3rd of October

Earlier today, Matthew Ryan posted the following bulletin on myspace...

"So this morning I tried to upload track 1 off of my second record, East Autumn Grin, onto myspace. The track is called 3rd Of October. I think my reasons for wanting to upload it is obvious. Just a little autumn simpatico.

Anyway, my second record was on A&M/INTERSCOPE/UNIVERSAL Records. It's one of the largest record companies in the world. The short version of this story is I signed with A&M Records in the mid-nineties. A&M was as independent as the larger companies got back then. They were one of my favorite American labels. They had put out The Police since day one, Soundgarden, Kitchens Of Distinction, The Blue Nile and many other great records. When I signed to them, they were in their last days of being a true label with their own taste and infrastructure.

In 1999 A&M was bought out by Universal Records. Universal cut and merged several smaller into one giant indistinguishable muscle head. My second record came out in 2000. It's arguable that it never really came out. The new label did the minimum and so on. So I was dropped. And so began my truly independent career. I'm proud that I kept moving and growing my audience by doing what my art and instinct told me to do.

Fast forward to October 3rd, 2007. I'm sipping coffee and want to introduce those of you that are listening and new to my music to something I'm proud of from years ago. So I try to upload a song from my second record onto Myspace, and I get my uploading privileges suspended because of copyright infringement.

Yes, I can't share a song that I wrote and recorded with you because this company is so desperate to maintain control they won't let it be heard. Understand, I didn't post it for download, I was just posting it to be heard and hoping some of you would be curious and seek that record out.

Can you understand my frustration?

Here's the message from Myspace: "Audio or video content has been blocked or removed from your profile. Content may be blocked/removed because we received a notice from the copyright owner claiming you were infringing its rights, because the content was recognized by MySpace's copyright filter, or because your use of the content violated MySpace's Terms and Conditions."

There's a bit more, but it's kind of boring legalese. Anyway, since Myspace sucks, consider this my public service for the day.

Matthew Ryan - "3rd of October" (mp3) from East Autumn Grin