Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download | Hacker News Reader

Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download

news.bbc.co.uk

66 pointsXichekolas52 comments

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.

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?

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.

Smart people aren't immune to brainwashing.

If anything--they're more susceptible. http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscie... is a great book on the topic.

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.)

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?

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).

Che was a doctor himself, according to

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

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.

So you think intellect is not correlated with revolutionary-ness?

This is a strawman. He never says that the industry isn't brainwashed. I'm not sure why you are attacking that point.

His point is that the industry is screwed and they know it. Given the choice between folding in the towel and suing to drag out the process (making money along the way), they have made the only logical business choice.

Saying the industry has made the only logical business move is NOT the same as saying they are good people.

How did highly paid experts get things wrong? I'd argue that they were responding to incentives put in place by (not all that well paid) policymakers.

You really think that all those bankers at Lehman sat there plotting to suck the company dry until it went bankrupt? Even though 50% of their salary was in the form of shares?

Here's the NPR stream they mentioned: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1041295...

Edit: bad link.

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

The 192 KB/s version is 65.4MB.

Danger Mouse, who is half of pop group Gnarls Barkley

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

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?

Tons of songs are just: Play a bass note, play it an octave higher, lower, higher, with a 4/4 beat.

Then there's a note, play a note higher, one note higher, back to the first note.

For instance, The Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust, Drop the Pressure by Mylo

[Edit addition] I should also point out that in a big way, modern music is about the clarity of the production, and not necessarily the melody or lyrics.]

modern music is about the clarity of the production

It is also, in a big way, a function of the tribal effect of being part of a mass-media phenomenon, something which the labels are all-but-essential for. Disney could make any of a hundred thousand girls into the next Britney Spears.

(Typically folks recoil in horror at the notion that their enjoyment of music would be affected by this. What can I say... branding works and is not evil?)

"Typically folks recoil in horror at the notion that their enjoyment of music would be affected by this."

Any links to support the claims that branding works, and that modern music is a function of the tribal effect of being part of a mass-media phenomenon?

If you want academic work, look at anything by Merry White about Japanese children -- she covers the phenomenon of how Japanese record companies do it, and why, in detail. (Short version: the fantasy that you are just like this pop star and that they are part of your life sells records.)

If you want more informal analysis, look at anything in the press about Disney Music in the last 10+ years. It is crazy how much of American pop has come out of The Mouse -- not because they have superior access to talented teenagers but because they know what to do to craft, develop, launch and manage a brand which just happens to center around an actual human being. (They're seriously ambivalent about that, actually -- if they could do it without the human they would.)

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1564394,00.html

I also love the Onion's take on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZgXg_7kVI8&feature=playe...

Thanks for the links.

I've gotten the impression that creating hits is a complete black art, whihc is one reason companies are so keen on blatant copies and minor variations.

It was also my understanding that most acts fails, even those pushed by major media; people are fickle about what's trend-worthy.

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.

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?

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.

This seems like a matter of taste. Certain people were apoplectic about the Kenny G. But tons of people actually loved that Kenny G thing (look at the youtube comments). Scary, but true. The Grey Album seems to draw the most ire from Beatles fans who consider their recordings sacrosanct. Personally I liked the 99 problems remix better than either of the two original songs. Related, I'd rather listen to a Girl Talk track before I'd listen to any one of the songs he samples...

You bring up some good points. But associating Danger Mouse with Girl Talk is doing Danger Mouse a HUGE disservice.

I thought the other way around, but to each his own... >:)

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

Define it.

Yeah that's a tough one. I have a musician friend who was obsessed with figuring out what equipment the neptunes used on certain songs and then remaking the instrumental part of the tracks. to my ears, they were pretty much indistinguishable from the originals. what's the distinction?

I guess it doesn't seem too hard to define, but maybe the confusion is philosophical. When I say bit-for-bit, that's what I mean. When I say "remake" it involves using your own voice and instruments to make a new recording. That's actually been the default through all history. There's no "original recordings" for Beethoven's music. If you buy a pop song's sheet music, never having heard the song, that's a very traditional kind of making music, and completely appropriate.

But really, philosophically. Here's an original recording (couldn't find the studio version):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzZHmHqEE7k

Okay, and here's a great remake. I say great because it's so completely original at the same time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVuh1Ymve2I

And here's a ripoff (sort of. The sampled parts were paid for), which you probably already guessed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx3m4e45bTo

I really like that song, but that guy added very little to the original remake, so to speak.

Here is a link to a more original recording.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/The_Last_Time/14716915

If that second video is were the Verve stole their sample then I think there's was sufficiently different as to be new. It wasn't a real sample, not like "brush your shoulders off" ...I just heard that for the first time because of this story. I was getter mad just listening to it.

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.

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.

You raise an interesting point here - why is Kenny G's clarinet so insufferably cheesy to so many (including me), but Danger Mouse doing the same thing with a drum machine is hailed as a visionary (though I'm personally indifferent).

