8/27Record store raid in tennesse rattle rap fans Copyright issues future of mixtapes

[rizzlecapone]

Local DJ Jeff Newlin knew the recording industry was cracking down on illegal "mixtape" CDs. There have been highly publicized raids in cities such as New York and Atlanta over the past two years in which DJs and record store clerks were arrested and tens of thousands of CDs were seized.

This month, the counterfeiting raids reached Nashville, when Metro police seized more than $21,500 worth of CDs and DVDs from two Nashville record stores, Platinum Bound and Key 2 Music.
"My first response (to the Nashville raids) was just of shock," said Newlin, who makes music under the name Chief Rocka and had CDs in both the raided stores. "I never thought that it would happen in Nashville."

The raids have dramatically affected Nashville's hip-hop scene, spurring local retailers and DJs to pull their product from store shelves and making it difficult for Nashville hip-hop fans to find the music.

Labels crack down

The Recording Industry Association of America and other industry groups have put intense focus in recent years on illegal downloading of pirated music and movies, with efforts including lawsuits and arrests. While mixtapes fall under the same laws regarding copyright infringement, they're in a grayer area ethically and artistically.

Mixtapes have been around since the early days of hip-hop, when DJs like Grandmaster Flash would sell cassette recordings of their party performances on the street.

These days, a mixtape is a CD arranged by a DJ that blends original content with altered versions and remixes of popular rap songs. Even though mixtapes violate U.S. copyright law, many of hip-hop’s biggest stars, including 50 Cent and Lil’ Wayne, endorse mixtapes and record exclusive material for them, often rapping over other artists’ hit songs.

“It’s the strongest promotional tool available” for an artist, said Newlin, who has worked on mixtapes with major-label rappers such as Rick Ross. “It’s instant credibility.”

Preserving that credibility with the streets, however, means keeping the major-label music industry out of the mix. The labels, in turn, have generally not legally pursued the mixtape market because of its promotional value. Nobody from the Recording Industry Association of America was available to comment for this story, but the group takes a strong stance against “piracy on the street,” stating on its Web site that “the makers of fake products don’t pay the songwriter, the musician, or the recording studio costs. They don’t develop new artists or finance the promotion or the marketing of new music.”

Newlin argues that mixtapes do help develop and promote new artists — and says that’s something that major labels have known for years. “Everything that I put on a (mixtape) is sent to me,” he said, “either by the artist or the record labels.”

After the Aug. 16 raids, Newlin asked every local retailer still carrying his CDs to remove them from shelves. Nashville-based chain Cat’s Music enforced a chainwide ban on mixtapes after the raids. Jason Herndon, manager of the Cat’s in Hermitage, says the company’s vice president is waiting to hear back from the recording industry association about the material before deciding whether to restock the CDs. “We were under the impression that these types of mixtapes were sanctioned,” Herndon said. “The labels kind of turned a blind eye to them. There are record label reps in our store every week from every major label.”

Fans lose out

Losing their access to mixtapes means local hip-hop fans have lost their direct, personal tie to the artists. A mixtape “was a way for artists to give back to the very loyal core audience,” said Bryan Deese, a hip-hop listener and publisher of Concrete, a local urban culture magazine. “They said things and did things on mixtapes that major labels just wouldn’t let them do. It’s kind of like hip-hop’s Fan Fair or Music City Fest. They don’t have a city they go to every summer and set up booths in a convention center and sign autographs. They put out mixtapes with different DJs from different regions to give back to the fans.”

Lil’ Wayne, a top national artist who’s from New Orleans, used a mixtape track, “Georgia…Bush” to speak to his hometown after Hurricane Katrina: “We from a town where everybody drowned / Everybody died, but baby, I’m still praying with ya.”

Future is murky

Key 2 Music manager Chakisha Beach said the legal issues surrounding mixtapes are “just now coming to light to us. We had no idea until we started doing our research after this happened. If we had gotten a letter or gotten someone coming in the store and saying, ‘You’re not supposed to be selling these,’ under any circumstances we would have tried to fight in a political way, rather than buck the law.”

Underscoring the difficulty of determining which CDs conform to the law and which do not, Beach claims that about 200 of the 828 CDs seized by police from their store weren’t infringing on copyrights at all. “They were (CDs for which) a local artist had actually paid for studio time, wrote his own music, bought beats and melodies from local studio producers.”

The raids haven’t shaken up just the mixtape market — Nashville’s larger hip-hop community has been affected too.

“I really have to think through what’s going on,” Newlin said. “What’s going to happen in three months? Are mixtapes going to ease back onto the scene, or is this going to continue to happen? What’s going to happen to the record stores?”

No matter what the future holds, Jason Herndon at Cat’s says demand for mixtapes is still high.

“People come in every day asking for mixtapes,” he said.

[killa_psy]

daz a lot of $$

[Hoofy]

how much time they get for this type of shit?