
De La Soul to Make Entire Catalog Available for Free   - grahamel
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/de-la-soul-to-make-entire-catalog-available-for-free-20140213
======
jfasi
Here's my thinking about the decision on the part of an artist to release
their entire catalog to the public for free: if digital distribution has
rendered direct sales to the customer significantly less worthwhile than it
once was, they need some alternate source of promotion and revenue. A move
like this would likely increase the artists' visibility in the public's eye
without significantly harming their total revenues.

Notice that they give out copies of their songs, but don't release their
copyright: want to download their music to listen to it on your iPod? Awesome,
enjoy. Want to remix it or use it in a commercial setting? The music isn't
licensed for that, you're going to have to talk to their agents.

This move is genius: it increases artists' exposure, ultimately leading to
increased sales, licensing, and presumably also concert revenues. There's
basically no downside to this.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>> This move is genius: it increases artists' exposure.

Only if people actually find out who De La Soul is. Considering they started
in 1987 and their last album was out in 2009, I'm not sure most kids this side
of 1997 really know who they are or care about their music.

It would be cool if they did get the exposure. I feel without a concentrated
PR campaign, besides a few articles over the next few days, not sure their
sales are going to get a big bounce from doing this.

~~~
dasil003
I know hip hop is treated as a disposable commodity by society, but kids who
are really into hip hop as an art form will definitely learn who De La Soul is
sooner or later.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>>> I know hip hop is treated as a disposable commodity by society.

This is really depressing because most kids think of hip-hop as music only. I
was taught hip-hop is a culture. Breakdancing, music, and graffiti are
integral parts of the culture. It has such a rich, vibrant history that's
disappearing as more and more suburban kids gravitate towards rap. Sure they
know Kayne and Jay-Z. Do they know about Sofles, Dondi and Phase 2? Doubtful.
Do they about the Rock Steady Crew or the Super Cr3w? No way.

Too many kids just think hip-hop = rap which is depressing.

Insane video of Sofles - Limitless: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv-
Do30-P8A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv-Do30-P8A)

~~~
mturmon
Hey, thanks for that great link.

Here's a viewpoint, coming from a different place, but with the same
recognition of the one-dimensional quality of commercial rap, from a lover of
hip-hop as a verbal art form --

[http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/09/all...](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/09/all-
of-my-purple-life/26823/)

"I think that mix of vulnerability, confidence and honesty was why our mothers
loved [Prince]. I think that was the sort of alchemy we missed in hip-hop. We
got close a few times--notably De La Soul on _Buddy_ or _Eye Know_ , or The
Roots on _Silent Treatment_ or _You Got Me_. Also, there are a few Outkast
joints. But we never achieved that sort of confidence--that sort of true
manhood."

Another viewpoint is from DJ Shadow ("Why Hip Hop Sucks in '96") -- it's the
money.

------
Tashtego
One thing I don't see anyone in these comments taking into account- this is
music that, for various sampling law / licensing reasons, they have never been
able to sell or stream online. They seem to be giving it away because they've
run out of options for getting it in the hands of their fans otherwise.

~~~
ghx
Yeah, the story isn't quite as compelling when you put it that way. That first
album would cost millions of dollars to release if they put it out today. The
list of expensive samples (Johnny Cash, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, etc.)
on that album is totally out of control...

~~~
e12e
Oh, I don't know -- at least now new artists can (more easily) sample them,
and continue making art under equally unclear legal status. One can always
hope this will help push fair use to become broader, rather than narrower.

------
dorfe
The context here, which I haven't seen mentioned, is that De La Soul cannot
release much of their catalog digitally given the way their contracts are
structured. As a result, all material before Grind Date (2004) is not
available on digital stores/platforms like iTunes, et al.

De La negotiated their contracts well before Internet distribution and revenue
was germane. Oddly, this is sometimes described as distribution "throughout
the universe". This is actually not an uncommon problem for artists from this
era who relied heavily on samples (i.e., hip-hop).

Would they have cleared samples used on their albums "in perpetuity", giving
De La the widest distribution license available (read: for use forever), we
would not be talking about De La Soul releasing music for free online. We'd be
buying it on iTunes and they'd be compensated for it. End of story.

