The Grey Album
DJ Danger Mouse has remixed Jay-Zs’s Black Album with samples taken from the Beatles’ White Album. It’s a really brilliant album, both deeply acoustic and obviously computer-created. Rolling Stone raved. The Boston Globe’s music critic liked it.
Postmodern art is fundamentally incompatible with strong copyright. Examples abound. The search cost for the copyright owner of a sample is way too high, as are the transaction costs of obtaining the license once the copyright owner is found. What’s the solution? Compulsories?
UPDATE: Illegal-Art.org has posted 192kbps MP3s of the whole album.
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I listened to like 5 tracks and honestly, I wasn’t too impressed. I feel like I should know Jay Z’s album better, which I’m not interested in doing. EMI also hasn’t allowed Beatles tracks to go on sale online. Combine that with all the bootlegger crashes they’ve had, EMI has been very busy “protecting” the Beatles work.
Comment by stacia — February 17, 2004 @ 5:34 pm
[...] .org as participants in tomorrow’s online protest, in which many sites will make the Grey Album available for free download, have received C&D letters from Capitol Re [...]
Pingback by joegratz.net » Grey Tuesday sited C&D’d — February 23, 2004 @ 9:43 pm
WEll im impressed. Beatles are classic and Jay-z is classic. Mixed equals one of the best albums of the year!
Comment by Glen Hall — August 30, 2004 @ 6:43 pm