I think the difference may be that while DM is no different, his contributions are at least contemporary; that doesn't make it better, just more fashionable. Clarinets used to be fashionable, and Kenny g's stock-in-trade is musical nostalgia: so nostalgia^2 is not an improvement to most people.

On the other hand, this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ9iNoTKMAs (same song mashed up with Radiohead) presents the same melody in a different but interesting harmonic context - that is, in the same key but with different chords behind it. To me that's innovative, although I don't personally like Radiohead. On the other hand Kenny G's clarinet vampings seem completely unoriginal - as someone who uses sequencers because I'm poor at actually playing bass or piano, he's much better than me at operating his instrument, but isn't doing anything remotely novel with that ability (like introducing new rhythmic or harmonic tension, he's just echoing what's already there with a clarinet).

Although we disagree, I think your points are interesting because I find myself wondering about things like this when I reach a site that mashes up (say) Craigslist with Google - is there really anything original going on here, or is it just digital glue, something the browser will do by itself in a few years?

Kenny G plays soprano saxophone, not clarinet. Insufferable either way, though.

D'oh. Thank you.

I guess I'm just pragmatic about these things, but I find it difficult to think of any sort remix, mash-up or cover that could be done that would make someone an "artistic wrecker". Even your example of belching on top of "Yesterday", while not palatable to most people, perhaps, is still definitely art. It comes down to a matter of taste, not a matter of art. I would argue that this isn't even a particularly recent idea or something unique to music. See: Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917).

As far as it being theft: nobody is going to buy Belching Yesterday under the illusion that they are getting a Beatles recording. There is no lost sale. There may be a possible copyright claim, but I don't think even this is completely cut and dry. Belching Yesterday could win in court as a fair use. You never know...

The grey album was never officially sold by Danger Mouse from what I remember.

Most albums that contain samples go through a legitimate clearing process. Many songs never get released because of sample clearance issues. People who truly profit from stealing someone else's work are generally sued.

Danger Mouse has a lot more on his resume that the Grey Album and other chopped samples. He's clearly an extremely talented producer and songwriter, as already mentioned.

Next time before you go on a little rant, you should at least know what you're talking about. I've made songs out of samples before and many without. I don't think their is less merit in either method. Some songs with samples are significantly more difficult to put together than 100% original compositions.

I agree with you and upvoted you, but you gotta realize we are in a den of thieves here...

I voted you up because it is a valid point and you shouldn't be downvoted as much.

I think it is a matter of deciding how original do you have to be to earn the badge of creativity for yourself.

If you think of the great pop artists, Warhol and Peter Blake for example they all sampled from popular culture but they did it in such a way that they created a visual look that defined art for the generation they created it in.

Equally with music some of the best modern music has used samples to good effect, think of DJ Shadow's work and one of my personal favourites The Avalanches - they took small fragments of other people's work but arranged it in such a way that what they created was an original work in its own right.

In the creative industries we all are influenced by what's around us and artists who do not sample are no different in this regard they just use their influences in a slightly different way.

If you're writing a consumer application and there are great libraries available for much of the functionality, you'd probably use them, right?

If the license on them permitted it, yes. If FOSS advocates want respect for the GPL, then you've got to respect other peoples licenses too.

To be fair, Danger Mouse is a lot more than just Gnarls Barkley. He's a competent producer with credits on a dozen albums in the past 6 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Mouse_(DJ)

We are all ripoff artists, myname. Every sound, thought, experience is nothing more than a rearrangement of what already is. There is nothing new under the sun.

This is a really lame idea and easy to disprove. Go back in time long enough and there were /no/ ideas, therefore, there had to be at least one original idea. If there had to be at least one original idea, there can be many original ideas.

There are lots of new things under the sun.

Edit: I apologize for the lame part. It's not really lame, that was an emotional response.

I didn't say ideas, I was referring to the rearrangement of matter and energy. Music and sounds and just rearrangements of basic "atoms" that have been around forever. So its not all that lame.

Even if you want to go that route, I would still argue that due to the vast number of combinations of atoms in 3D space, there are certainly some that have never before existed in history popping up still today.

Lots of the periodic table was created by Humans, which didn't exist at some point in history: http://www.ptable.com/

Sure, they could exist in a black hole or whatever, but really what matters is whether or not the material is new to consciousness and exists in memory and many new thoughts/arragements of atoms/etc are exactly that -- new to consciousness.

No harm, no foul. What I wrote was pretty off the cuff and thus I can't vigorously defend it. For the most part, you are correct though. There are new things springing into creation all the time, for some definition of new.

And yet... every with every inteligent rearrangement of said existing 'sounds', 'thoughts' and feelings, we create and experiance new and wonderful things.

That's like saying this website is one big ripoff. Mixing and matching content from other people to create something new is totally valid.

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