Instead, De La makes most of their money off CD sales and touring, which is a
tough spot as CDs are entering obsolescence and touring, especially at their
age, must be grueling. On the flip side, the good news here is De La Soul and
early hip-hop pioneers are seeing a resurgence (IMHO well-deserved) and
getting the music out there by any means necessary is a crucial step to be
heard. Go see them on tour, buy their gear or even a CD (ha) if you're feeling
it.

~~~
isa
Absolutely. As more people crave for personal experience, their live shows
will mean more. Plus, if you've never been to a De La show, you're missing out
on life. One of the best show's I've ever been to, hands down.

------
darklajid
Well, that was an interesting idea.. They decided to distribute the files via
... Dropbox.

Missing AOI: Bionix now, because

Error (509) This account's public links are generating too much traffic and
have been temporarily disabled!

~~~
makmanalp
This sounds like _the_ situation to use torrents. I wish there was a web
torrent standard for large content delivery, and browsers implemented clients,
which only seeded for a preset amount or only during the download. The
checksumming would also help immensely.

~~~
cpeterso
The article says their back catalog will only be downloadable for 25 hours. Is
it possible to prevent new downloaders from joining a torrent swarm if you
take down the original torrent file? Someone could just repost the original
torrent file on a different torrent site.

~~~
kleiba
I suppose their whole discography has been available as a torrent download for
a long time anyway. The whole thing could have been made a whole lot easier,
all they'd have had to do was to say: "Look, for the next 24 hours, we're not
going to press charges on otherwise illegal file sharing."

------
Edd314159
What's funny is one of the albums they've put up for download ("De La Soul is
Dead") seems to itself been downloaded from a piracy website. This album lacks
any ID3 data except for a link to
"[http://rappalata.net/"](http://rappalata.net/"). I can't read Russian, so
forgive me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't look too legitimate. (EDIT:
Correction: all tracks have that link)

------
Jacqued
For those wondering, I've just started to download them, the albums are
100-160MB each, so that seems to be in the range for FLAC or 320 MP3

Edit : I can confirm, they are 320 mp3s

~~~
darklajid
Checked 5 out of 6 (after that the links were down) and only track 01 - but
all of these were mp3@320

------
aye
This is huge. This is amazing. Not only are De La Soul incredible artists, but
their work isn't available on Rdio. I had De La Soul is Dead on cassette -- I
definitely know what I'll be doing at 11 am (servers willing).

~~~
tommorris
Yep, not on Spotify either. Want some De La Soul on my playlists.

------
hiphopyo
Check my homage to the guy who produced their best beats:

[http://bit.ly/1dOAbq9](http://bit.ly/1dOAbq9)

