The Love of Beer
TV Girl
Rhino Entertainment, a subsidiary of music conglomerate Warner Music Group, is issuing notices to websites to take down "If You Want It," a track by local indie-pop duo TV Girl that samples the hook from Todd Rundgren's 1968 hit "Hello It's Me." TV Girl has taken the track off their Bandcamp site and it's been removed from Pitchfork and YouTube, among other websites.
"Just to clarify, TV Girl had nothing to do with the takedown notice," members Trung Ngo and Brad Petering wrote in an email that they sent tonight to bloggers and journalists who've posted the track online. "We have no affiliation with Warner Music Group or any other songwriting association or record label. The copyright claim is on behalf of Todd Rundgren for the use of a sample from his song 'Hello, It’s Me'."
We'll have an update on this in next week's issue of CityBeat. In the meantime, here's the email in full:
Just to clarify, TV Girl had nothing to do with the takedown notice. We have no affiliation with Warner Music Group or any other songwriting association or record label. The copyright claim is on behalf of Todd Rundgren for the use of a sample from his song “Hello, It’s Me”.
Even though it’s a bummer that our particular song is being silenced in this way, we feel that this is representative of a larger issue that will only get worse as blogs continue to gain influence over an increasingly desperate music industry.
When the song started getting really popular late last year, we reached out to the copyright holders to get the sample cleared so that we could avoid this mess. Their responses were completely unreasonable. To give you an idea, one company demanded 100% of all proceeds from any money made, in addition to us paying a $5,000 clearance fee. Basically they were saying: “Fuck you, we have all the power, either pay us or take the song down.” Because we weren’t making any money off the song anyways, and because it had already spread around the net thanks to blogs, we declined their offer.
The fact is, because of the amazing independent promotional capacities of music blogs and sites like Bandcamp, it’s increasingly unnecessary for bands like us to align ourselves with major labels or music companies like WMG. Our use of the sample easily falls under the protection of “fair use”. WMG’s actions are a rather blatant attempt to bully independent artists and blogs into playing by their rules. It’s easy to see tactics like this becoming more common as the industry continues to shift.
Obviously, we wouldn’t recommend keeping the song up if there’s any chance of your site being affected. We just thought that you and your readers might want to know about this issue as it directly affects every band, blog, and music fan operating outside the mainstream music machine.
Thank for listening, and feel free to post about or reprint this e-mail. We are truly grateful to all the blogs and fans that have supported us.
-Trung and Brad
TV Girl
Clarification: TV Girl said that Warner Music Group issued the takedown notices, but an examination of one of the notices after this was posted revealed that the notice was sent on behalf of Rhino Entertainment, a Warner Music Group subsidiary. This post has been edited to reflect that.
