The legal repercussions of the protest were minimal a number of the participants received cease and desist letters from EMI, but no charges were filed in connection with the event. Over 100,000 copies were downloaded on that day alone. Hundreds of web sites publicized the event with 170 hosting the album for download. Participating websites posted copies of The Grey Album for free download for a 24-hour period in protest of EMI's attempts to prevent distribution of the mashup on the grounds that sampling is fair use and that a statutory license should be provided in the same manner as if an artist were to perform or record a cover version of a song. Music industry activist group Downhill Battle responded by coordinating Grey Tuesday, an electronic civil disobedience event held on 24 February 2004. The hype around The Grey Album caught the attention of Beatles' copyright holder EMI, who ordered Danger Mouse and retailers carrying the album to cease distribution. ĭanger Mouse also commented at length on the creation of The Grey Album in the 2007 Danish documentary Good Copy Bad Copy: A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture. You can do different things, it doesn't have to be just what some people call stealing. I stuck to those two because I thought it would be more challenging and more fun and more of a statement to what you could do with sample alone. Once I got into it, I didn't think about anything but finishing it. I was obsessed with the whole project, that's all I was trying to do, see if I could do this. Ī lot of people just assume I took some Beatles and, you know, threw some Jay-Z on top of it or mixed it up or looped it around, but it's really a deconstruction. 10 in The Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critics poll. The Grey Album was named the best album of 2004 by Entertainment Weekly and ranked No.

A buzz around the album resulted in wider Internet distribution and media attention garnering a glowing review in the Februissue of The New Yorker. While Danger Mouse never asked permission to use the Beatles' material, Jay-Z's a cappella recordings, though copyrighted, were released commercially for the purpose of encouraging mashups and remixes. Danger Mouse created The Grey Album as an experimental project intended for a limited 3,000-copy release in February 2004.

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