{"id":324119,"date":"2010-02-15T16:46:30","date_gmt":"2010-02-15T21:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100215\/1235058169.shtml"},"modified":"2010-02-15T16:46:30","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T21:46:30","slug":"emi-apparently-forgot-grey-album-disaster-issues-takedown-of-wu-tang-vs-beatles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/324119","title":{"rendered":"EMI Apparently Forgot Grey Album Disaster; Issues Takedown Of Wu Tang vs. Beatles"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m beginning to think that EMI is trying to commit suicide, given many of its recent actions. Its latest move is to force offline a wildly popular mashup<\/a>, mixing The Beatles with The Wu Tang Clan., despite it getting rave reviews and lots of attention… and despite a history of similar actions backfiring massively for EMI.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a look back. Apparently the folks over at EMI\/Capitol Records have no sense of history. Back in 2004, DJ Danger Mouse put together “The Grey Album,” a fantastic mashup of The Beatles’ “The White Album” with Jay-Z’s “The Black Album.” EMI\/Capitol, who holds the copyright on much of The Beatles’ catalog went nuts, and started sending cease-and-desists<\/a> to pretty much everyone, leading to the infamous “Grey Tuesday” on February 24, 2004, where lots of websites posted the album in protest. Years later, EMI admitted that the Grey Album didn’t do any harm<\/a>, but the company didn’t care, saying “It’s not a question of damage; it’s a question of rights.” Except, that’s not true at all. If no damage is being done — and, in fact, such a mashup is likely to attract a lot more attention to your back catalog from an audience who might not be that familiar with it, you’re making a pretty huge mistake. That’s just business.<\/p>\n

Of course, EMI\/Capitol refuses to learn. A few years later, when someone put together a Beatles\/Beach Boys mashup, EMI\/Capitol again sent out cease-and-desists<\/a> and demanded the IP addresses of anyone who downloaded the album.<\/p>\n

And here we are today, as EMI\/Capitol (who, last we saw, was trying to bootstrap a fake word of mouth<\/a> viral campaign, after its suits blocked a real viral campaign<\/a>) is fighting to stay alive<\/a>, as it is massively in debt<\/a>, with little hope of getting out of it.<\/p>\n

So what does EMI\/Capitol decide to do? The same thing that’s helped fuel this downward spiral: send out cease-and-desists on wildly popular mashups.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of January, word started spreading online of a mashup put together by Tom Caruana and Tea Side Records, called “Wu-Tang vs. The Beatles: Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers.” I have to admit, I’ve been listening to it a lot the last few weeks, and it’s really well done. It quickly started receiving rave reviews<\/a> online. If you listen, this certainly isn’t just playing Wu Tang vocals over Beatles instrumentals. As many noticed, the beats are changed significantly<\/a> to fit with the vocals.<\/p>\n

But, apparently, that’s not going to satisfy EMI\/Capitol. It’s not entirely clear what happened, but the album has been removed from where it was originally posted<\/a>, and the only explanation is a short comment on February 10th:<\/p>\n


\nHad to remove all Wu Beatles material at Capitol Records request
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, yes, as EMI\/Capitol are battling for survival, its lawyers thought the best thing to do with their time was to send a cease & desist to an album that might actually get them some attention and sell some Beatles albums — and they do so knowing how badly this backfired with The Grey Album, leading many to swear off EMI releases. No wonder they’re going out of business.<\/p>\n

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I’m beginning to think that EMI is trying to commit suicide, given many of its recent actions. Its latest move is to force offline a wildly popular mashup, mixing The Beatles with The Wu Tang Clan., despite it getting rave reviews and lots of attention… and despite a history of similar actions backfiring massively for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}