Fresh from kick-starting a multi-million dollar campaign for their Music Unlimited streaming service, Sony are flexing their corporate muscle in a different way, with news that the music corporation have unleashed their legal team on a small American indie label for copyright infringement for sampling A Tribe Called Quest’s back catalogue in a tribute album… that doesn’t actually include any ATCQ samples.
Gummy Soul, an online collective that functions as a production group and boutique record label focussing on hip hop, reported on their website that they have had to pull the release of Bizzare Tribe: A Quest To The Pharcyde after receiving a cease and desist order from Sony Music last Friday 31st May.
“As owners of A Tribe Called Quest’s catalog, Sony is claiming copyright infringement and has demanded that we take the album down immediately or face further litigation for damages,” reads a statement on Gummy Soul’s website.
Sony is taking issue with the 55 minute tribute album, compiled by Amerigo Gazaway, one of Gummy Soul’s three former radio presenter co-founders – along with Wally Clark and Kurtis Stanley. But the clincher, and Gummy Soul’s main gripe, is that Gazaway utilised the original source material in his tribute mix; using the original jazz, soul, and funk recordings that the influential East Coast hip hop group sampled to “recreate classic productions” and reinterpret the original material with vocal selections from West Coast hip hop group, The Pharcyde.
The Gummy Soul statement reads: “while less than 3 minutes of the 55 minute Bizarre Tribe experience is Sony owned ATCQ material (you’ll remember Amerigo flipped the original sourced records Tribe sampled, as opposed to having sampled their music directly), Sony feels that our project is non-transformative, and is in direct competition with original A Tribe Called Quest material.”
The group penned an open letter to Sony Music after receiving the threat of legal action, outlining that their work falls under the “fair use” exemption of copyright as defined by the Copyright Act of 1976, while critiquing the major record label for their knee-jerk reaction.
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SOURCE: Tone Deaf
