cutter music MySpace griftcel

He didn't steal music in the take another musician's idea and make it his own sense: the actual music files were ripped from one musician's page and uploaded it to his own with a new name. This guy uploaded dozens of independent musicians' mp3s as his own over 3 - 4 years. Songs with different styles, singers, recording qualities, and instrumentation were all claimed as his with no credit to producers, collaboraters, backup musicians, graphic designers etc.

There are 4 or 5 songs that he would eventually concede were not his, saying that he was hacked and framed. But the majority (30+ songs) were never disowned by him. For example, if you can stomach some questionable music, compare two Andrew Landon songs: "We Could Be In Love" and "Addicted". These are two VERY different songs by completely different musicians, but both were on his MySpace for months/years.

Several musicians spoke up on YouTube and MySpace about Andrew Landon stealing their music, but many of them were taken down quickly†. I reached out to one around 2008/09 (Stephen Dodge) and he seemed defeated when we spoke. When I asked why he stopped writing music, he said "some clown in Florida" kept stealing his songs†. I don't know if he was a master h4x0r or if everyone's password was "password," but accounts and youtube videos went down at an impressive rate†.

One of the surviving testimonies is from the singer of a band called "imadethismistake", claiming Andrew Landon uploaded an early version of his song "Staring Blindly Into A Dull Sunset" to Andrew Landon's page where it was retitled "She Looked Like Death.": Andrew Landon - She Looked Like Death imadethismistake Staring Blindly into a Dull Sunset

Here's a http://Last.fm post by the same guy:

(I actually still own one of imadethismistake's CDs. I don't listen to it.)

After this song had been on Landon's myspace for a over year, he suddenly claimed that someone had hacked his account and uploaded this song and a few others to frame him. Apparently his myspace had been held hostage by a myspace profile designer who... was mad at him or something, but who let him continue the rest of his business as usual.

He continued to upload different songs. He would claim that someone framed him once or twice more. When things got too hot, he would quit music for a little bit, but was always back a month later.

#Image and money

Landon didn't just steal music, he stole likenesses too. His most common images were of a MySpace-popular skateboarder (whose name I won't mention). This skateboarder uploaded a video of himself claiming Landon was stealing his photos†. Within a day, Landon had ripped this video and reuploaded it with much lower quality and dubbed over it to say that HIS photos were being stolen by the skateboarder. Here's the dub, the only video you'll actually find of "Andrew Landon" The original was taken down.

For most of this, I can't say how much he benefitted beyond ego. On the http://archive.org link above, you can see him trying selling CDs (featuring tracks he later disowned) "for cash only" through DMs. He also sold t-shirts.

He announced a few tours with ...pretty vague venue listings. No one ever saw him perform and there's certainly no videos of it.

At one point, he claimed he needed heart surgery and people donated money to the cause. Big if true, but bigger (and funnier) if not true.

#In the end, I don't think anything really happened.

He moved into spoken word stuff (with his REAL VOICE--same as the voice in the dubbed video). I think ONE musician (Noah Gundersen) took legal recourse, but that's it and I cannot find evidence of it. Like MySpace itself, he sort of just faded away around 2011 or 2012.

The moral? Be grateful but a little sad that your myspace profile got deleted and no one can see just how emo you were.