Free the Grey Album!

I received this email last week and have decided to go Grey…

We noticed you linked to a story about the Grey Album. It seems like copies of the Grey Album are definitely making their way to people who want them, but we thought it was vitally important that we *insist* on sample-based musicians’ right to create, and on the public’s right to hear the amazing music they make. EMI wasn’t just trying to stop DJ DM from selling the album, they sent cease and desist letters to some websites that were making it available for free. EMI acted to stop people from hearing this piece of fun and inventive music, and that’s just not right.

So we’re organizing an online-protest of sorts–called “Grey Tuesday”–to take a stand and pretend, even if only for 24 hours, that we don’t live in a culture where the legal environment ensnares musicians. The idea is that this Tuesday, February 24th, as many sites as possible mirror the Grey Album and/or turn their page “grayscale” (i.e. no color) for the day. We’re also calling for people connected to independent radio stations (college, commercial, internet) to get the entire Grey Album played at some point on Tuesday (possibly along with the Beatles and Jay-Z sources).

We’ve been pretty successful so far with our attempts to provoke debate about sampling and copyright. Check out this article from Wired that we got going or have a look at our press page. We’re pretty confident that, if there’s a reasonable level of participation, we can translate this “online event” into some serious coverage in mainstream press that tons of regular people will read.

And what regular people think about sampling and copyright matters, especially when the future of the music industry is almost entirely up for grabs.

So please, check it out: http://greytuesday.org
and email us to join: greytuesday@downhillbattle.org