We published the manifesto on Monday January 7th 2008. Subsequently the following articles were published and much arguing took place in the comments sections. We've been branded as everything between "faggots who are ruining music" to "brilliant." "While we think that this is quite possibly a hoax, it’s a fantastic one." Label: Life "Our new heroes!" Paper Thin Walls A lot of great discussion has been taking place about the project and we think that's just aces. Whether you're excited, bored, enthralled, angry, annoyed, or curious about The Overdub Tampering Committee we thank you for even letting it cross your brain for a moment. Shortly after the above articles came out, Jon Parales of the New York Times wrote us with this short, reasonable request: "A scintilla of evidence would be nice." We wrote back: "Jon, Thanks for your email. We won't be providing any more evidence than what is presented in the manifesto. We know what we've done, we've had fun doing it, and now it's in the public's hands. We don't believe the burden of proof lays on our shoulders. Part of our goal with the project was that no one would ever know for sure how many albums we worked on, which ones, or if they resided in your digital music collection. In this way we highlight certain aspects of living in present day U.S.A. Often times proof is nothing more than general public consensus."
First off, if you haven't yet, you should read The Overdub Tampering Committee's Manifesto.
Also, as many of you have suggested to us, by providing examples of our work we're likely placing ourselves in the open for a lawsuit from...someone. We feel that complying with the "Evidence Requests" would only put us in a spot where we'd be poised for a large amount of legal trouble. We love the project but don't want to ruin our lives because of it.
Which brings us to the least enjoyable aspect of all this: the death threats. Our inbox has been flooded with messages from people all across the globe and while we certainly don't mind negative messages we've been disturbed by the ones threatening violence or murder. Is this really necessary? (I know, the same question can be asked of us as well) What a boring, unoriginal, uninspired response. Is that really the cost of admission for jump starting a conversation with unusual methods these days? As Christopher Weingarten of Paper Thin Walls wrote us, "That's the cruel irony of culturejamming. Everyone can know about it, but no one is allowed know who did it."
So, as you may know, no one likes to die. We're thinking about shutting this all down and erasing all traces we've left behind. But we've had a lot of fun and we've met our goals and then some.
To all of the people who asked us if they could join the Committee, or told us that they're taking the project on for themselves, we dedicate the experiment to you. Music is alive, not dead and lying in a digital heap at the bottom of your hard drive, and this is just another way of realizing that. Make it, hear it, feel it, tamper with it.
Write us: overdubtampering@gmail.com
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
You Will Not Die, It's Not Poison
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Please Allow Us To Introduce Ourselves
The Overdub Tampering Committee’s Manifesto
OR
Your Copy Of Your Favorite
Album Has Us All Over It
OR
Your Copy Of Your Favorite
Album Has Us All Over It
What?
We are a group of musicians who have downloaded newly leaked albums by popular artists, quickly recorded many subtle overdubs over the work, and then re-leaked it to the internet. We have done this for about three years now. We used all kinds of instruments with recording techniques that matched the audio quality of the album in question. We used a varied amount of re-leaking methods including but not limited to Soulseek, OiNK, The Pirate Bay, Limewire and zipped files hosted on sites like YouSendIt or Mediafire with links spread out on hundreds of message boards. Our turnaround time was usually very short so often our version of the artist’s album was online for download within hours of its original leak. If you illegally download music on the internet the chances that our work is in your collection is very, very likely! In fact, you might have a whole lot of us!
Why?
One of the things that's always shocked us about people “illegally downloading” music is the blind faith that what they’ve downloaded is the actual finished product that the band has released (or is about to release). We download and we had this faith too. But one day, about 4 years ago, one of us downloaded a newly leaked album by a very popular band. Excitedly listening to it for the first time we noticed a very out of place death metal song in the middle of the album. The obvious genre change and the ability to check the track listing and run time for each song on a reliable website made it easy to sniff out that this leak had been tampered with. We discarded the leaked files and waited patiently for the actual release where upon we bought it in a store.
This got us thinking: what if this problem got more insidious, subtle, and widespread? What if there was a network of musicians who got a hold of albums right as they leaked, added subtle yet very much additional overdubs all over the album, and then re-leaked it to the internet?
We imagined a scenario where someone would get in a car with their friend, he would put on the new _____ album, and you would say, "Where's all the piano parts?" to which the driver would say, "What piano parts? This album is all guitars and drums." Finally, you would scratch your head and say, "Not my copy!"
