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So Pacman Buzzed this link with some rather insightful thoughts about why the industry isn’t suing Greg Gillis (Girl Talk) saying that he is the ultimate Robin Hood posterboy of copyright law, and that lawyers from all around the world would gather around him, prop him up on a chair, march him into Time’s Square and declare him Galactic Emperor of Musical Copyright laws. This might be part of it. However, I’m also willing to bet that if they wanted, the music industry could easily pony up for some equally powerful and talented lawyers to fight their fight.

They also have a pretty powerful precedent on their side, there’s a number of cases where if someone doesn’t get properly credited on a sample, there are ramifications. Even artists who stole from Creative Commons liscenced (looking at you Crystal Castles and Timbaland) artists have had to give credit where credit was due. Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album (which mashes up Jay Z’s Black album with The Beatles’ White alubum) caused some pretty intense disputes between Danger Mouse and EMI, at a certain point EMI even held his OTHER album (Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul) hostage, refusing to release it for almost a year until the issue was resolved.

Exactly how the issue was resolved is actually pretty important when we’re considering Girl Talk. Basically, the labels backed down when it was decided that there was not going to be a commercial release of the album (and sure enough, it’s still available, online, for free, right here).

I’m sure Gillis took his queue from this and released “All Day” for free, on a pay what you can basis. Basically he’s saying “Pay for it if you feel like giving me money.” He could probably turn around in court (if it ever got to that) and say that people were paying him directly as an artist, and not paying for the actual work. As though we were all just kind hearted philanthropists. Which may be so.

So where are we? Oh yeah, he’s not selling the album, so he’s not making a profit directly from the copyrighted material? That sounds right.

So if I’m a big music industry fat cat, and someone comes into my office, sits down on the huge padded leather chair across from me and looks at me from across my enormous treated oak desk that overlooks Los Angeles and asks me what’s to be done about Girl Talk, the conversation would go like this:

Me: Is he selling it?

Them: Nope.

Me: Let him be.

Them: Why?

At which point I would hold up the picture you see to your right and say:

Me: Do you see these people? I’ve seen these people for the past 30 years (in this scenario I’m 65), they only listen to demos of bands you’ve never heard of. But not anymore. What are the odds of these people bobbing their heads to Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” or rapping along with Soulja Boy’s “Pretty Boy Swag”? The odds SHOULD be zero. But they’re not. Because of Girl Talk.

And then I would tell whoever was in my office to get naked, put on boxing gloves, and fight my pet monkey.

When I listen to Girl Talk, there’s a lot of guilty pleasures that are indulged. Do I want to listen to all 4 minutes of Bananaram’s “Cruel Summer”? No. Will I throw my hand up at a club and gesture approvingly to a DJ when he samples it for 10 seconds? Yes. And that’s what Girl Talk taps into, he masterfully weaves a lot of ultimately cheesy samples into an enjoyable experience with solid beats (which are also stolen). He takes just the right amounts of music you ACTUALLY listen to, music you’re nostalgic about, music with gangster cred that makes you feel less white, and pop music with undeniably catchy hooks that would never listen to in public and whips it into something awesomes.

Taken apart I would say that a good 70% of the music Girl Talk samples I would not listen to at all, let alone on a regular basis (I’ve been listening to “All Day” more or less *ahem* all day since it came out on Monday). But there I am, music snob and all, on the metro, nodding my head to Lady Gaga (mixed together with Iggy Pop and the Beastie Boys mind you).

And I think the record industry is aware of this. They spend a good portion of their marketing budgets making sure some of these artists get as much radio play as possible, but no amount of spending would ever get a lot of these tunes into my MP3 player. Girl Talk did it. And he’s not even selling it. If even a handful of people legally download and pay for Rihanna’s “Rude Boy”, even if they did so ironically, the record labels win. That’s to say nothing about the 371 OTHER songs on the disc (or Girl Talk’s previous efforts).

That might be the real reason why, even though he’s “shrouded in controversy” the labels just let him do his thing, because bottom line he’s probably doing them more good than harm.

PS: Fun Fact, even Girl Talk has never sampled anything from The Beatles catalogue. I guess there are lines you just don’t cross.