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Backlash as EMI Hunts Down the Grey Album
An anonymous reader writes "DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, a remix of Jay-Z's Black Album and the Beatles White Album has become a online music sensation, even getting reviewed in Rolling Stone though only 3,000 CDs were ever made. Now EMI, which controls the Beatles copyright, is trying to shut the album down. They've sent cease and desist letters to Danger Mouse, a handful of record stores, and websites that have hosted the songs. Wired News is reporting on the backlash that has ensued, led by anti-music industry group Downhill Battle, who insists that the major record labels are stifling creativity."
Seriously, it's fucking awesome.
1) Get this
2) Set this as default
3) Query the album name
You should have it downloaded within 20 minutes tops. It's fucking worth it though. I'm a huge Beatles fan and I enjoy a lot of modern rap, so this was a great joy for me to find this album. I don't see why EMI is so pissed off anyway.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
http://66.90.75.92/torrents/1163/DJ_Danger_Mouse-G rey_Album.torrent
I wasn't going to download it until I read this article.
A little birdie has informed me that there is a Torrent at the USUAL PLACE.
he could perhaps have got himself into a lucrative deal with EMI, whereby he uses the samples, and in turn releases the album under them.
In the United States, there is no compulsory license for derivative works of sound recordings. In the distant chance that the label would have accepted such a deal, it probably would have resulted in a negative royalty arrangement, where the artist would have to pay the record label for each copy sold.
The best file storage format, bar none, is a piece of letter size paper. You'll be able to see it 5,10, yes even 15 years from now. From what I understand, they have even found readable documents that are hundreds of years old. As a bonus, paper is quite thin and light and very easy to store. And since your personal documents are probably already printed on paper, you save yourself the time spent scanning them. Next question please.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Ack. the "uninteresting" in the first paragraph refers to my thesis, not the one I linked to. Apologies. Friggin inability to edit on /. is almost as frustrating as debugging PHP.
ed <--- bonehead
and I also think that "only 3000 pressed" is actually a pretty big run, considering that's larger than most independent releases (which are lucky to sell 1000).
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
If you just want a few songs, here's a site hosting the individual files. I just got 300 K/sec off them, so they seem pretty strong.
if you keep the songs, just paypal him a few bucks. guys like this deserve compensation
The interesting thing here is that he pressed 3000 copies for his friends and family as gifts, he likely still has a supply leftover at this point, and he never sold it. They're not going to be able to get much money as damages in court from that.
Any further sales or downloads are not Danger Mouse's problem... that's somebody else doing that. EMI's going to have to go after a few hundred people to grab that money.
Clearly, the path that leads to the most money for EMI would be a deal that leads to the legal release of the record. But, guess what, that's going to take Danger Mouse's approval in order to do that. If Danger Mouse is not willing to license his share of the project at any price, then this is dead on arrival. (And who's to say DM didn't reach out to EMI before and they refused to contribute their part at any price?) This could set up the ultimate irony... big money in front of a major record company that is just out of its reach.
If anything, Danger Mouse is getting his name out, and it'll likely lead to future work for him...
They're not going to be able to get much money as damages in court from [leftovers after a 3000-copy pressing].
They can get 150 grand.
And who's to say DM didn't reach out to EMI before and they refused to contribute their part at any price?
Every public corporation has a price, usually about one-third of its market capitalization. It would be possible to buy a controlling interest in EMI, but such a hostile takeover would be cost prohibitive.
That isn't what they did. They took samples from the White Album. Some samples are long chunks, some are just drum beats. Then they synced Jay-Z's vocals with the samples.
It's not A + B.
BitTorrent rocks.
told me the torrent is here
Not so: Danger Mouse ran for several years on Nickelodeon, the cable network for kids, here in the United States in the 1980s, and was (if not still is) available on VHS. I'm in freakin' Kansas, not exactly a cultural hotspot, but I know all about Danger Mouse and Penfold. (We also had Count Duckula, which was a spin-off, I think.)
