Cloudkicker’s Ben Sharp on Unauthorized Vinyls: “Doesn’t Bug Me At All.”

So, hey, didja hear about how Finnish label Blood Music recently released some old Cloudkicker albums and EPs on vinyl… without giving Cloudkicker’s Ben Sharp a heads up that they were gonna do so? The whole thing was perfectly legal, because Sharp released the music under a Creative Commons license, which basically means anyone could use the music for any purpose — even for profit! — so long as they credited Sharp. Legality aside, the news made a lot of fans feel icky, which is understandable, because we tend to think of using an artist’s work without his permission as being, y’know, a bad thing.

But it turns out that this rather bizarre story has a happy ending, mostly because the folks at Blood Music aren’t total dicks, and because Sharp is a legitimately chill fatalist. Heavy Blog is Heavy reports that even though Blood Music was under no obligation to do so, they’ve kicked back $600 to Sharp (actually, it may be more like $900 — I’m not clear if the $300 in legal downloads the label purchased to make the vinyls are part of, or in addition to, the $600 figure); meanwhile, Sharp himself has now given the releases his blessing, stating —

“Doesn’t bug me at all. I wasn’t going to release any of the old stuff on vinyl anyway. If they make a bunch of money from it then it’s my fault for being lazy. As far as I’m concerned everyone wins: I get to not worry about it, and people get to buy old albums on vinyl that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. Blood Music didn’t have to give me a dime, but they gave me much more than that which is very cool of them. They’re even sending me some copies which I will be able to sell myself.”

So all’s well that ends well, and Cloudkicker fans can save themselves the trouble of having to storm Blood Music’s offices and string some record label peeps up by their toes. HUZZAH! Meanwhile, Cloudkicker continues to kick heinies all across this great nation as part of a tour with TesseracT and Intronaut. Get dates here.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Cloudkicker vinyls to purchase.