The Grey Tuesday protest was simply amazing. On February 24, 2004 approximately 170 websites hosted a full copy of the Grey Album, in spite of the fact that many of those sites received a cease and desist letter from EMI's lawyers (read Downhill Battle's response to EMI). Right now, thanks to everyone who participated in this protest, tens of thousands of people in the US and around the world are listening to DJ Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album". Because the attempt to censor this record is one of the most clear-cut examples of what's wrong with current sampling rules, everyone who participated in the Grey Tuesday protest has sent a strong message in support of common-sense changes to copyright law. Grey Tuesday was organized by Downhill Battle, a music activism project.

OVER 1 MILLION SONGS IN A DAY After a survey of the sites that hosted files during Grey Tuesday, and an analysis of filesharing activity on that day, we can confidently report that the Grey Album was the number one album in the US on February 24 by a large margin. Danger Mouse moved more "units" than Norah Jones and Kanye West, with well over 100,000 copies downloaded. That's more than 1 million digital tracks.

NEW: BANNEDMUSIC.ORG Downhill Battle and other Grey Tuesday participants are continuing the fight against music censorship with the new project BannedMusic.org, announced one month after Grey Tuesday. The site offers for easy download albums that have been legally attacked, ensuring that they will remain available. If you're looking for the Grey Album, you can get it here.

DOES EMI REALLY CONTROL THE COPYRIGHT TO THE WHITE ALBUM? The Electronic Frontier Foundation has issued a brief legal analysis of the Grey Tuesday protest, which strongly supports the protesters fair use rights and calls into question EMI's claim to hold a copyright on the White Album. Read it here.

If you still have not heard the Grey Album you can find it at BannedMusic.org.


It's time for music fans to stand up and demand change from the music industry's copyright cartel.

Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse's Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI's attempts to censor this work.

DJ Danger Mouse created a remix of Jay-Z's the Black Album and the Beatles White Album, and called it the Grey Album. Jay-Z's record label, Roc-A-Fella, released an a capella version of his Black Album specifically to encourage remixes like this one. But despite praise from music fans and major media outlets like Rolling Stone ("an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time") and the Boston Globe (which called it the "most creatively captivating" album of the year), EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and websites remove them from their site. EMI claims copyright control of the Beatles 1968 White Album.

Danger Mouse’s album is one of the most "respectful" and undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honors both the Beatles and Jay-Z. Yet the lawyers and bureaucrats at EMI have shown zero flexibility and not a glimmer of interest in the artistic significance of this work. And without a clearly defined right to sample (e.g. compulsory licensing), the five major record labels will continue to use copyright in a reactionary and narrowly self-interested manner that limits and erodes creativity. Their actions are also self-defeating: good new music is being created that people want to buy, but the major labels are so obsessed with hoarding their copyrights that they are literally turning customers away.

This first-of-its-kind protest signals a refusal to let major label lawyers control what musicians can create and what the public can hear. The Grey Album is only one of the thousands of legitimate and valuable efforts that have been stifled by the record industry-- not to mention the ones that were never even attempted because of the current legal climate. We cannot allow these corporations to continue censoring art; we need common-sense reforms to copyright law that can make sampling legal and practical for artists.

The Grey Tuesday protest is being organized by Downhill Battle, a music activism project that has no affiliation with Danger Mouse. Downhill Battle Press Contact

You can read more about this issue by following the links on the sidebar.


If your site is participating in the protest, please send an email to greytuesday@downhillbattle.org and we'll add you to the list. It is still changing quickly and we will continue working to make it as accurate as possible. More than 400 sites are currently listed as participating in the protest. At this point, we are receiving hundreds of emails from sites that are going grey and we simply can't keep that list up to date, but that support means a lot and we are thrilled that so many sites are getting involved. We will be focusing on the hosting list for the rest of the day. (If you sent us an email before this update, but don't see your site on the correct list, please send us a reminder.)

If you are here to download the Grey Album, please be sensitive to the fact that many of these sites have limited bandwidth and that a huge rush of downloads may cause them problems. Consider looking into another way to get the album, perhaps from friends or filesharing networks (zeropaid can help you find a client for pc, and we like acquisition for mac). If you use bit torrent, you can find a torrent file at seren.net. If you do choose to download from one of the sites listed below, try to pick randomly from the list of sites. Also, you can find and print out really nice cover art here. All that being said, enjoy the music and pass it along.


SITES HOSTING THE GREY ALBUM ON FEB 24



SOME OF THE HUNDREDS OF SITES THAT TURNED GREY ON FEB 24