Don't expect justice in a court of law. Expect lawyers, judges and very non-expert jurors.

This only ever happens when somebody does something that goes very, very big.

And if you get a tune, copyright it. Don't whatever you do send your self a copy of it in a registered letter. You can't ever open it, so you end up with a lawyer with the biggest bucket of money you ever seen on one side and you with a sealed envelope saying trust me on the other. It'll cost you thousands to open that letter under the sight of a judge, and then, and only then, will your lawyer and his experts consider the merits of your case. It costs between $35 and $55 to lodge an unpublished Performance Arts claim with the US Copyright office (from anywhere in the world). You can even do it online and upload a wave file of your song. And you are covered. Prima Facie evidence of your copyright. When you're small it's people ripping you off you have to worry about. When you're bigger your Publishing agency will do the worrying for you.

There's a soundtrack song in an eighties movie that was ripped off me (don't ask cause I won't tell). It hurts. Pay your money and learn the lesson the easy way.

 

You know what's different about all those players? they were single-instrumentalists, playing in bands with other talented artists, and they had huge production budgets. If Hendrix wanted a drum sound, he got a drummer, he didn't buy an expensive drumset and then learned and practiced it for years until he could record it.
Meanwhile the average user of this forum doesn't play in a band, doesn't have much money to hire session musicians, and probably doesn't have a budget at all. So we get the best alternative we can, which is sounds made by dedicated sound-designers. I did learn to play several different instruments and record them, but one can't do everything, we simple don't have the time. So your entire rant is pointless and ignorant.

 

Every single person on Earth starts with no budget and a dream. The listed musicians in the original post didn't even have the convenience of audio warez, yet still managed to become great through the manifestation of their dreams. Audio warez isn't the reason anyone becomes famous ...Talent, desire, networking with the right people, hard work and sometimes luck, as in being i the right place at the right time is. When you say "we" your trying to speak for every bedroom producer out there, which is very arrogant of you. I once was part of that "we" you speak of. In the 80's audio warez and major sample packs were unheard of. We still made it cause we wanted it bad enough, and made time to fulfill "our" dreams.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 13, 2018

The times have changed. In the 80's you'd get half a million dollar budget to record a debut album even if you were an unknown band. You could actually hire musicians, or give them incentives to play in your band. Now you get none, absolutely none. Even if you're an established artist you get very little.
I don't know what exactly you "made" but it isn't relevant today because it's a different world. I rather invest my time in actually writing music than studying drumming because it will take me years and thousands of hours of practice to reach a level where I'd be able to sound better than drum programming (all the while I'm currently studying singing and playing keyboards).

 

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Last edited: Nov 14, 2018

To be fair, your example is using a band who were signed. Not many were signed at all, and many of those got very little or were ripped off.

I think what Nana Banana is saying, don't expect to do the drums, synths, vocals, arranging, mastering etc etc and get famous. Doesn't happen... then or now. All big single name artists have a network of people behind them, many of whom don't get a penny. Nothing has changed.

 

Nailed it...

 

I just logged in to say this:

Not sure about ALL samples, but when you are a Devine, a 'skippy' or an unfinished, you have been creating thousands of patches for hardware and software synths, and you spend 30m, 1h, maybe even 5 hours, creating that sound from scratch, perfecting it, optimizing it, eqing it, and even creating a demo song with that sound,
I am pretty sure IF you create a track, and you use one of their sounds as the lead melody, bass, or any other sound that will be present & well audible throughout the entire song, i am sure if they listen to a song with their preset/patch on it, even slightly modified, they will instantly say 'hey, that sound looks like the one i did for the zebra/etc bank'....
They put so much effort and passion on it, they will instantly recognize it...


the same with a sample... even though there are bilions of samples, songs, more or less eq'ed, compressed, layered with othersounds, etc etc,
if you sample a voice (the human can recognize billions of different voices. ..), a synth, or even layer 3 or 4 sounds, if you hear that sound, somewhere, there are chances you might recognize it, in 2 seconds...