[http://bit.ly/1dOAbq9+](http://bit.ly/1dOAbq9+) (preview)

~~~
Ryanmf
Good stuff, thanks for sharing it.

Having said that, I can't help but get nitpicky about a few things (I hope you
take this as constructive criticism).

Filling in the blanks: Jackhigh is from the UK, Odd Nosdam is from the midwest
but lives in Berkeley, Nocow is Russian (St. Petersburg). Shlohmo is from Los
Angeles, not New York. Lunice is from Montreal, not the UK. Dakim is
definitely from Detroit, but moved to California a while back. Mike Slott is
marked as New York, where he lives now, but he's originally from Glasgow.

Ssaliva and Cupp Cave are the same person. His occasional collaborator Dem
Hunger (who is an insane genius) seems only to be releasing music under the
Wanda Group moniker of late. Jeremiah Jae is included, as is his older group
material with Young Black Preachers, but not the newer stuff as Black Jungle
Squad. The DJ for that group, Pbdy, signed to Brainfeeder not too long ago,
runs a few regular nights in LA as well as his own label (TAR), and should
probably be included, as should many others.

However, the most egregious omissions from the list are Kutmah and Daddy Kev.
Daddy Kev is one of the residents and founders of Low End Theory, and the man
behind Alpha Pup Records, a label which has released work by many—perhaps even
most—of the artists on that list. Kutmah founded Sketchbook, the art/music
night which evolved into Low End Theory. When Ras G releases a song called
"One 4 Kutmah"—one of many instances of a producer naming a track "One for/4
_x_ " as a nod to Dilla's "One for Ghost" on _Donuts_ —that pretty well
establishes you as a godfather of the scene. Without the contributions of
those two guys that huge circle covering Los Angeles on the map gets a lot
smaller.

And that kind of gets to the heart of what's really missing from this
graphic—the personal connections. You're documenting an art movement which is
very much alive, not only in the sense that it's constantly evolving, but that
it's filled with real people who are friends and coworkers and share ideas
(and experiences and meals and even sometimes bathrooms and lease agreements)
with each other.

The fact that a handful of producers from across the map all dabble in samples
that might qualify their work as "world music" is sort of interesting, I
guess. What I find a great deal more interesting is that Kutmah used to earn
extra cash by picking up shifts at Poo-Bah Records in Pasadena, one of the
best independent record stores on the planet, which just so happens to be co-
owned and managed by Take (who is going by Sweatson Klank these days).

Other employees of that shop have included Ras G, Black Monk, and Detective
Tully, who himself has long been the stage manager (and frequent opening act)
at Low End Theory, and is a founding member of the My Hollow Drum crew along
with Teebs, yuk., Co. Fee, Bahwee, and others. MHD made their name playing a
residency at the The Crosby in Santa Ana, which was co-owned by Chris Alfaro
a.k.a. Free the Robots, a venue which more recently has played host to
frequent performances by members of the Soulection and Team Supreme
collectives, who have been making huge moves lately and are completely absent
from your list. (Even more recently, The Crosby was forced to shut its doors,
though I'm certain something incredible will rise from its ashes.)

Similarly, Kutmah was also one of the earliest participants in dublab, one of
the first touchstones of the beat scene in Los Angeles. Its founder, frosty,
was once a member of Adventure Time alongside Daedelus, and another early and
frequent dublab collaborator matthewdavid would go on to release his own work
on Brainfeeder, and put out tapes by Ras G, Samiyam, Odd Nosdam, Ahnnu, Dakim,
Dem Hunger, yuk. and many others on his Leaving Records imprint, which just
last year signed a distribution deal with Stones Throw.

And that brings us back to Dilla, as so many things do. His impact is wide and
deep, and he inspired a great many people to do a great many things, including
inspiring you to create that graphic, which itself just barely scratches the
surface.

~~~
hiphopyo
Thanks for the valuable insight. See you at Low End.

------
orblivion
I entered my gmail address with a "+" in order to differentiate mail coming
from this direction, and it considered my address invalid.

~~~
wlj
You can put in an invalid email address and then click through to Mailchimp's
signup form, which does respect the + sign.

------
dylanz
They take the marquee up out of the biz.

As a long time De La fan, this was a great thing to wake up to. They fell out
of my daily playlist for a while because I'm horrible at keeping my devices
synced. Now I have it engrained in my mind that I can download their catalog
at anytime, so they'll probably be the first "go to" music in a lot of future
situations.

~~~
larrik
It's only for 25 hours, not "anytime."

~~~
gonzo
I'm thinking they'll need to extend that some, because their download
mechanism failed in approx 15 minutes.

------
eponeponepon
If this turns out to be all 128k mp3s, I am going to be thoroughly irked.

...and then proceed to grab the lot anyway, of course.

~~~
codelap
I'm sure you didn't mean it to sound entitled, but it's free music.
Disappointed in 128k is fine, as you can't get the sound quality that would
meet your requirement to be in your library. But it shouldn't annoy you.

~~~
eponeponepon
Nah, it doesn't actually _annoy_ me - forgive my hyperbole. It would be more
exciting to have lovely clean flacs than to have dirty mp3s, though. :)

------
waylandsmithers
...for 25 hours starting at 11AM Eastern, not indefinitely

------
grahamel
They've started now -
[http://www.wearedelasoul.com/](http://www.wearedelasoul.com/) Process is:
choose an album/albums, enter an email, click link in email, get message
saying they'll be ready in about an hour

~~~
gonzo
then dropbox saturated, and you can't get the zip files.

------
n2j3
So who's gonna be the one to tell De La Soul of the BitTorrent file
distribution system?

~~~
reticulated
Probably the Dropbox sysadmins!

~~~
gaadd33
You mean Amazon?

------
yardie
To me "Stakes is High (1996)" was their first album I really liked. And I
can't find it online anywhere (not the warez servers, I support my artists).
At the moment all I have is an empty CD case as someone has absconded with my
CD.

~~~
rjtavares
Although I can't understand why you didn't like 3 feet high, I agree with with
on Stakes is High. One of the most underrated albums in hip-hop.

