Grand Royal Auction
January 13, 2004 12:52 PM   Subscribe

Psst...wanna buy a record label? The Beastie Boys' defunct Grand Royal record label (former home of Luscious Jackson, Atari Teenage Riot, Ben Lee, Sean Lennon, Bis, Buffalo Daughter and Money Mark) is on the auction block. The successful bidder walks away with various master recordings, license agreements, recording agreements and miscellaneous contracts.
posted by boost ventilator (19 comments total)
 
More details...
posted by boost ventilator at 1:00 PM on January 13, 2004


wanna go halfsies? in that case, I'm in.
posted by dabitch at 1:16 PM on January 13, 2004


You mean I could walk up to Sean Lennon and tell him to stop making music and there wouldn't be anything him or Yoko could do about it?
posted by jon_kill at 1:25 PM on January 13, 2004


I just wanna know if there's still an At the Drive-In contract in there somewhere.
posted by cinderful at 1:37 PM on January 13, 2004


1) Collect money via Paypal
2) Buy label's assets
3) ???????
4) Profit!
posted by shoepal at 1:42 PM on January 13, 2004


Maybe we can get a group of MeFi users to all chip in and put in a bid :)
posted by TNLNYC at 1:42 PM on January 13, 2004


MetaFilter: That funky monkey
posted by mathis23 at 1:53 PM on January 13, 2004


I saw this earlier, is there any list of the details of the auction, like an inventory of the assets being bid on?

If there were Beasties' masters in the auction, I would assume that there would be bids by now.
posted by jonah at 2:16 PM on January 13, 2004


Assets are linked to on this page at the bottom. (PDF's)

No beastie boys masters, but some Butter 08 and Luscious Jackson ones. Wish there was more description on the licenses, like the "Use of Fight the Power" one. Watch for a commercial on that real soon.
posted by destro at 3:09 PM on January 13, 2004


Well you can't run a record label when everything you release SUCKS ha ha .
posted by xmutex at 3:53 PM on January 13, 2004


The minimum bid is $10000.

MeFi has, what, 14K users?

I think TNLNYC has a rather groovy and insane idea. What if everyone ponied up, say, five bucks to a PayPal account? That's $70K. We make that our max bid, and if we lose, we either get it back or make a donation to a music charity.

Of course, there's the problem of what we'd do afterwards if we won. Have 14,000 people argue over what to do with Sean Lennon masters? Release all of 'em under a Creative Commons license?

Mmm...Luscious Jackson...
posted by RakDaddy at 4:21 PM on January 13, 2004


The rights to distribute TechnoAnimal in the US are probably part of the deal.

But that is a big deal to no one except me and I guess that is why the label is on the auction block.
posted by spartacusroosevelt at 4:33 PM on January 13, 2004


10k is the minimum bid. I bet the reserve is many, many times that. The sad thing about this is that the Beasties' have basically done what mega-labels have done for years: screwed artists over by tying up their masters in legal battles and ownership without intent to sell. How long has it been since GR released a record? About half a decade that these peoples' masters have been out of reach. Usually when you hear about masters being tied up like this it's WEA or someone else responsible. When artists own the label and that kind of thing happens... eesh. When labels go belly up the artists should be able to buy back masters at cost, "potential profit" be damned. Sad sad.
posted by dobbs at 4:34 PM on January 13, 2004


Who wouldn't want 3,000 copies of Grand Royal Magazine?
posted by punishinglemur at 4:38 PM on January 13, 2004


xmutex: Score 5 Insightful
posted by quonsar at 6:07 PM on January 13, 2004


I say we get everyone to buy the thing and give the artists back all of their assets... it'd be awesome. We'd make national news, and the artists would come supporting the new MetaFilter Recording Group

Awesome.
posted by psychotic_venom at 5:36 AM on January 14, 2004


I second the MetaFilter Recording Group.
posted by VulcanMike at 7:11 AM on January 14, 2004


And we'd end up sitting around the studio having meetups, while the equipment had beer spilled on it or was stolen.

Let's do it, guys.
posted by angry modem at 8:42 AM on January 14, 2004


I'd support the MetaFilter Recording Group... and by the way, Techno Animal is the bomb. The Brotherhood of the Bomb, in fact. But I think that's not a Grand Royal record... dammit...
posted by micropublishery at 10:01 PM on January 14, 2004


« Older Israel's founding war   |   Man Giveth, the Church Taketh, Whateth Be the... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments