Bradford Cox, the creative force behind indie favorites Deerhunter and Atlas Sound, is a very prolific songwriter. He’s also extremely generous and gave away four mixtapes of bedroom demos on his blog over the course of last week. Pretty cool, right? Well, not if you ask Sony, who slapped him with a cease-and-desist notice and removed the files for three of the four volumes from their hosting site, claiming he had no right to distribute the material. The weird thing about this is that Sony has no legal or financial interest in Cox’s music as he is not signed to any of their labels, and the only track with a connection to Sony — a cover of a Bob Dylan tune — appears on the one volume Sony did not have removed. Even if this was about the Dylan remake and Sony got confused about which set to eliminate, it seems like a lot of effort to put into getting an unauthorized Dylan cover out of circulation given that Dylan is one of the most covered artists of the past century. In any case, Cox has re-uploaded all four mixes, so go check it out, if only to spite Sony.
Apparently Sony Music Owns Bradford Cox’s Bedroom [Stereogum]