Might as well toss Ray Repp vs. Andrew Lloyd Webber into this thread. Cause you know, he used the same chords that I did.
If The Romantics give permission to use a cover of their song, and it is readily identified as a cover, it could lead people to want to buy the original version. If, on the other hand, the cover sounds exactly like the original, people will assume they already have the original, and not bother to seek out and purchase the actual original.
I don’t think the issue is “better” or “worse”. I think the issue is “distinguishable from the original”.
Presumably, the Romantics could have licensed their actual performance of the song to Activision. Either they chose not to, or Activision didn’t request a licence to the actual performance. I would assume that licensing the actual Romantics recording would be significantly more expensive.
I would imagine that the dispute is over the difference of those two licensing fees.
YMMV.
Re: Ghostbusters/I Want a New Drug
Before this thread I didn’t know that there was actually accusations of song stealing there, but my 80s cover band has played both songs, and sometimes we’ll do a medley of the two, which basically involves singing different words over the verses, and alternating choruses.
They are indeed very, very similar songs, in style, arrangement, harmonically, and melodically (both in the vocals and in the bass line).
Anyone else have a craving to hear this? Eonwe, does your band have a website, by any chance?
Heh. No recordings, sadly. If we pull one together at some point I’ll definitely post it. You can almost get the same effect by just playing both songs on two different stereos at the same time. 
WTF? That graph seems to clearly show that the release of guitar hero coincided with a slowing of the sales of Sleeping, The Stroke and Beastie Boys.
Or rather a slowing in the increase of the sales.
It was the suit in which Fantasy Records claimed that “The Old Man Down The Road” was a copy of “Run Through The Jungle.” Fogerty not only won, but Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc. became precedent when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings in 1993 and awarded attorneys’ fees to Fogerty, without Fogerty having to show that Zaentz’s original suit was frivolous.
At the risk of continuing the hijack (apologies for starting it), when the theme to Ghostbusters originally came out, my first thought was, “He’s ripping off I Want A New Drug.” You don’t even need a trained musical ear to hear the similarities.
There was music on the radio when I was first reading this thread, so I couldn’t make my brain compare the songs, but now that it’s quiet, I can totally hear it in my head.
Retroactive plagiarism! I like the way you think!
And here I was worried about RIAA lawyers running out of work…
Article that discusses various issues relating to “distinctiveness of musical identity.” Part of the issue in the Waits and Midler cases is that using a soundalike may establish a “false endorsement” where the general public may assume that the real person endorses the product because it confuses them with the soundalike.
Which is why you see/hear “celebrity voice impersonated” disclaimers on ads that use voices that even resemble a celebrity’s.
Exactly. Tom Waits hates advertising in general, and he was extra-peeved that the song “Step Right Up,” which was meant as a tongue-in-cheek indictment of common advertising jingle cliches, was used to sell a product without his approval. In that case, the musician who performed the soundalike version of Waits’ “Step Right Up” for the Doritos commercial eventually testified against Frito-Lay because he was such a fan of Tom Waits and so indebted to him for vocal style and musical inspiration.
I’m here evoking the late comedian Bill Hicks, who was understandably bitter about the fact that Denis Leary basically stole his routine, gutted it enough to make it mainstream, and thereby became known as the originator.
Hicks’ comment: "It’s true – I stole Denis Leary’s act. But I camouflauged it by adding punchlines. And then, to really throw people off… I did it ten years before he did!"
Color me amazed that anyone could not notice the similarity between IWAND and Ghostbusters. I never heard Lewis’ song until a few years after Ghostbusters, and I immediately thought: “Hey, that sounds like a rock version of Ghostbusters.”
They’re not exactly the same - tempo-wise they’re quite different - but I hear the same rhythm guitar and bassline. (Don’t listen to the signature keyboard riff from Ghostbusters, but the bass and rhythm track are the same.)
Continuing the hijack, did anyone notice that Peter Schilling’s “The Different Story (World of Lust and Crime)” sounds a lot like New Order’s “True Faith?”
That’s just crazy. Next you’ll say he ripped off David Bowie or something.
At least some of the artists “re-using” material 'fess up and pay the royalties. When John Legend came out with the song “Save Room”, it was almost exactly a copy of “Stormy” which was written by Buddy Buie and James B. Cobb Jr. (recorded by Classics IV), with new lyrics. Even the instrumentation, specifically the organ sound, was a ripoff of the original.
But when it was challenged by Buie, they quickly settled for paying 50% of the income from that track. Buie says, “No lawyers were involved”.
(Although Legend still claims that he never heard the original. :rolleyes: )
(story here, about halfway down the page)