, allowing easy drag-and-drop of audio files, and—with permission—will archive obfuscated results for others to browse.

So, I’ll get to work right away. Watch my Twitter feed for updates.