Today is Grey Tuesday. In accordance with the protocol of the official protest against the attempted censorship by EMI of Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, you’ll notice a colour theme change for the day.
I kind of like it – I’m toying with the idea of keeping it like this.
As I mentioned on Friday, today’s the day to go and download Danger Mouse’s rather fine ‘The Grey Album’ – a collision of the acapella vocals of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and music constructed exclusively from samples of The Beatles’ self-titled album (more commonly, The White Album).
But wait – isn’t that piracy? Am I downloading something that could get me in trouble – or worse, prevent artists from recouping their full due? Well, yes and no. It’s complicated.
The first complication is music itself. Is it commerce or is it art? Obviously, it’s both. We wouldn’t even have a music industry if it wasn’t commerce, and nobody would bother devoting their lives to making music if it was purely a means of making money. There are far better ways of earning a decent living than spending from the age of 7 learning your trade and then taking your chances when you hit your late teens, only to be entirely overlooked by the major labels.
So we have to face the idea that music is an art form. Artists – more than anyone, I think – deserve every penny they can get. They are, as McLuhan said, the antennae of society.
However, where a recording artist signed to a major label differs from, say, a painter, is in the process of mechanical reproduction. I’m not talking about pirated copies, but multiple sales of a single cultural artefact. That, too, is all well and good. The only way to leverage a decent amount of money out of a recording is to press a few thousand and sell them at a profit. Record companies, which are purely and simply marketing firms, help facilitate that process, and take a cut accordingly.
But it’s art. And like in literature, where an artist can quote another – or in visual art, where an artist makes a collage of other artists’ works – or in sculpture, where an artist incorporates or even simply presents ‘found objects’ – music can include the collection and re-interpretation of culturally accessible references. Sampling.
Like this textual sample from the Grey Tuesday website:
Danger Mouse’s album is one of the most “respectful” and undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honors both the Beatles and Jay-Z. Yet the lawyers and bureaucrats at EMI have shown zero flexibility and not a glimmer of interest in the artistic significance of this work. And without a clearly defined right to sample (e.g. compulsory licensing), the five major record labels will continue to use copyright in a reactionary and narrowly self-interested manner that limits and erodes creativity. Their actions are also self-defeating: good new music is being created that people want to buy, but the major labels are so obsessed with hoarding their copyrights that they are literally turning customers away.
See how that works? It’s credited, it’s contextualised and it’s legitimate. Nobody has stolen anything, nor has anybody lost anything. In fact, if anything, something new was created.
Now, that’s a bit of a stretched analogy, but you see my point. The Beatles have not lost anything, and are rightly silent in this protest. It is not – by any stretch of the imagination – about creative artists and their right to own their intellectual property. This is about a major record label grasping at leverage to exploit their artists.
That’s the word that’s in the contract: exploit. Seriously. When you sign a label deal, it is specifically stated that you allow the record company to exploit both your music and you.
EMI’s attempt to quash a legitimate (and, in places, excellent) work by a talented DJ/Producer is an attempt to retain complete control over the works of the Beatles.
Now, the fact that Danger Mouse is a DJ/Producer is another interesting aspect to this. Jay-Z did not sample the Beatles. The Grey Album is neither a Beatles Album nor is it a Jay-Z album. It is the artistic work of a third party: a person who is a musician, but does not play what is generally thought of as a musical instrument.
A DJ/Producer creates music from the work of other people – a musical catalyst that sees possibilities of sound where others do not, and then brings them to fruition.
A victory for EMI in this case de-legitimises the role of DJ/Producer.
While there are all sorts of complications that extend from the recommendation to break copyright law and download the album from any one of many, many sites (where do you draw the line – where does re-presentation become theft?), the important issue is that it is recognised that there are complex issues regarding copyright and the meaning of art in the digital age.
We need to be having this conversation. Having the conversation shut down because the negotiating weight is all in the corner of five major record labels is counterproductive, anti-art and anti-consumer. It will, ultimately, spell the death of the music industry.
As a side note, you have broken copyright law simply by reading this. I assert my moral right as author of this work – and yet since you’re reading this on the web, it has been copied to your ISP’s cache, and copied to your hard drive to facilitate the process of online access to information. At least two copies that I have not specifically authorised have occurred – but that’s not because I have an objection to you reading my writings (obviously) or that you have in any way stolen anything. However, strictly speaking, you are breaking the law right now.
If you’ve got this far, then that suggests you’re interested in this topic. In that case I strongly encourage you to read this article: ‘Taking the Copy out of Copyright‘ – it might help.
Every time a significant new medium is introduced, copyright laws are scrapped and entirely rewritten. It happened when sheet music was introduced. It happened when mechanical recording was introduced. It happened when radio broadcasting was introduced. It even happened when television came along (though to a lesser extent). However, with the advent of the Internet and other digital technologies – we are still applying the same old laws to the new medium and IT DOESN’T WORK!
All we’re achieving is an extra-lucrative career for IP lawyers, who have to argue and re-argue every single case that comes up: peer-to-peer distribution systems, DVD authoring software, internet radio – the works. Oh, and we’re also ensuring that the power over artistic output and cultural artefacts is entirely in the hands of a small collection of media giants who, I have to say, I don’t trust with global culture.
It’s a huge issue. It’s a big topic. It’s a vast and convoluted discussion that needs to be had. Downloading The Grey Album today is a way of putting your hand up and saying “can we please discuss this before the Big Five dictate all the rules on this stuff?”.
Apologies for the long post. You should have seen it before I started editing.
Enjoy the album.
