
Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download - Xichekolas
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8053471.stm
======
Xichekolas
It's becoming increasingly hard to argue that the labels are fighting p2p for
the sake of the artists.

How they can sue their customers, stifle their content producers, and stay in
business is amazing.

~~~
JoelSutherland
The labels are distribution companies in the era of the internet. Staying in
business _without_ suing customers and stifling content producers would be
amazing.

<http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/>

Edit: Perhaps I am being misunderstood. I am saying they are screwed and
dragging things out to hold on to profit. How is this a controversial
position?

~~~
swombat
I don't buy the Matt Maroon argument. I've worked in large corporations and
observed general incompetence at many levels. You only need to look at the
state of the finance industry today to see that highly paid experts can get
things wrong on a _massive_ scale.

That's not even a function of intelligence - it seems to be more a function of
the level of isolation they live in. How thick are the walls of your
industry's bubble? For the finance industry, it was thick enough that it's not
even completely burst yet.

The music industry, similarly, seems to have an exceptionally thick bubble
(probably thickened with dried up bits of Coke, discarded LSD papers, and the
money they accumulated over the last 50 years of ripping off the general
public and their own artists). I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that
these smart people, who, outside of that bubble, would probably think like you
and me, really do believe their own bullshit - if only because they spend all
day surrounded by people who keep repeating it.

Smart people aren't immune to brainwashing.

~~~
DarkShikari
_Smart people aren't immune to brainwashing._

If anything--they're _more_ susceptible. [http://www.amazon.com/People-
Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscie...](http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-
Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0716733870) is a great book on the topic.

~~~
jamesbritt
Years back I used to go to Mensa meetings in NYC and found that the most
distinguishing feature of the crowd was not what the thought or believed, but
how they expressed themselves.

Overall, the Mensa folk (for the sake of argument, "smart people") believed
much the same things as the average person on the street, but they had a much
better vocabulary.

(Actually, one thing else was interesting: beliefs held seemed to be more
extreme. E.g., higher numbers of hard-core socialists and libertarians than
mainstream population.)

~~~
grandalf
interesting...

I have always wondered about the correlation between intellect and the
decision to make huge life decisions based on one's own beliefs.

Simply having a consistent set of beliefs (or seeing the inconsistency in
mainstream beliefs) will make someone seem more like a hard core libertarian
or socialist.

But what does it take for such a person to hit the street and start trying to
make change happen? Are such people ever revolutionaries? Or are they content
to have a logically consistent worldview but sit on the sidelines?

~~~
swombat
Historically, most famous revolutionaries, from Che Guevara to Ghandi or
Trotsky, were well educated, often coming from solid middle-class backgrounds
(e.g. Che Guevara was the son of a doctor).

~~~
tome
Che was a doctor _himself_ , according to

<http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/g/u.htm>

~~~
swombat
Sure, but being a doctor himself doesn't mean he was from a middle class
background. The fact that his father was a doctor, though, does.

------
ericwaller
Here's the NPR stream they mentioned:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1041295...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104129585)

------
mikedouglas
Edit: bad link.

~~~
nickmolnar
That Rapidshare link isn't a valid RAR file. I posted a working torrent of the
album here: <http://neekolas.tumblr.com/post/108678640/my-first-torrent>

~~~
rms
The 192 KB/s version is 65.4MB.

------
mynameishere
_Danger Mouse, who is half of pop group Gnarls Barkley_

Jesus, this guy's whole life is one big ripoff.

~~~
anigbrowl
While I'm not into the 'mixologist = artist' thing myself, in an age of
abundant content it's a valid choice. If you're writing a consumer application
and there are great libraries available for much of the functionality, you'd
probably use them, right? Is it so bad to do that with music, especially when
~80% of pop music is just a thinly-disguised rearrangement of the same 3
chords?

~~~
mynameishere
_in an age of abundant content it's a valid choice._

Whatever. I remember hearing the "grey album" and have still not recovered
from the aesthetic disgust. It's just absolutely pathetic that people steal,
steal, steal, and then add, as their contribution, a load of their own shit--
only to be praised for it! And called "artists"! And base careers off of it!
Legal matters aside, it should just be utterly banished from decent society.

 _just a thinly-disguised rearrangement of the same 3 chords?_

Yeah, well, you might as well say, "Geez, music just keeps using the same 12
notes over and over, therefore it's okay to take exact recordings of other
people's work, decimate it, and sell it as your own." Dishonor should not be
rewarded. Neither should dishonesty.

~~~
anigbrowl
I upvoted you because I think you raise a valid point, but I still disagree.
Personally, I know where you're coming from; I make electronic music as a
hobby, but I can't bring myself to use samples because then I feel like it's
not me any more.

However, I don't see it as theft, any more than I see a production of a
Shakespeare play as theft. Stealing is when you're dishonest about the source
of your raw material and represent it as your own creation. An interesting
juxtaposition of known material is a commentary in itself, regardless of
whether you like it; and the guy's career is as a producer, not as a musician
or composer. For that matter, both Mozart and Bach were regarded by some as
mere hacks, appropriating or accepting tunes from others and applying mere
technique to arrive at elaborate (but not fundamentally complex) arrangements.

I'm unsure why you seem so personally offended by this, to the point of
finding it indecent and dishonorable. I've been blatantly ripped off by a
(book) publisher in the past, and it made me mad, but not to the extent of
rejecting an entire branch of creative technique. Can you explain, without the
invective?

~~~
mynameishere
I guess there's a distinction between remaking music and copying it (bit-for-
bit) that people aren't seeing. Or, they see, and don't care. Now, if you make
the 2000th cover of "Yesterday" and sell it, that's one thing. If you take the
original 2 minute recording of "Yesterday", add yourself belching on top of
it, and sell it as your "own", then you're a thief and an artistic wrecker.

I _think_ this comes down to opinion. The principle is firm, but the disgust
is sometimes lacking. When this little gem was released,

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJePNFkkvFk>

...the outrage was vicious and near-universal. DM is doing the _exact same
thing_ , and I would argue, to a much, much greater extent, because he isn't
contributing, you know, actual music, like the above recording.

~~~
GHFigs
_I guess there's a distinction between remaking music and copying it (bit-for-
bit) that people aren't seeing._

Define it.

~~~
pj
The distinction is the amount of work, energy, creativity and risk required to
produce them. One requires a lot of it, the other requires clicking a button.

~~~
sah
You're overestimating the amount of effort and creativity it takes to play a
song someone else wrote, and underestimating the effort and creativity
involved in the kind of sampling Danger Mouse did on the Grey Album.

Kenny G definitely had the easier job among those two examples.

