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Coldplay sued by Joe Satriani

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David_Dovey:

Nodaisho:
I don't dislike coldplay (boring, though, and I find Katatonia's Day a captivating song), but bashing is always fun. I don't dislike Satriani, either. I just don't often listen to instrumental guitar stuff. My dad apparently likes his music, didn't know that until he mentioned that Al Pitrelli's soloing with TSO reminded him of it.

Thrillho:
Get a life, Satch. I doubt there's a great deal of overlap between your fans and theirs, they're not exactly stealing sales from you. And how the fuck do you prove this kind of thing anyway?


--- Quote from: Dazed on 07 Dec 2008, 17:43 ---This would not be the first time that Coldplay has bitten a riff directly from someone else, just in the past they've gotten permission for it.

--- End quote ---

Otherwise known as 'sampling.' It's this new fangled thing that some musicians do, not been around long, only the 70s or 80s. I wouldn't worry about it, I'm sure it won't catch on.

Spluff:
This word, I do not think it means what you think it means. Sampling is taking a portion of a sound recording and playing it within your own song. And even that, now, would require permission from the original artist, as the last major sampling case (Bridgeport Music, Inc. et. al. vs. Dimension Films et. al) found that "no substantial similarity or de minimis inquiry should be undertaken at all when the defendant has not disputed that it digitally sampled a copyrighted sound recording", meaning that, in that specific case, that the repeated use of 3 notes, lasting 2 seconds sampled from another artist did not fall under fair use. The part in question here is much long than 2 notes and 2 seconds, and would therefore almost certainly be found to be illegal.

But in any case, this is not about sampling - the court treats sound recordings (samples) much differently than the underlying compositions of the song. I would say this is almost certainly plagiarized, as both the melody, the chord progression and even the timing fits together perfectly between the two songs - but I doubt the court will award it in his favor, as not only will he be able to prove that the music is almost exactly the same, he will also have to prove that Coldplay had actually heard the song before, which would be very, very difficult.

[EDIT - Oh man, you were saying that the other 'riffs' that coldplay stole were actually just samples - not that the issue at hand has anything to do with sampling. God damn it late night, why do you have to make me misunderstand people]

Inlander:
I think plagiarising requires a measure of forethought or conscious decision-making. But it's entirely possible that whoever wrote the Coldplay song had this melody suddenly arrive in his head, thought it was great, and wrote it down. Melodies - like a lot of things - can worm their way into your head and emerge at the strangest time, and you won't even realise that they were there. Coldplay songwriting guy might now be astonished to think that he was recycling someone else's song: quite possibly for all he knew, it was just a good tune that came to him in a flash of inspiration. He may well have heard the Satriani song some time, maybe years ago, maybe only once. The fact that his brain for some reason decided to regurgitate it does not necessarily mean that he was deliberately ripping it off. Just how is a songwriter supposed to differentiate between unexpected memory and bolt-from-the-blue composition?

An example from my own life: a while ago I was trying to come up with a name for a character in a story I was writing. I had her first name, but I was struggling with the surname. Then suddenly it hit me: of course! I had the name! It sounded perfect! Several days later I was watching a T.V. show that I occasionally watch, and much to my surprise, there, in the credits, was my character's name. My brain had recycled the name of an actress from a T.V. show, without me even realising at the time that that was what was happening.

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