Kutiman makes music by stealing from YouTube

Kutiman makes music by stealing amateur musical extracts posted on YouTube and mixing them up with others. The result? Despite being unknown to the world just a month ago, the Israeli musician has just been labelled "YouTube's most famous DJ" by Time.

Piano lessons, drunken guitar strumming; post it on YouTube and you've got a chance of ending up in one of the internet's most popular sites - ThruYOU. Launched on March 7, 2009 by Ophir Kutiel (Kutiman's real name), the most listened to song on the album has already got almost 650,000 hits.

Track 7: "Just A Lady"

"I’m not a stage person. I prefer to sit at home with my computer"

The idea was quite spontaneous really. I saw this drummer on YouTube playing and explaining how to play this groove. I thought, why not find someone else to play it, and others, together? I fell in love with the idea. I wasn't really experienced in mixing. The video bit is totally new to me. It took about two months to put the album together. There was no day or night. 

When the album was finished I sent the link to the album to about 20 friends and asked them not to forward it because I still had a few changes to make. Two days later and my mailbox was exploding. After a week I'd had over a million views. I'm still in shock actually.

I didn't actually let them know [the people he featured in the videos]. I thought it would be interesting to let the internet do its thing. It's more exciting that way. I talked to one of the singers on the phone the other day. She told me she used to have 30 or 60 views on YouTube and then one day she opened her account and saw loads of messages and views. People were writing, ‘Kutiman's mixed you up real good!'

I got some emails from some big musicians. RJD2 was one of them. I'm reading mails and dancing at the same time! But to be honest I'm not familiar with that many big musicians. I like old, psychedelic music best. Some of the people who emailed me I don't know. Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) for example. I wrote back to him and said ‘sorry, but I don't know who you are'. I think he respected that - he got back to me and said that was funny.

I'm not into performing at the moment. I'm not a stage person. I prefer to sit at home with my computer. I live alone. The room in my videos, that's my bedroom.

Right now I'm in the middle of producing an album for Israeli group Karolina. So that will take about a month. I get all kinds of propositions and there are some interesting things. I'd actually planned to go surfing though..."