country feedback

(crossposted with REMcycle)

Lots of press on the last post (on REMcycle, here).

First was Rolling Stone, I was starting to see pings on the blog at approximately 10am (EDT) from them.

Rolling Stone: R.E.M. Archive Blog Preemptively Shut Down by Universal
Label disputes post featuring the band's earliest demo cassette

Then they started coming in droves, mostly rehashes of the RS article but a few with original content (prefix, aux.tv, exclaim.ca...).

CNN: R.E.M. archive blog preemptively shut down by Universal (RS article feed)

prefixmag: R.E.M. Restoration Blog Pressured To Shut Down By Universal Over Material That The Label May Not Actually Own

aux.tv (Canada): Universal issues copyright takedown notice for songs it doesn’t own on R.E.M. archivist’s blog

exclaim.ca (Canada): R.E.M. Blog Shut Down After Questionable Copyright Claim from Universal

The best one though, as they actually did original research (err, they talked to us) was from Spin - which also presented the most balanced piece:

Spin: Fan's Digital R.E.M. Archive Nixed by Universal Music

Takedown notice thwarts latest project by audiophiles behind Joy Division/New Order blogs

And lastly, my favorite:

soundabble: R.E.M. Archive Blog Preemptively Shut Down by Universal

Here's the entirety of the Soundabble article, preserved just in case the editors realize the writer was beaming in from Mars (or felt that repeating the RS article was much more exciting if run through a loop of Google re-translations first):

The digital archivist who easy a singles catalogs of a Smiths, Joy Division and New Order in a array of blog projects is being strongly disheartened from starting a identical plan collecting R.E.M.’s beginning work. In a blog post on a nascent R.E.M.cycle site, a blogger famous as Analog Loyalist explained that Universal, a record association that owns a band’s IRS Records catalog, expelled a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice for an R.E.M. post on a writer’s sister site The Power of Independent Trucking featuring a easy chronicle of a band’s initial cassette demo, with early renditions of “Radio Free Europe,” “Sitting Still” and “White Tornado.”


“Tell me, what purpose does a IFPI (of that Universal is apparently a member) have to do with unreleased element available when a rope had no record contract?,” Analog Loyalist writes, referring to a International Federation of a Phonographic Industry. “These were demos openly given divided by a band. On low-fi C45 cassettes. And a IFPI thinks it’s their business how?”


The blogger is now reconsidering a knowledge of posterior a project. “So we can see since I’m really wavering to pierce brazen with this blog, usually since we don’t wish to see my efforts as a writer/archivist/engineer wasted,” he writes.


The site would in fact be a really labor-intensive process. As explained in a sidebar for a R.E.M., Smiths and Joy Division/New Order sites, a marks used are “taken from a best/earliest probable sources to equivocate complicated mastering techniques that vanquish a dynamics,” and a design is “scanned during a top probable fortitude and a form was reset when probable regulating a strange fonts.” All works featured in these projects are from out-of-print sources, and some marks have never been commercially expelled or reissued.

A rope has no record contract, indeed.