The Girl Talk Debate!

So over the past couple of weeks people keep coming to me and asking how Girl Talk is getting away with what he is doing.

Here are a couple of the questions that keep coming up; "Does he have all the rights for the stuff he is using?" "Do all the artists know he is using there stuff?"

Seeing as most of my best friends, family, friends family's, keep asking me how can someone get away with taking popular music from over the last 2 decades (sometimes even more) "mix it/mash it" up with other artists and not get in legal trouble.

Well seeing as I see myself well educated in the music industry and up to date with what is happen to music in the Digital Age, here is my answer to how this is happening:

1) Does Gregg Gillis (Girl Talk) get all the proper rights to all the sames that he uses on his LP's as well as live?

NO, I read once (in one of his older blogs) that he has only ever asked one person to use their stuff, and the only reason he did end up asking them was because he ran into the them at the airport, and there response was "ya that's cool I don't care, I've made my money off of that track"

For all the other 500+ samples he has used, he has not let any of the artist know, they only way that they would have found out was through word of month but others.

2) So how can he get away with it?

GT says all the samples he uses fall under fair use, here is example of what he is talking about, which provides an exemption to copyright law under certain circumstances. Fair use allows book reviewers to quote from novels or online music reviewers to use short clips of songs. He feels that because his samples are short, and his music sounds so little like the songs he takes from that it is unlikely to affect their sales.

Again because the music industry is just starting to get a hold on the Digital Age, this is all fair under the copyright laws right now. And another way that GT as backed up his point even more is by providing a Wikipedia page for the new LP "Feed The Animals" where every artist is listed, at what time the artist comes into the album, what song he uses as well what song he uses. The link below will take you to the page it you feel like reading more into it.

Feed The Animals

Well for now that's all I feel like getting into with the Girl Talk debate, but one last thing that I tell people all the time. Listen to "Feed The Animals"and make a game out of it, can you get all 300+ artists on the LP???

Pee's

Girl Talk - Live at the Fillmore (Weezer - Lil' Wayne Mix)