Peter Gabriel Wants You to Re-Shock the Monkey

PreacherTom writes "The party line for the music industry has been clear: discourage music downloads at all cost. However, singer Peter Gabriel is taking things in a different direction. In order to promote his own label, he is actually encouraging people to not only download his music, but also adapt it into something more modern. In doing so, he actually posted a sample pack of Shock the Monkey consisting of vocals and other pieces of the original multitrack recording. Some in the music business would call this the commercial equivalent of hiring kidnappers to babysit. In actuality, Gabriel is pleased with the results."

Minding the "P"'s.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The party line for the music industry has been clear: discourage music downloads at all cost. However, singer Peter Gabriel is taking things in a different direction. In order to promote his own label, he is actually encouraging people to not only download his music"

In other words the copyright holder is giving others permission to do something. Well that certainly beats digitally knocking him over the head, and taking the goods.

Re:So?

[Salvance]

Sure some artists love it, because they often get paid when the music is used, or at least get credit for the riff/sample. The courts have ruled multiple times that unlicensed sampling is a violate of copyright (for example: Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Demsion Films, 2004 [findlaw.com]). Plus, I don't think most artists have access to all the master tracks when sampling "illegally" ... which is partly why contests/experiments like those of Peter Gabriel and Nine Inch Nails were so interesting.

Claiming that all "Real" musicians love having the music sampled is a bit overstated ... particularly since the practice seems most common in Rap and Hip Hop.

Stupidest phrase ever...

[IANAAC]

..the commercial equivalent of hiring kidnappers to babysit...

Uh, no. It just letting listeners remix already recorded segments into something they like.

Really.

Journalists are stupid. Sometimes.

Re:suck 2.0

[frankm_slashdot]

and that my friend, is the beauty of innovation. if people willingly choose to give him money when he is giving his stuff away for free, than he's doing what we all try to achieve. profit. If thats not what "earning" your money is about, then I'm not sure I know what is.

Re:Music + Video?

[pimpimpim]

Put I pray to god, if there is one, that any user-made video will not consist of screencaps of someone's favorite anime movie, dammit there are too many of those around! :)

Better business sense than you might think

[petrus4]

I know it's been said before, but Gabriel and other artists who opt to do this are smarter than it might initially look.

As in the terminology of the open source software market, in this context Gabriel's music constitutes what they call a "loss leader."

He puts his entire discography online, free for the taking. He doesn't make a cracker from that, and presumably he wouldn't plan to. He also lets people do the mashy thing as Bowie did. This generates enormous positive PR for him that he supposedly "gets the open source revolution." Then after a while, he either decides he's got bored sitting at home, or he wants to make some additional revenue...so he decides he wants to do a comeback series of concerts. He'd use his site with the free music as a point of sale for the concert tickets. Let's also say hypothetically that in the meanwhile, a particular one of the mashies of his music has become unusually popular. So he arranges for the author of this particular mashy to play at the concerts with him as a supporting act...Mashy Kid either does his thing solo, or better yet, he and Gabriel do a duet of sorts. Gabriel could also do something like a "very limited" run of autographed photos or CDs to sell at the concerts...which given the infinitely replicable nature of the music files, would hold particular appeal as unique objects.

Mashy Kid gets professionally discovered, so he's very happy...Gabriel's positive public image would be through the roof by this point...and he could also more or less surf home after the concerts on the tidal wave of cash that would have been forthcoming. (Assuming he still has a large fanbase of course, which I'm assuming he does...not to mention the additional demand that would have been raised by the chance of seeing Mashy Kid play)

This of course is only one of an infinite number of possible scenarios by which he could make a fortune with this.

So...yep, it's a crazy move, all right. Crazy like a fox. ;-)

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Maybe, just maybe...

[WilliamSChips]

If you download music without paying for it, you are breaching copyright, end of story.

Mostly true.

All the "file sharers" and "music communities" do is make it worse for honest customers like me who have to put up with copy-protection and over-priced CDs that subsidise your theft.

Untrue. DRM is something the companies want in order to force you to pay for the same thing multiple times and filesharing is just the excuse.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Put your publishing where your mouth is...

[orcrist]

Hmmmmm... I'm not sure if 'Troll' is the appropriate moderation, but I guess the moderator was trying to find something fairly close to "-1 Asshole".

-chris

WHAT!

[spongebill]

Peter Gabriel ....just a stupid blogger? excuse yourself...... Peter Gabriel was the BEST pop artist ever! And this is coming from someone who DESPISES popular music. lemme guess you probably think Phil Collins was the star of Genesis, too! what a loser you are! Gabriel made Genesis popular for Progressive/Rock/Classical all in one. Then the record company started pressuring them on time.... so Lamb Lies down on broadway suffered. then P. Gabriel and S. Hackket left and PHIL COLLINS RUINED THE GREATEST BAND EVER!