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The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

nytimes.com

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Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#41

Post by Applejinx »

klodolph wrote: post #22
agumonkey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I saw a news recently that they've been dismissed for gateway to heaven

Stairway is not a ripoff of Taurus and it never was going to be, but there are plenty of other accusations against Led Zeppelin that are more credible. I have Spirit’s eponymous album, the part in question that is “ripped off” is so basic and found in so many songs you’d die before you could list them all. (FYI—You the news you “think you saw recently” is in the linked article above the fold, which features a photo o…

Stairway to Heaven has contrary motion in the top voice of the guitar arpeggio, which I consider a really substantial change. They did grab lots of blues songs, occasionally gave some form of credit, otherwise not.

It's an interesting question: blues is mostly delivery, so if you take a concept like 'lemon' or 'leave me' and deliver it in shrieky overwrought British rock star fashion, aren't you rewriting it, perhaps significantly? You can't copyright the pentatonic scale. It'd be like someone copyrighting the monotonic drone and then filing suit against half of EDM. I performed for a livestream recently and used a riff from Plastikman 'Marbles', except that riff is only note-note-rest-note-note-rest repeated infinitely on one note. Part of it is the tone and context, and I wasn't cloning that, just the way the extremely brief three-note chunk cycles over a 4/4 beat. Plagiarism? Plagiarism because I know of 'Marbles' and found it inspiring? What if I picked a simple repeating pulse because I'd heard that in some minimal techno, and intentionally did my own take on that because I'd liked it?

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#42

Post by Applejinx »

taormina wrote: post #38
1123581321 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Papers of record/highly reputable sources should be held to a different standard.

I'll take the bait. It's 2020, is the NYT still considered highly reputable? Or is it just a "loveable brand name" at this point?

That is a fair question, in my opinion. Depending on the topic, the New York Times isn't always reputable.

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#43

Post by philipov »

cyxxon wrote: post #28
g-erson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something weird going on with that page! The article number in the URL changes back and forward between 2 numbers as you scroll! Makes coming back to HN a bit tricky! Interesting read though

In my case it changes when the next article comes up. This is a really weird page format some online news magazines have adopted, where they simply add different articles at the bottom of your original page, infinite scrolling style. If you scroll back up though, it switches back.

I hate it when pages do that.

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#44

Post by 1123581321 »

taormina wrote: post #38
1123581321 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Papers of record/highly reputable sources should be held to a different standard.

I'll take the bait. It's 2020, is the NYT still considered highly reputable? Or is it just a "loveable brand name" at this point?

Fair question. My response wasn’t meant to be trollish or beg the question. You can read a summary of the New York Times’ reputation in its WP article. In summary, it is still well regarded for accuracy and thoroughness by its peers. Popular opinion is still high relative to its peers but has lowered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Reputation

The WP article also links to the paper of record article. Papers of record can be important even if they are disliked because of the sources they have access to, and the extent to which they influence stories by reporting on them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#45

Post by ThomPete »

What really interesting about Blurred Lines is that it was more the feeling of the music than the actual note for note, which was the center of the discussion. If you don't understand music and what it entails you could be convinced that it was the same.

Such an interesting case.

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#46

Post by moomin »

midgetjones wrote: post #30
moomin wrote: post #6

My (least) favourite example of this is that Iggy Azalea gets a song-writing credit for Classic Man. http://www.mtv.com/news/2215334/iggy-azalea-fancy-classic-ma... If you listen to the two, you can spot the similarity but... it’s nowhere close to sampling or plagiarism. They’ve got different melodies, different feels, just a similar prominent keyboard sound. But no-one wants a court case, so the writers of Fancy get…

My least favourite was Quentin Tarantino demanding a songwriting credit for Fun Lovin' Criminals' Scooby Snacks, just because it sampled a few seconds of dialogue from Pulp Fiction.

At least in that case and the Blurred Lines case there was some component that was verifiably the same.

(But yeah, QT was and is a jerk. Especially when you consider how he ripped off City on Fire.)

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#47

Post by rgbrgb »

rock_hard wrote: post #36
ilamont wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've told this story before. In the early 1990s I worked for Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond's record label, back when they were dominating the UK and European pop charts as The KLF ( https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/07/20/537708922/... ). One day we received in the mail a cassette tape and a letter from a law firm representing a composer or publisher (I can't remember which) of a famous Broadway soundtrack…

I need to tell you this: in the 2000s we worked off the strategy and tactics outlined in The Manual and had a string of global chart topping successes I can only assume others did the same...do u know the bigger story?

If anybody else is wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#48

Post by johnr2 »

FriendlyNormie wrote: post #2

If I repeatedly linked to my own site with a title that interested you but all you could see on my page was an unskippable ad demanding that you sign up and pay for my unrelated product, wouldn’t my site be banned from HN? Why do sites like nytimes get a free pass with their paywalls?

> Why do sites like nytimes get a free pass with their paywalls?

I've never encountered a paywall on the NYT links on HN and I'm not a subscriber. I'm guessing the complaints here are from people who only have access to browsers with no means of blocking (or ignoring) JavaScript.

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#49

Post by ilamont »

rock_hard wrote: post #36
ilamont wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've told this story before. In the early 1990s I worked for Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond's record label, back when they were dominating the UK and European pop charts as The KLF ( https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/07/20/537708922/... ). One day we received in the mail a cassette tape and a letter from a law firm representing a composer or publisher (I can't remember which) of a famous Broadway soundtrack…

I need to tell you this: in the 2000s we worked off the strategy and tactics outlined in The Manual and had a string of global chart topping successes I can only assume others did the same...do u know the bigger story?

I would love to hear more.

I've heard of at least one other band that had this kind of success, and it does not surprise me in the least. Drummond knew how the industry worked as a musician, manager, and skeptic, and in that book outlined a formula that could work. It was a bit of a piss-take but there were nuggets of wisdom and truth.

Re: The ‘Blurred Lines’ case scared songwriters, but its time may be up

#50

Post by coldcode »

agumonkey wrote: post #13
empath75 wrote: post #5

Zeppelin have long been known to be notorious plagiarists: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/led-zeppelins-...

I think I saw a news recently that they've been dismissed for gateway to heaven

the one riff is vaguely similar, but the Taurus song includes a simple descending riff that sounds like something from a guitar intro book. All music has similarities to something. Even Bach and Mozart borrowed ideas from other composers and later ones did to same to them. You can't just take a snippet and go aha! No different than the Oracle attempt at Google over Java.
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