Given the notoriously bad business decisions that they made back in the 60s, I would guess that they didn't really care that much if it was going to be profitiable the week after it was released.
What is interesting however is the reaction to it. I've been anticipating this for a while now; ever since "2 Many DJs" became popular, bootleg remixes have pretty much entered mainstream music. Here in the UK there are radio stations who promote it, and MTV even has a show now called MTV Mash. Note that the latter has to limit itself to licensed tracks, kinda ignoring the "dirty, unauthorised" appeal of some mashes.
When 2 Many DJs released their album "As Heard on Radio Soulwax Part 2", they had to cut out half of the tracks due to license restrictions. Since then, parts 1-8 of the series have appeared on-line, without restriction. The style is really an extension to hip-hop turntablism, but created entirely digitally. Tools like Acid allow you to pull loops from songs, reorder them, remix them and resequence them into something entirely different. Mainstream music has been doing this for years, a listen to the "Sampled" album collection shows some interesting sampling loops done years ago in well-known tracks you'd never think were based around a few samples. You could actually do this years ago on machines like the Atari ST, but the software now is incredible.
Tech is also entering the turntable world. "Final Scratch" puts PCM encoded vinyl onto standard decks, allowing a Linux PC to play mp3 as if it were on the disk. Entire electronic systems are available with scratch pads. However, you will never get the respect of a real DJ, they don't go for blinking lights!!
There are loads of websites with new mixes appearing daily from all over the world. Some of them are incredible, others are accapallela rap lyrics over something else. Like this album. Yawn, might have been interesting about three years ago...bootleggers, mixing rap over another song isn't big or clever. Mix two songs with similar chord-sequences and clever name/band connections, then I'll be impressed. :-)
If this sort of thing appeals to you, check out the following names: Freelance Hellraiser, 2ManyDJs, Eclectic Method, Osymyso, etc. See you on p2p!!
Mod parent up!
The Beatles (Specifically John and Paul) made a hugely bad decision when, in 1970, upon the breakup of the band, they sold the rights to the entire Northern Songs Catalog for less than 2 million pounds.
Paul spent years trying to buy it back, only to have Michael Jackson swipe up the entire catalog in one swoop.
I think it's important to note that there is another artist that's been sampled here, whose opinion on the matter is obviously different. The Grey Album wouldn't have happened at all if not for Jay-Z releasing an acapella version of The Black Album for the explicit purpose of remixing. There's a hell of a lot more of his work in the Grey Album than the Beatles'.
Your point seems to be that they (EMI) have a legal right to do as they are, and right you are about that. The question is should they (and if so, why)? Are they afraid that this underground release is going to cut into new sales of The White Album? Fat fucking chance. This breed of remixing isn't about stealing someone else's work for your own gain -- it's about creating something new out of something else.
This wouldn't even be a debatable subject our culture still viewed music as art instead of product.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
So if I decide I don't like the terms of the GPL, I can just take their software and violate their copyright?
That's completely incomparable. If something is GPLed, you can take it and combine it with other GPLed code, without violating anything. As it fucking should be.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
The Grey Album is an exhibit at Illegal Art , an site dedicated to discussion of the copyright issue as it affects creativity.
Which just goes to show you know absolutely nothing of "real DJ's". Many of them DO go for blinking lights as it enables them to carry FAR more music with them in a much more compact form which is much harder to damage. While there are still some issues with the scratch pads, they are remarkably close to the real thing and MANY of the top DJs in the world use mp3s in some form in their sets. Just so you know, tech has been in the turntable world for a LONG time. In fact, the entire modern electronic music scene has been embracing tech for a while now.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I have mod points, but I don't see a "Factually Inaccurate" option, so I'll just have to reply.
