Mixtape Drama: Record Industry Cuts Off Nose To Spite Face

It must only be a couple of days ago when we highlighted the Recording Industry Association of America’s rampage against music fans. In that case, they had won a successful lawsuit against a woman who downloaded music files when she was a minor. Not content with trying to win 18,000 other cases like that, the RIAA has decided to stop what is probably one of the most thriving and important aspects of the music business today: the mixtape.

On Tuesday night police arrested DJ Drama in Atlanta under Georgia’s Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization law. DJ Drama makes mixtapes. Very influential ones. The NY Times explains:

In the world of hip-hop few music executives have more influence than DJ Drama. His “Gangsta Grillz” compilations have helped define this decade’s Southern rap explosion. He has been instrumental in the careers of rappers like Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne. He appears on the cover of the March issue of the hip-hop magazine XXL, alongside his friend and business partner T.I., the top-selling rapper of 2006. And later this year DJ Drama is scheduled to make his Atlantic Records debut with “Gangsta Grillz: The Album.”

Now DJ Drama is yet another symbol of the music industry’s turmoil and confusion.

…The compilations produced by DJ Drama and his protégés are known as mixtapes, though they appear on CDs, not cassettes. Mixtapes have become a vital part of the hip-hop world. They are often the only way for listeners to keep up with a genre that moves too quickly to be captured on albums. On a mixtape you can hear unreleased remixes, sneak previews from coming CDs, casual freestyle rhymes, never-to-be-released goofs.

Let’s repeat that one: “They are often the only way for listeners to keep up with a genre that moves too quickly to be captured on albums.” Of course, as one commenter pointed out on PSFK that at the end of the day the music industry’s view is that sharing copyrighted material is illegal. The problem is, that attitude is out of touch with the attitude of music lovers. Music can’t hide behind a barrier of what’s legal and what’s not. Control is dead. Inspiration, like DJ Drama’s mixtapes, is the way forward.

DJ Drama Arrested – Report – New York Times

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