“In 2000 the Finnish demoscene musician Janne Suni (also known as ‘Tempest’) won the Oldskool Music Competition at the Assembly demoparty with his four-channel Amiga .MOD entitled ‘Acid Jazzed Evening.’ A Commodore 64 musician called ‘grg’ remade the song on the C64 (using the infamous SID soundchip); it is this that was stolen. The producer’s name is Timbaland and he is one of the hottest names in American music these days. The track in question is called ‘Do it’ and it is featured on the Nelly Furtado album ‘Loose’ on the Geffen label. Getting nowhere with Geffen, the demoscene has now risen to the aid of Tempest, first by creating a stir at SomethingAwful (files downloadable from the forum), then at Digg.com, then on YouTube, with a video demonstrating the blatant ripoff. Being an online-posting musician myself — what rights do I have if this should ever happen to me, and what can be done to raise awareness about such things?”
This is really spreading all over the web… good. Even though Timbaland is not going to get any official punishment, I think. Let’s face it, big companies, lots of money, lots of lawyers etc. But at this point it’s the unofficial side that matters. His reputation is on the line.
That’s really annoying. I think, Geffen Records / Timbaland would create a huge lawsuit, if anybody uses 1 msec of a Sample but Timbaland stole many parts of Janne’s Track. That is really disgusting.
I filed a request on our national radio station to void any promotion request for that single if it ever is being dropped at their desk.
I think the only thing you can do against this is anti-promote the single and album as much as possible.
We don’t have money but we have voices and we have our ways to contact those that have a big influence on the success-rate of a song, so just use them. Many cries make a loud noise, that’s for sure
I do not think, that this is really a bad thing to make “cover” versions of existing tracks but on the other hand, Geffen Records and all major-labels will kill you, if you use a 5 second-sample of a track. And THAT is, what really annoys me.
That any skilled “tracker” out there is a potential hit-music-producer? Well, maybe Timbaland sells more on his name than on his music.
If you’re well known and respected as a top-producer, your music might sell even if it’s just a Demoscene song.
To be honest, I’ve heard alot of tracked songs that were “better” than the song I heard from the MOD made by this Finnish musician. (And yes, I know it was just a MOD with four channels, I’m taking that into consideration also).
So, given the right/wellknown singers and equipment, and guidance of course (I’m sure Timbaland uses some) would any of us be able to produce a “monster hit”?
of course it’s sad to see these things happen, on the other side, I womder why a major producer should steal such a simple and cheesy song in order to make another “hit”… I really don’t understand… Not only he ripped the melody, but he totally ripped the song by sampling it, while he could have lost 5 minutes by making it from scratch…!!
bah… the good side of my music is that noone has interest in stealing it, and it would be anyway a nightmare even trying to do it
My only opinion about this is that they should have credited it properly, and that would be the end of that story. “Track 9 contains a sample of…”. I have the CD and there’s no mention of it anywhere.
Some years ago, the same story happened as the track Kernkraft 400 - Zombie Nation, used the melody of one of the tunes from the C64-game “Lazy Jones” - with no credits given. That track was a lot more well-known (and was so clearly the melody it was based on) so it was more obvious too.
As already stated, it’s the principle of the using other peoples work in any fashion…then claim it as your own.
At least they could have given the creator a bunch of dollars and the name printed somewere.
I think it just shows how talentless some famous ‘stars’ really are… There is far more good music available in the scene than in mainstream music. Timbaland didn’t sample this track, he copied it and used it as the entire basis for the song. Sampling sections of music or beats is also completely wrong, in my book. He did worse than that!
Everybody should spread the facts about this plagiarism as much as possible, so his name will be mud from now on. Screw the music industry! Screw the RIAA!
Yes, it gets worse! He did nothing more than add a drum beat on top of the original tune that time.
Better yet… the next beatbattle sample pack should just contain one sample: “Nelly Furtado - Do it.flac”
Then we could release a cd with all these original tracks and split the profits amongst the participants.
“Hey, all the cool kids are doing it!”
I sure hope this makes it at least to the morning papers. He should not get away with his reputation intact.
This is one part of the thing that pisses me off, the other is the RIAA that does not protect anyone that pays membership to the organisation but chase you with a broomstick if you illegaly download or share commercial content.
My consideration is that if you use material from another artist, you have the decency to politely ask permission to use it and you have the decency to credit the artist for using his/her material.
I don’t know if Timbaland is personally behind the rip-off i do consider him personally responsible for not doing proper research on the source of the samples he uses if he really does not know about this.
Using sample-rips without permission of the original author is prohibited in a lot of countries.
And in this case we don’t talk about a sample-rip, we discuss a schema of notes that has been translated to a sample which is not a rip but a partial rendering of the full song of the author.
It is a derivative composition which requires explicit permission.