Final words... are the majors, publishers, studios, composers, playibg a playlist with 25 million songs, night and day, to expect finding someone who might have stolen a sample ? I don't think so.

will a composer, producer, artist, sample library maker, like Sample Logic, etc etc, instantly recognize one of their sounds or samples, if they hear it/them on a track being played somewhere ? Ohhh fukin YES ... ! specially if they spent 8 hours tuning and perfecting that sample, over and over. ..

 

I agree but the question is if every time they recognize their presets/samples they check who the composer is and if he/she has a license to use it.

 

As a budget producer I typically take note of what was used in each track and the moment I found out about a use I secure the licenses if I didn't have it already.

 

An interesting thing about sample libraries is that they all have their general license agreements directed to one person only, the buyer. However, this brings an annoying thing into collaborative music making processes. So if Producer A has a certain sample library the general license only licenses Producer A to use that library in a noncollaborative music. As soon as there is another producer Producer B involved in a collaboration with Producer A the sample library that is licensed to Producer A cannot be used unless the same sample library is also licensed to Producer B. However if Producer A plays the piano and Producer B plays the guitar and they collab on a production they can do that without any licensing problems as their instruments are hardware instruments and not license bearing data on data holder devices. So, in this case, the fact that when you buy a sample library you are not the owner of the samples but only a licensee for usage is annoying. It would be really bad if instrument makers would sell their instruments to the buyers with the condition that only they can play the instruments and nobody else. Thus comes the different legal definition of recorded materials played and recorded by others versus ready-made instruments. It is mostly about skills. When you use samples there is a certain amount of skills that are also invested in those samples. Granted there are also certain skills in designing and making instruments. However, the difference is that those skills are different. One skill is about making music and the other is about making musical instruments hence the legal difference between samples and real musical instruments.

 

Most likely they do not do that, however, if the musician makes it big with that sound I am sure those sample library makers will look into things. This means even if the actual creator of that music realizes that he/she is about to make it big hence now wants to purchase all the necessary licenses to clear that music properly, it is too late because of the time of purchase of the licenses happened later, usually much later than the time of first publishing of the music.

 

I think artist A would be covered and the use ok in this example. What the dev might be trying to avoid is ie; a company buys a sample library with "individual license" and allows all of its employees to use. Not sure but I think I've seen some dev's offer group licenses as well as supplemental license options

 

I'm curious how exactly the companies can know that a track has pirated sample libraries in it(like something that's posted on Youtube or Soundcloud for example)? I understand that the samples can be watermarked but what do they use to detect the watermarked samples (obviously you can't tell just from listening).

 

Hey... I got an idea.... If your going to release a track.... Purchase the sounds... or even better.... Don't use stock presets....
I'm sure most of use have terabytes of samples and one shots... Just make sure you are aware of what you put in your track....

 

Actually, many of those samples can be recognized as is, especially by those who produced them. I am not sure about watermarking. How would they analyze a track for watermarking? Filtering maybe? Amplifying certain frequencies according to a certain code?

 

I've created a ton of samples I would easily recognize. Mostly because they were made from hand crafted synth patches and unique field recordings, all with a definite nuance only I would recognize. Unless of course someone else added their own special artistic nuance combined with heavy FX and filtering ...Then I would have recognizable issues

 

I'm a little scared about pirated Tones, especially Samples. When you doing music just for fun, non commercial ect. I think nobody cares, but when you get somewhat popular and mayyyyyybeee you could make money with your music... But you used 100000 of Sample Packs, Kontakt Libraries and so on, so if you want to go legal and safe you have to buy all this stuff mostly before you can make money with your music. So when you're a warez addict you maybe have a problem.

 

What's the Sheeran song that sounds like this one?

 

Even KSHMR uses pirated software. If you want to check then watch out his video of "how to produve jammu?". You will get your answer. #peace