After Hundreds Of 'Empire State Of Mind' Parodies... Why Does EMI Suddenly Take One Down?

from the these-copyrights-will-inspire-you dept

Nearly a year ago, the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys collaboration Empire State of Mind was released. If you haven't heard it, you've been living under something of a rock: The song went from popular to ridiculously popular after Jay-Z and Keys performed it before game two of the World Series at Yankee Stadium: It also got a bit of a boost when Stephen Colbert took on the Jay-Z role and did a version with Keys, where he changed the lyrics to be about living in the suburbs:

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Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down
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Of course, that version -- a parody of the original -- was really just picking up on a popular trend showing up all over YouTube: people rewriting and performing Empire State of Mind with lyrics to reflect their own hometowns or other cultural groups. They were everywhere. A few months back, I remembered seeing one site list out 55 of the best such parodies (some much better than others), including all sorts of cities, big and small, as well as random other versions, such as College Humor's amusing Galactic Empire State of Mind, starring Darth Vader. So, it seemed a bit odd that, nearly a year after this phenomenon, yet another of these parodies, called the Newport State of Mind, about the Welsh town of Newport went viral, with over a million views, but such is life in the viral video world.

Even odder? Apparently EMI has issued a takedown notice for just that one video pulling it off YouTube. This is despite literally hundreds of Empire State of Mind parodies on YouTube. Those 55 best parodies? They're all on YouTube (with the exception of the Darth Vader one...). Honestly, I thought this had to be a mistake, or some weird Content ID error by YouTube. Considering the vast number of these parodies that have all remained up this whole time, would EMI really issue a takedown for this one parody?

However, EMI seems to have confirmed that it's taken down the video. According to the BBC report:

A statement from EMI said: "When a song is created based wholly on any of our writers' works, those writers need to grant their permission.

"If that permission isn't granted, then we ask the service in question to remove the song."

And what about all those other parodies? And, of course, at least in the US, parody is often protected as fair use. I recognize this particular parody was done in Wales, but, still, the decision to take down this one video seems really, really odd.

Oh, and one other bit of irony? In looking up some of these parodies, I found this article, which notes that the key musical hook used by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys are sampled from a 1970s track from The Moments called Love on A Two Way Street: So, it's a bit amusing that EMI is complaining about others building on top of this particular work...

Filed Under: alicia keys, empire state of mind, jay-z, parody, takedown
Companies: emi