It would be bewildering.
It would be irksome.
It would be annoying.
We set out to make that specific bewildering, annoyance a possibility.
We guessed that if this could become a widespread phenomenon it would really highlight one of the biggest flaws with the “illegal downloading” method of obtaining music, i.e You Do Not Know That Someone Hasn't Fucked With Your Favorite Band's Album.
Attempting to police and punish “illegal downloaders” with lawsuits and fines is misguided and, in our opinion, a waste of time. This model treats the music fans as criminals. That’s an insane business model. But we expect nothing less than insanity from large, crumbling corporations. We do not know how the music industry will change in the next few years and we don’t know how a method will arise to ensure that musicians are properly paid for their recorded work. We have no solutions. All we set out to do here is jump-start a conversation. It would delight us if our relentless efforts over the last few years might force you to doubt what you consider to be a pristine source of untampered music. We’re here to tell you it’s far from pristine.
However, because of the subtlety and the careful nature of our work we realized that our mission might go unnoticed forever (with the possible exception of the scenario explained above, or the artist themselves checking out leaked versions of their own albums) unless we made a formal declaration of what we’ve been up to and this is just that. We have confirmed the widespread disbursement of our work via all kinds of methods including download counts, hearing our versions of others’ songs on the radio (!), and re-downloading albums, years later, from different sources and finding our handiwork still firmly in place. By uploading our copy of the albums within a short time of the initial leak we have ensured its widespread use and lasting shelf life.
We love music. We love music makers and music collectors. But right now the scales are incorrectly balanced. We all know this. This is our attempt to throw a few ounces of weight on the other side of the scale.
We are honored to now be permanent parts of so many music lovers' collections.
We would be glad to conduct interviews or answer any questions the press may have about our project but please note that at this point we have chosen to remain completely anonymous. Thank you so much for your attention.
Please direct all questions to OverdubTampering@gmail.com
Sincerely,
The Overdub Tampering Committee
FIRST ROUND OF Q & A
Q: Were your overdubs meant to make the music sound better or worse? How subtle were they?
A: Neither good or bad. Neither enhancing or detracting. Simply additional. They weren't meant to be anything but additional music layered on top of what was already considered a completed product. We use the word subtle because the overdubs were designed to blend in with the music that was already there. We wanted our overdubs to be believable. Upon hearing our accordion solo in someone else's song you might think, "Boy, that's odd" but you would hopefully not realize it was an effect of malicious tampering from the get go.
Q: You mention that you're all musicians? Do you have recorded works that are downloaded illegally? Did you overdub your own records?
A: Yes, we're all in bands that have albums we've seen being "illegally" shared on peer to peer networks. Yes, we made overdub versions of our own albums. That was particularly fun for us.
Q: Doesn't the fact that you also illegally download music (as you implied in the manifesto) sort make this whole thing a bunch of hypocritical bullshit?
A: If you want to come to that conclusion that is fine with us. In fact any conclusion, or reaction, to this project will be welcomed with open arms from us here at the Overdub Tampering Committee. We used the phrase "illegally downloaded" so much in the manifesto because that's the accepted, currently understood term for what we're talking about. We don't personally think it's illegal, or necessarily wrong, but that it's a system with holes that will probably rapidly change over the coming years. Many members of the Overdub Tampering Committee, for example, "illegally download" albums they're interested in hearing, take a listen, and if they love it they purchase a hard copy on cd or vinyl (most of us are big album artwork/packaging fetishists). We're not really here to point fingers and declare who's the good guy or the bad guy in all of these scenarios. All we wanted to do was fuck with the treasure everyone's hunting for to realign everyone’s perspective.
Q: Don't major labels leak fake versions of their own newly released catalog?
A: Yes, we've heard it's common practice for some record labels or guns for hire (such as MediaDefender and MediaSentry) to leak files that contain no music, or garbled music, or other tactics like actually trying to physically disrupt a download. In our minds this is akin to creating a "fun digital dragon" that music lovers will happily spar off against and defeat in order to, eventually, get the album they wish to hear. Please join us in heartily LOLing at the idea that the record companies actually pay these companies good money to carry out this useless bullshit. We have no interest in creating dragons. Rather, we here at the Overdub Tampering Committee have been happily building Trojan Horses for years that we would now like to spring open and let the soldiers spill out. Like we said earlier, and above, those soldiers have very likely been in your record collection for awhile now. We'd just like to let you know that they're there now.
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