“The iTunes Store quietly responded last month to the flood of soundalikes on the service by aggressively banning them,” Shawn Setaro reports for Forbes. “Soundalikes are cover songs that ape the original in every respect. Often, they’re meant to fool the consumer.”
“Streaming services are awash with soundalikes – try searching just about any hit song by title on Spotify and you’ll find some,” Setaro reports. “On iTunes, where consumers are paying for each song, such a slip-up can have serious repercussions. Thus, Digital Music News reported, last month iTunes sent notices to digital distributors laying out new guidelines.”
“They banned titling songs in the search-friendly way common to soundalikes: having the artist name in the song’s title, for example, and nixing phrases like ‘originally performed by’ and ‘in the style of,'” Setaro reports. “While these guidelines apply only to iTunes, they will likely effect all digital music services… [since] digital distributors like TuneCore put songs on all the digital music services at the same time. So if a song has one title for iTunes, it has to have the same one for all the other streaming services.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good. Get rid of these things that are obviously meant to fool the consumer. They’re the musical equivalent of Samsung and Xiaomi fragmandroid phones. Apple is all about originality and innovation, their music (and all other) stores and services should be, too.
” . . . they will likely effect . . . .” Nope. “Effect” means to bring into existence; “affect” means to influence in some way. Again, professional writers given blog space who cannot use the tools of their trade correctly. Pathetic.
I agree. I’m tired of seeing the wrong use of words (their, there, they’re), poor grammar and the “I’m the story” complex that many of these folks have.
The Grammar Police are out today. They are tagging every infraction.
If you are not able to defend yourself, hit the road Jack.
Unless perhaps there is some object called a “road jack” you would like to be struck, you should put a comma in there. 😉
This reminds me watching a TV series that starts out great, but eventually becomes all about some relationship between actors. More of the “me” factor, rather than sticking to a great storyline.
Does this mean that all of Weird Al Yankovic collection is going to be yanked? What about the Chipmunks?
Weird Al does spoofs…this article is about “artists” who are putting music on iTunes in a way that fools the consumer into thinking they are buying the real thing. A lot of artists are not on iTunes but their songs may be covered by other “artists” with a similar name. There were albums by “Rock Kid” doing kid rock songs. Weird Al makes no attempt to fool people. I can’t speak for the Chipmonks.
Weird Al, it turns out, is beloved by those whose songs he parodies. He contacts every one of the source authors before he re-records their songs. Legally, he does NOT have to do so because satire and parody are covered in copyright law is entirely proper under the ‘Fair Use’ doctrine. (At least in sane countries around the planet).
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”
There are defined legal limits to ‘fair use’. So check the rules before you leap.
Correction: …satire and parody are covered in copyright law AS entirely proper…
Yes, it’s my tea time and it’s showing.
I should add that Weird Al ONLY performs parodies of songs after the authors have given him their kind permission. So he says!
Ah, the ‘Muzak’ clause.
And what about backing tracks for Karaoke?
So why doesn’t Apple take the same stance with copycat apps?
Yes! This action makes me a bit more hopeful that they will tackle that problem.
Next we need to ban games that use in app purchases to endlessly mine wallets.
I’m amazed that the, ahem, dazed and confused music oligarchy isn’t flying nuclear lawsuit bombs into the sources of these monstrosities. Apparently, they’re to busy abusing their paying customers via the TPP Treaty, ad nauseam, to bother.