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"PIRACY" Project Exposes the CD Underbelly of Music Theft

By Rain Noe - August 22, 2012

in Object Culture

First Floor Under is a "pop-vanguard culture magazine" and digital publishing company out of Milan, backed by the Italian arm of TBWA. For their stunning "PIRACY" public awareness campaign addressing digital music theft, they commissioned artists Mirco Pagano and Moreno De Turco to recreate album-cover shots of iconic musicians using their own CDs.

Pagano and De Turco spent more than 200 hours arranging some 6,500 CDs. The images went on display to the Milan public back in March, but it's just hit viral blogosphere status this week.

In addition to creating the amazing stills, where the CDs are arranged as if spilling out of dropped backpacks and desk drawers, Pagano and De Turco also created this chilling animated trailer featuring the late MJ:

The cynics among you will note that Elvis and some others depicted here died before they'd ever heard of CDs, but that doesn't detract from the power of the images. Sure they could've picked more relevant direct sufferers of music piracy, but I must admit I'd rather see portraits of Hendrix, James Brown and MJ than Foo Fighters and Metallica. (Let the rabid fan-bashing begin!)

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moose johnson

12 years ago

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So let me get this straight....the one who steals something that belongs to someone else is not to blame...the maker is and the maker must find a way to adapt to their product being stolen....this is how the market works. Check.

Do you realize how foolish that sounds? If people suddenly realized it was very easy to walk in the back door of Kroger and steal candy bars by the box would Hershey be to blame? Would Kroger? I think the thief would be to blame, call me crazy.

Songwriters are the ones being stolen from more than anyone. What you might not realize is a lot of songs you hear on the radio are not written by the artist, but rather by a songwriter who is counting on the royalties to put food on their table. Until you've been a staff songwriter your opinions fall on the side of ignorance...and ignorance is no excuse, as they say.

The fact of the matter is this...copyrighted material has ownership and no one....not you, me, or the illegally downloading public, has the right to decide what is right in how you receive it. If you steal it you are a thief, it does not belong to you.
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Rafael Morgan

12 years ago

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Hey hipstomp.

Agreed 100%. These guys could not care less if their cds are getting pirated or not. Except for MJ, they are all dead for a long time.

Also, there are other faces of piracy as well. We can not analyze it by only one perspective.

Regular people are not to blame for piracy; the record companies are, because they refused to find other ways to adapt to a new age of music distribution...Music piracy will not end and the industry must find a way to get over it if it want to survive. This is how the market works.

Besides, musicians and bands do not profit from cds. We all know that. They earn their money mostly from concerts, and guess what, piracy makes their music reach considerably more people than conventional cds, bringing more people to their concerts eventually.

Also, music piracy liberated new bands and artists from the huge destructive monopoly of the record companies. Artists now are free to record anything they want, upload to the net and hope for the best. In long term, it will contribute to increase creativity in music which is a very desirable thing, since music is quite decadent these days.

You know, it is pure hypocrisy for almost anyone to talk about piracy. I do not know a single person who does not have a huge mp3 collection downloaded from suspicious sources, specially musicians, who are often the ones who have the biggest collections of pirated digital music.

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