I have friends who are really into the hip hop scene, and they regularly get sent tracks of just the beats to songs from the artists themselves. Most of the time, the artist is hoping it'll get passed around and used and heard by multiple people for the publicity. Just because you can't buy it at Best Buy doesn't mean the artists don't release them.
Musicians get a lot of money when even a small amount of their music gets sampled
If by "Musicians" you mean "Record Labels", then you are correct. Otherwise you might want to read up a little more on who gets what in a record contract.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
1. You can download Bittorrent here.
Bittorrent is a small program that lets you download
2. Install the program.
3. Open your browser and paste in this url:
http://66.90.75.92/torrents/1163/DJ_Danger_Mous
4. Download. You can and should keep your torrent downloads open a while after you've finished downloading so the network stays alive.
The _whole_ point of copyright is to move works into the public domain. A copyright is not some all powerful ownership that you have. Copyright was setup as an agreement between "The People" and the copyright holder, and after a _limited_ time, that work would be part of the public domain. Big businesses have been trying to destroy that part of the agreement by making large bribes^H^H^H^H donations to congress critters and they have managed to get copyrights extended well beyond the _limited_ time that our Founding Fathers had in mind.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Dude, how funny is it that as soon as I saw this article, I did the same thing; downloaded it. I just had to hear it. Only listened to one track thus far and it's not bad. Have to listen to the rest to see if it's suitable to burn...
A variation of this idea already exists. Except it's Sergeant Pepper's, not the White album, and not strictly speaking the Black Album either. But hilarious. Enjoy.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
This sort of thing happens all the time, and often it's only astroturfing. But assuming it isn't, and this situation doesn't look like it could be, EMI wouldn't be treating it seriously if there weren't anything about it.
So yeah, when I read the Slashdot article, I visited a w4r3z site and found a torrent for it, and downloaded it. And no, I'm not a big fan of rap, but it's not that bad.
I have never bought a CD with vocals on it. I think the Label takes liberties with their artists products, but I would doubt the artist just offer this up.
It's not on the CDs, it's on the 12" (vinyl). So if you're DJing, you can play it over some other record, or scratch with it, etc.
You often also get the vocal-free version, too, for the same reason.
Ghetto Pop Life is a good album. Dangermouse comes up with some great hooks. Track 06, "The Only One," is awesome.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
Their black album is much better and it would certainly piss off Lars.
DJ Danger Mouse Grey Album .torrent
This is what all the fuss is about from wired.
The Grey Album, which mixes music from the Beatles' White Album with lyrics from rapper Jay-Z's Black Album, is being hailed as a classic. EMI thinks it's a classic, too -- a classic case of copyright violation.
This is a badass album. It is seriously one of the best pieces of music I have ever heard, truly greater than the sum of its parts.
bit trollent
I don't know if any of you realize it, but it isn't Jay-Z's interests that Capitol/EMI is "protecting", since he's not even on their label. Capitol/EMI is calling foul for DJ DangerMouse's failure to secure the rights to sample the works of the Beatles. DJ DM acknowledges this in the Rolling Stone blurb from last week (RS #492; which incidentally is what likely brought this to Capitol/EMI's attention. It was probably only included due to its relevance to the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' Ed Sullivan appearance). His hope was that the project would be well recieved by the source artists, and that if it wasn't (for one reason or another), then he'd recall the CD's.
Step one) Download from here.
Step two) Play Music.
Step three) There is no step three.
The ______ Agenda
Want it? Here.. Join the torrent:
o us e-Grey_Album.torrent
http://213.158.116.18/torrents/1163/DJ_Danger_M
192kbps. Go nuts.
-db
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On that note, get it from bittorrent straight away and see if you like it...
http://213.158.116.18/torrents/1163/ DJ_Danger_Mous e-Grey_Album.torrent
192kbps.
-db
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Here's the process I go through to create a typical track:
It may surprise you to hear that this is somewhat more difficult than writing a derivative three chord guitar part for your garage band.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling