Tom Petty & Jeff Lynne awarded royalties for Sam Smith single

wow... I had to google this to see if it was a joke or not. So those three notes can't ever be used again?

Smith pretty much rips it straight off from the melody to the phrasing of Petty's tune. Might have been unintentional, but you still can't do that.

Could it be that "Stay With Me" has sold over 4-Million copies? Could it be Petty and Lynne need money? National Enquirer please investigate.

What a case of hogwash. They are two different songs. Period. Different feel, tempo. Other than the same short lyric phrase, two totally different songs. I hate this type of legal 'petty'ness.

KenB123
 
Could it be Petty and Lynne need money?

 
I'm going to go with 'no'

If it was just a few notes, I doubt Smith would have just rolled over like he did and gave up 12.5% of the publishing. The whole chorus is a slower tempo direct copy of the Petty song.
 
Randy

Recently I've started noticing tons of melody fragments in songs that sound like they've been lifted from existing songs. What usually happens is that I will start whistling the newer song, and what comes out is the older song. I'm never sure if it's intentional or whether it's just that melodies are bound to get recycled sooner or later. Last night I was listening to the excellent "Harmonise" by Herbert, and there's the instantly recognizable melody from Madness's "House of Fun" in there. And in "Those Feelings" from the same Herbert album, I can hear a Zepplin song off Physical Graffiti (can't think of which right now). Personally I can't imagine taking it personally to the point where if sue someone. It's just a few freaking notes.

What a crock. Almost always is. How many other artists are paying Hank William's estate for almost every known country tune written since his passing?? Get a grip.

I'm w/ Randy on this one. He wouldn't have been bothered if it were just the melody. Or just the phrasing. But melody AND phrasing?
 
I know firsthand that this can be unintentional. Personally, when I realized it had happened, I gave up on the songs. Had they been released, I guess I would have respectfully acknowledged the similarities and try to come with an agreement. 
 
They didn't throw him in jail or put an end to his career or anything. His song is still a hit - if anything, this got him media attention.
 
I had no idea who he was before that - I know it may sound weird, but not knowing that Tom Petty song is probably just as weird.
 
The fact that it's hard to come up with something original does not mean that people should just do whatever and forget about acknowledging things like that. 
 

I think it is impossible to tell if it is intentional. The fact that NOBODY would confuse those songs. The song is popular because it uses common ballad theme, structure and he fills the gap of falsetto crooner. It sounds familiar because many pop songs created in a twelve not system just do. I'm  all for protecting artists against blatant ripoffs but this sets a dangerous precedent. Trends in copyright law in the past couple of decades reflect greed just as much as they reflect intellectual property rights.  If i dig deep enough, I can find an equivelent level of familiarity of most songs to another song. 

I agree that pop music is simple, but should we be rewarding people for pretty much doing the same thing?  The fact that it is such a simple musical phrase means petty himself gave into the urge to use simple pop cliches too. If anything, one should hold the rights to things so unique that odds of someone making something similar are astronimical. The purpose of intellectual property rights are to protect the unique and not necessarily to give ownership to basic things based on who's lawyer figured a way to own it first. 

I spoke of getting away with murder because it's also a figure of speech, though technically, it's also true that science has made it less and less possible in a more literal sense.
 
I think that there are indeed some incredibly wicked things when it comes to copyright laws - lawyers being what they are. I do recognize that this part of the problem is anything but perfect.
 
But I think that the tendency to lower the bar is a much greater plague, still.
 
Why, for example, should a group of teenager expect to become star musicians and be regarded as songwriters without first learning the basics and earning those titles? Why do we value ignorance and lack of skills so much that they become a right and a stepping stone in the quest for notoriety instead of a potential and something which should be worked upon, with time and humility, out of the spotlight? Why does every one has to be a star, right away?
 
No one can forbid someone to write a song very similar to another. But once you throw it out there and claim it as yours and try to build a name and a credibility on it, you expose yourself, and take whichever responsibility comes with it. But we only ever hear of rights.
 
I mean, the guy will not be thrown in jail, or be put in a concentration camp - he still gets to sing whatever he wants, and earn a living and all. But he was asked to give credit, and he did amicably have I read.
 
Obviously, that's jut an opinion. It may seem harsh, but I obey the exact same of rules when it comes to creating. If I think I'm quoting or borrowing from someone, either I'll drop it altogether or acknowledge it or keep it to myself. The right to write a song that sounds like another is inalienable. What you do with it is subject to debate.

musicman100
Ill do you one better, last night on Austin City Limits I heard a singer by the name of Bryan Adams
I first thought Tom Petty  and his band were  hiding behind the stage playing and singing.
this guys vocals AND music(chords, structure, tonality) are a direct ripoff of Tom Petty

Or some of Tom's is copped from him (his first album came out in 1980).

No one is talking about safeguarding ignorance...certainly not me. But, again, there are twelve tones with which to work and countless...literally...compositions to compare one's arrangement of said tones to. It is a statistical improbability of the highest order to not have scads of near and/or exact repetitions of melody in what is loosely termed, modern music. Especially given the rules governing non-dissonant melodic and harmonic content. And these facts should, at the very least, be taken into account when adjudicating these cases. It is not hyperbolic to say that almost any modern melody, when reduced to a finite set of notes, can be found to be a replicant of many, many previous works by many and varied artists stretching back as far as history allows.

This is...and always will be...more an issue of monetary remuneration...than artistic sovereignty.

FWIW, and I felt I needed to mention that I genuinely appreciate the fact that you guys keep the conversation on a very civilized level. Sometimes I'm afraid my wording sounds harsher than I'd really like and I don't necessarily manage to put every nuance across the way I should. 
 
So, thank you folks for being such gentlemen. :)
 
Now back to our regular program...