Club mp3 search

Gay fans love CD compilations of club hits, but they may not know that many are pirated. Those responsible say they're just promoting rare tracks. So who's really profiting?

WHEN JEFF TARDIFF OPENED PERFECT BEAT IN MARCH 1999, HE HAD BIG PLANS FOR HIS SMALL WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIF., STORE. The energetic entrepreneur worked 18-hour days as part of his "die-hard mission" to serve the gay community's apparently insatiable craving for dance music. Perfect Beat carried the latest CD singles, club hits, and DJ compilations. A knowledgeable staff answered customer questions. Sales were good.

His world collapsed on the morning of July 21. Minutes after Tardiff opened for business, eight people entered Perfect Beat, presented a search warrant, locked the front door, and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. He watched as the team--composed of law enforcement officers from West Hollywood and Los Angeles County and investigators front the Recording Industry Association of America, the watchdog and lobbying group that guards the interests of the recording business--combed through the shop's CD bins. At one point, he says, they "tried to peel the flat wall off" as they "looked for hidden rooms" that might conceal other items in the small store.

Four hours later the investigators had what they were looking for: a haul of around 600 alleged "bootleg" CDs. Most were compilations of dance tunes, typically mixed by popular party DJs, that were without authorization from--or any payments to--the original artist or their record labels. Ultimately, the charges filed against Perfect Beat centered on a California law requiring CDs to carry their producer's address in plain view on the packaging.

A similar raid occurred that same day down the street at gay novelty and music shop Don't Panic! where, according to the RIAA, more than 900 CDs were seized. (Don't Panic! declined to comment for this story.)

The West Hollywood raids came on the heels of a series of events that took aim at the multimillion-dollar dance music piracy industry--an industry sunk to the roots in gay culture thanks to the DJ compilations that are sold in connection with major clubs and dance events. For the gay partygoer who just wants to hear again the tunes he danced to one special weekend, the CDs may seem innocuous. He may even think he's funneling more money to the nonprofit group that benefited from the party named on the CD's cover. But in fact, the only people profiting from bootleg CDs are the pirates who make them. Not the charities and certainly not the singers, songwriters, and musicians--many of them gay--whose livelihood, the RIAA would argue, is being stolen behind their backs.

For the DJs who mix them, compilations are a sonic business card (and as long as the CDs are used only for promotion--not sold to the public--they're not illegal). For the many small stores that sell them, they're a valued source of revenue. And for people who buy them, compilations are a source of stares: The music that's newest and hardest to find is always most coveted.

"When I've interviewed a lot of retailers, their main thing is, `People want [this music]. If I don't sell it, my competitor down the street will,'" says Billboard reporter Michael Paoletta, who has exposed several popular DJ compilations as bootlegs in stories for the magazine. "Does that make it right? No."

In the era of Internet downloads and MP3 technology, music pirates are having their biggest party ever. Not counting Internet sales, the recording industry loses about $300 million a year to piracy, says Frank Creighton, senior vice president and director of antipiracy at the RIAA. That's almost $1 million a day.

Opponents of piracy are struggling to stem the tide. In July, a week before the West Hollywood raids, the Billboard Dance Music Summit held a panel discussion to address the problem of bootlegging, with members of the dance community, including the RIAA, vowing to take stronger measures against pirates and against DJ dance compilations in particular.

In the days following the raids, a not-so-civil war of words broke out, with some members of the dance community countering accusations of piracy with accusations of their own via E-mail and unsigned letters sent to gay retailers. These screeds charged that the RIAA had homophobically targeted gay retailers.

Nonsense, says Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the RIAA. "I'm a proud, open lesbian who happens to be in charge of the music industry's enforcement operations," she says. "We're not targeting gay store owners. To the contrary, we're protecting artists and the people who invest in their work. We've been asked by our member companies and their artists to try and be broad-based in enforcing against [DJ and dance] compilations, which they see as a particularly difficult problem."

The anonymous communiques also accused several members of the dance music community of betraying their colleagues and urged a boycott of their products. The chief target? A gay-owned company that is producing legitimate dance compilations: Centaur Entertainment. Its president, Nick DeBiase, and its house DJ, Julian Marsh, were singled out for "snitch[ing] on" and "hurt[ing]" the gay dance community as a whole.

Nonsense again, says Creighton. "Those retail raids and search warrants were scheduled ... prior to my having had any discussions with anybody in the dance community about what we were doing to fight piracy in this arena." DeBiase and Marsh, he says, provided no tips or information of any kind.

So why the heat? One explanation: sour grapes. Says DeBiase: "We were the first people to produce legal DJ compilations in the gay and lesbian market. By the fact that we were providing a legal alternative, that helped to shine light [on those who] were not doing it legally." Grounded or not, the rumors were enough to shake Centaur's business. "Certain stores have called our head of sales and questioned things," DeBiase says.

Marsh says his name was "dragged through the mud" thanks to the rumors. "A promoter who had hired me to do a party in San Francisco was told by all the stores and clubs and restaurants that they wouldn't put up any signs with my name on them," he says. "Other promoters were not quite sure now if they wanted to use me. Attendees of parties told me they had a problem with me being there. Stores wouldn't promote the stuff I'm doing. Physically it had a toll on me. I suffered physically through this."

Eventually, Marsh says, he managed to convince most people that he's trustworthy, often by responding to individual E-mail accusations from strangers. "What hurt me most," he says now, was how easily people decided "that I would turn my back on my own community. It also hurt that people seemed to be standing up for the bootleggers and not for the legitimate people."

And who exactly are the pirates? An in-depth story in Billboard's June 26 edition identifies not individuals but the best-selling illegal compilation series they produce: Master Beat, Go Girl!, SPINfinity, DJ Limited Edition, Essential Mix, Paragon, Circuit Grooves, 'KTU Radio Cuts, Sessions, and Passion Tracks.

These producers and others reacted to the RIAA raids. Sources say that one company, IAM, quietly called stores and asked that its CDs be returned. The reason: Pride '98, one of IAM's biggest sellers, allegedly contains at least one unlicensed track. (IAM chose not to comment for this story.)

Some pirates who disappeared after the raids have reportedly resurfaced under new names. But the names, of course, don't matter. Gay consumers still buy pirated CDs as fast as they hit the shelves. "Hell, yeah, I know it's probably not legal!" says one fan. "It's great music. It's better than anything that's on the, radio. I want the music that I want now!"

Why don't more gay music fans care if they're supporting illegal activities? Marsh thinks the key lies in the nature of gay culture. "Our society was an illegal society," he says. "We weren't allowed to be gay. When gay people buy music and they know it's illegal, do they really care? Most of our lives have been illegal."

Anyway, sometimes it's not so easy to spot a pirate. Deacon Maccubbin, proprietor of the Washington, D.C., gay and lesbian retail outlet Lambda Rising, remembers stocking a load of bootlegs by mistake. "We had been told that they were legal, copyrighted materials originally by the vendor," says Maccubbin. "We asked, and they said, `Oh, yeah, that's all clear.' Eventually they did let us know that they weren't firmly licensed, and as soon as they let us know, we pulled them."