~~~
yardie
I'm not sure why 3 feet high did not resonate with me. It was good but not
great album, IMO. Me, myself, and I was getting too much commercial play so I
never took it seriously.

It might also be timing. When 3 feet was released I was a pre-teen. Stakes is
High arrived when I was a real adolescent, I was dating, working part-time,
and hanging out with friends. Buying music was a big decision back then, a $15
CD required 3 hours of minimum wage, fast food work.

------
NAFV_P
Talking about sought after hip-hop, the article reminded me of this:

[http://www.discogs.com/KMD-Black-
Bastards/release/4762758](http://www.discogs.com/KMD-Black-
Bastards/release/4762758)

~~~
sizzle
You fancy DOOM I take it?

~~~
NAFV_P
> _You fancy DOOM I take it?_

Whoops, mis-parsed your comment initially. I thought you meant the video game,
not MF-DOOM.

Yes, to both.

~~~
sizzle
any hip hop recommendations?

~~~
NAFV_P
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s_13iPg6DY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s_13iPg6DY)

||

[http://www.discogs.com/Siah-And-Yeshua-Dapo-ED-Siah-And-
Yesh...](http://www.discogs.com/Siah-And-Yeshua-Dapo-ED-Siah-And-Yeshua-Dapo-
ED/release/195338)

------
cycojesus
"Error (509) This account's public links are generating too much traffic and
have been temporarily disabled!"

~~~
thaJeztah
Yup, same here..

~~~
cstross
+1. (Me too.)

I suspect De La Soul hit some sort of quota limit and Dropbox will either (a)
hit them up for a bandwidth bill, or (b) decide to raise the limit as a
goodwill/marketing gesture, later in the day.

 _Edit_ : Downloads working now, 46 minutes after release time.

------
jgeerts
Noooo... I want to give them my money.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
Isn't there a way to do that? For some reason I thought I read in another
source about this that there was a donation type link?

~~~
Jacqued
Nope, you just leave your email and they send you the links by mail. They
don't even offer a way to send money.

------
barlescabbage
There's some bands like wilderness
survival([http://www.wildernesssurvivalmusic.com](http://www.wildernesssurvivalmusic.com))
that have always given away their music. Perhaps, this is how things will work
going forward.

------
ItendToDisagree
Do we think Trent Reznor, Thom Yorke, and others may follow suit? I really
hope so!!

~~~
k-mcgrady
Radiohead were one of the first major artists to do a 'pay what you want'
which included $0. I believe they regretted it and I think I read one of the
reasons was that it devalued music for everyone. e.g. if they are giving it
away why do others think they can charge?

------
majani
"Much more than they can see is how it'll always be, believe me"

De La Soul - Much More
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VojfkAZZqXA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VojfkAZZqXA)

------
vfarmm
Received my download link downloaded to my galaxy phone but reads file cant be
opened

------
ndrake
The Dropbox links are working for me now.

~~~
fuzzywalrus
I haven't even gotten a confirmation e-mail.

------
antocv
Awesomeness, De La Soul is the cream of Hip Hop.

More artists should follow this example, and we HNers should listen to Stakes
is High and "What we do for (love)" when nature calls. Its valentines after
all.

------
bashcoder
Not a good enough offer - they would have to pay me to download these.

~~~
bashcoder
Seriously though, I hate to see these kinds of unforced errors. Especially
from guys who should understand that the only reason people know who they are
is because of a business model that is under siege.

Now is a time when the music industry desperately needs to make the case for
value. These kind of gags don't help anybody.

~~~
bashcoder
OK, so I get downvoting a joke that someone doesn't think is helpful to the
argument. No problem. But why would someone downvote a legitimate music
industry opinion that they disagree with? As someone with over 35 albums to my
credit, I just happen to think this isn't a good strategy.

Is the groupthink so strong on HN that someone can't express an opinion
supporting the commercial value of professional artists and their work?

~~~
mratzloff
I up-voted the comment before I saw this response, as I always do when I see a
valid opinion down-voted. Down-voting opposing viewpoints is annoying, but
generally people like me will negate it, so there isn't much to be gained from
complaining about it.

~~~
bashcoder
Understood - thanks for the feedback.

