February 11, 2004

To Everyone Coming Here Looking for Danger Mouse's The Grey Album

So my site traffic is breaking all sorts of personal records today, and a large number of those visitors seem to be looking for Danger Mouse's The Grey Album.

So if that's what you are here for, do yourself a favor and head over to Zero Paid. Once you are there go pick out a file sharing program and start to use it. Within an hour or so you should have the album snug on your computer for your own personal enjoyment.

Of course as you may know using P2P programs current falls in a murky (grey?) legal space. But even if it does eventually get ruled illegal the case for file sharing as an act of civil disobedience just grew a lot stronger as the record industry cracks down on the distribution of The Grey Album.

Up in my comments people are calling this genius, and I'd agree that its at least really f'in good. There is no denying the creativity and talent that went into creating this album. But it's illegal to buy or sell and some lawyers would argue its illegal to trade as well.

That breaks the reality down hear into close to a binary. Either this piece of creativity disappears from the soundwaves, or it lives on due to file trading and bootleg cd distribution networks. So fire up your P2P programs friends, the music industry has just made it clearer then ever that the current copyright laws are about protecting profits not encouraging creativity. This is developing into war, industry lawyers and certain old school record execs vs. new school musicians and the fans. I know which side I'm on.

And yeah, donate to the Creative Commons if you've got the bankroll.

Update: Illegal Art is now hosting a downloadable version of the album, holla!

Posted by William Blaze at February 11, 2004 12:35 AM | TrackBack
Comments

On the unlikely offchance that anyone has qualms about using P2P applications to get this, it appears to be getting a semi-official release in the UK. At least, the Hall or Nothing PR agency are sending out press releases and promo copies to journalists here... not quite sure how they're planning to get around the obvious legal problems.

Posted by: Jack on February 11, 2004 08:38 AM

Has Jay-Z made any sort of public statement about this?

Posted by: JK on February 11, 2004 02:43 PM

not yet, but I made a little inquiry to someone in a position to find out. word may, or may not be forthcoming.

Posted by: Abe on February 11, 2004 02:44 PM

I had heard that Jay-Z thought it was cool, and said go with it or whatever. Where was it that pointed out that there's even a "words only" set of tracks to people could remix this all day? Hell, first weekend out there were like 80 remixes on the New York stations...

Posted by: djspicerack on February 16, 2004 02:23 PM
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