Thievery Corporation

Thievery Corporation 2009
18″ x 24″ x 1/8″
3 color silkscreen (red, blue, silver) onto clear Plexiglass

Design by Emek

Something super-funky – the official video for Thievery Corporation’s track The Numbers Game, featuring Chuck Brown.

This week, the Grammy Awards nominations were announced - and, for the first time, a Creative Commons-licensed track and album are on the list.  Nine Inch Nails’ 34 Ghosts IV is nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, while the album that track appears on, Ghosts I-IV, is up for Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package.

Creative Commons licenses are designed to protect your rights to your music, while allowing people copy and share it. 

Creative Commons’ Eric Steuer notes:

This year, NIN released both Ghosts I-IV and a second album, The Slip, under a CC BY-NC-SA license. Both albums were downloaded for free and shared legally millions of times by fans under the terms of this license. At the same time, NIN found great financial success in selling cool, well-crafted, limited edition physical editions of both sets. Back in March, Wiredsaid the band made $1.6 million on Ghosts I-IV in its first week of release alone.

Additionally, Radiohead’s song “House of Cards” is up for several Grammys, including Best Short Form Music Video. The video’s animation data was released under a CC BY-NC-SA license earlier this year (see previous post).

Congratulations to Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead for the nominations. Also, congratulations to all of the other artists whose work was nominated for Grammys this year, including Brian Eno, Diplo, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (AKA Gnarls Barkley), My Morning Jacket, Gilberto Gil, Peter Gabriel, Thievery Corporation, and Cornelius – all of whom have used Creative Commons licenses and/or have supported CC over the years.

Musicians like NIN are using Creative Commons licensing, and giving away their music, to actually gain more control of their careers.

It remains to be seen whether unknown artists will be able to create new careers at the scale of groups like Nine Inch Nails, though.

The Thievery Corporation has announced plans for the Outernational Music Tour, beginning June 20 in San Francisco and ending in Washington, DC on June 28.

The tour will have an international vibe. The tour will feature:

• he Brazilian roots rhythms of Seu Jorge;
• Federico Aubele’s Argentinean soul;
• Venezuelan funk of Los Amigos Invisibles;
• the Brazilian bossa nova of Bebel Gilberto;
• Gnarls Barkley
• TV on the Radio
• Ladytron.

Here are the dates:

• 6/20 – Greek Theater, San Francisco, CA
• 6/21 – Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Las Vegas, NV
• 6/22 – Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA
• 6/24 – Stubb’s BBQ, Austin, TX
• 6/26 – SummerStage, New York, NY
• 6/28 – Merriweather Pavilion, Washington, DC

This looks like an awesome lineup.

Amazon has released their customer picks for the Top 10 Dance & DJ releases of 2003:

1. 100th Window – Massive Attack
2. The Richest Man in Babylon – Thievery Corporation
3. Beautiful Tomorrow – Blue 6
4. Simple Things – Zero 7
5. Love Box – Groove Armada
6. Hotel Costes 5 – Various Artists
7. Mirror Conspiracy – Thievery Corporation
8. Verve Remixed – Various Artists
9. Play – Moby
10. La Revancha Del Tango – Gotan Project

These releases were the top purchases in Amazon’s Dance and DJ category in 2003.