As we recently reported, former Orange Juice front-man Edwyn Collins and his wife/manager Grace Maxwell have been in quite the clash with Warner Music Group and MySpace. Despite Collins owning the copyright to his 1994 hit "A Girl Like You," the major label and the website blocked the Brit from freely sharing the track, leading Maxwell to publish a lengthy post online bashing both the label and MySpace. Well, chalk one up for the little guys.
"After 30 odd fruitless emails, 'A Girl Like You' is now available in full on the MySpace player!" wrote Maxwell in an update on Collins's blog. "So, today's lesson is simple: the most powerful department in any organisation is the press office. The whole sad world runs scared of bad publicity, especially from a righteous source like Edwyn Collins."
And while Maxwell seems pleased the song can now finally be given out to fans for free, the whole nasty experience has definitely left a bad taste in her mouth.
"Warner Music Group has no connection with Edwyn whatsoever and yet they are still corporately arrogant enough to steal Edwyn's copyright and God knows what else from others," she writes. "A guy from MySpace advised me to treat their copyright department with kid gloves if I wanted a result. It didn't work. If the shoe was on the other foot they'd have been down on us like a ton of bricks. The next time a major tries to take ANYONE to court for copyright infringement, I'm volunteering my services as a witness for the defense. What's sauce for the goose...."
All that bad stuff aside, Maxwell said she wasn't going to let the dispute bring down her or Collins, who nearly died in 2005 after suffering two cerebral hemorrhages.
"Edwyn and I are loving our life together since he has pushed back the shades of illness and I'm not about to let some old music business nonsense get in the way of that," she said.
Thanks to NME for the heads-up.
"After 30 odd fruitless emails, 'A Girl Like You' is now available in full on the MySpace player!" wrote Maxwell in an update on Collins's blog. "So, today's lesson is simple: the most powerful department in any organisation is the press office. The whole sad world runs scared of bad publicity, especially from a righteous source like Edwyn Collins."
And while Maxwell seems pleased the song can now finally be given out to fans for free, the whole nasty experience has definitely left a bad taste in her mouth.
"Warner Music Group has no connection with Edwyn whatsoever and yet they are still corporately arrogant enough to steal Edwyn's copyright and God knows what else from others," she writes. "A guy from MySpace advised me to treat their copyright department with kid gloves if I wanted a result. It didn't work. If the shoe was on the other foot they'd have been down on us like a ton of bricks. The next time a major tries to take ANYONE to court for copyright infringement, I'm volunteering my services as a witness for the defense. What's sauce for the goose...."
All that bad stuff aside, Maxwell said she wasn't going to let the dispute bring down her or Collins, who nearly died in 2005 after suffering two cerebral hemorrhages.
"Edwyn and I are loving our life together since he has pushed back the shades of illness and I'm not about to let some old music business nonsense get in the way of that," she said.
Thanks to NME for the heads-up.
