“They may say EMI is trying to stop an artwork,” said Jeanne Meyer, an EMI spokeswoman, referring to the Web sites hosting the protest, “but they neglect to understand that there is a well-established market for licensing samples, and Mr. Coordinators estimate that more than 100,000 copies of The Grey Album were downloaded that day, but neither EMI nor Sony/ATV actually filed any suits. The protest was provoked by the opinion that sampling is fair use. On February 24, 2004, participating websites posted copies of The Grey Album for free download in protest of EMI’s attempts to prevent any distribution of the unlicensed work. The album spawned a day of electronic civil disobedience, Grey Tuesday, led by activists seeking to restructure the music industry. Even so, the record was (and still is) widely available on the internet. Danger Mouse claimed that he complied with the orders because he did not sell the record. But what he could do artistically, he wasn’t allowed to do legally.ĮMI, representing Capitol Records, the owner of The Beatles’ sound recording copyrights, and Sony/ATV Publishing, owner of the compositions on The White Album, sent Danger Mouse cease and desist letters, asserting that he was infringing on their copyrights.
I was like, ‘Wait a minute - I can do this,’ ” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “I had seen that there were these a cappella Jay-Z records…I was listening to The Beatles later that day, and it just hit me like a wave. Entertainment Weekly named it the best album of the year for 2004, calling it a “startlingly, shockingly wonderful piece of pop art.”Īnd art is what Danger Mouse had in mind. It’s popularity, bolstered by positive reviews in mainstream media, soon spread on the internet.
The Grey Album was initially created for just his friends with only 3,000 copies pressed for non-retail distribution.
In 2004, DJ Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) mixed rapper Jay-Z’s The Black Album over unauthorized samples of The Beatles’ LP The Beatles (aka The White Album) to create something brand new. But is it legal? What constitutes fair use? With the advent of digital media, the practice of sampling has become ubiquitous.
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