Coldplay plagiarism

[betahat]

Chris Martin once claimed that their fourth album, recently released, "is going to be the greatest piece of music ever made."
Coldplay is now being sued for plagiarism by Joe Satriani over their new song Vida La Vida which Satriani claims is a rip-off his song
Judge for yourself:


To make things more complicated an Indie Band called the Creaky Boards also claims that Coldplay plagiarized their song.



I've never been a big Coldplay fan, though In confess they have a few catchy pop songs. I think the Creaky Boards plagiarism claim is kind of dubious, but the Satriani song is a little too eerily similar. Technically speaking you can't be guilty of plagiarizing chords but you can be guilty of plagiarizing a melody.

What do you think? Is Coldplay the suckiest band of all time? Is their claim about "greatest piece of music ever written" even more laughable now? Are there any other blatant song ripoffs that can compete with this one?

[betahat]

Looks like youtube took the clip down. The Satriani song is If I Could Fly

[alphamikefoxtrot]

I've always thought of Coldplay as one of those standard, regular dime a dozen bands that's come out of the 2000's. Not special, a few good songs (well, Yellow...that's all I know).

If they didn't rip it off on purpose, they MUST have heard the song before and just sort of absorbed it into their consciousness.

[betahat]

The Stones also got in trouble for "Anybody seen my baby" which has a very similar melody to "Constant Craving" by KD Lang. The Stones actually agreed to pay her royalties BEFORE she sued as one of their producers realized the songs were similar at the release party.

Stray, although there are only 12 semitones in an octave, don't you think it's highly unlikely they independently came up with something that had the same chord progression and syncopation and also an almost identical note for note melody? I think you're right that it might not have been fully unconscious plagiarism (George Harrison settled a similar suit, where the jury ruled he had not intentionally committed plagiarism) - how difficult would it be to prove that in a court of law anyway - but even unconscious plagiarism that is that blatant should deserve some cut of the royalties, no?

[ChickenSoda]

Dec 12, 2008 9:01:35 GMT -5 @stray said:

Anyways, there's only 7 musical notes, and 12 in total counting half/flat notes. Something like 2048 unique scales possible.

The Middle East would like to have a word with you:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_tone

[betahat]

Well, there's the Creaky Doors song I linked to above, and on youtube there are also attempts to link it to a Cat Stevens song




and this guy


The last one is a bit of a joke, and the album came out after Satriani's anyway so conceivably they may have borrowed from him.


In terms of degree of similarity the Coldplay/Satriani one is by far the closest. I know Satriani has a slightly different end to the melody line, but that's about as big a difference as the extra syllables the Rolling Stones stuck on the chorus for Constant Craving:



The difference is the Stones did the right thing and agreed to give KD Lang a song-writing credit and a cut of the royalties. The only reason this thing will end up in court is because Coldplay refused to play ball. Apparently it's very hard to prove plagiarism cases in court, though there have been a few successful cases.

Personally I'm not a big fan of intellectual property rights in general. As a music consumer I would love to be able to get free copyrighted music by changing a few notes, or to sample at will from any artists for hip hop mixes, etc.
But if we are going to have them, there has to be some standard of musical plagiarism. Can I just take the chorus from another song, change a couple of notes, and tack that on to the chorus from a different song, and put out that record? The current standard is based on melody - if you were writing the law Stray, what would be your standard of plagiarism (if you would have any at all)?

[betahat]

Also, here's the link to a youtube video with other song similarities. At 2:23 you can hear a song by the Chiffons, followed by George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XEUjvEDvro

Harrison actually lost that case in court - the court ruled he had unintentionally/unconsciously plagiarized the Chiffons, and the court ruled that most of the royalty payments go to them.

If the standard of evidence that led to the jury's ruling in that case still applies, Coldplay is toast.

[betahat]

To give some closure to this thread (and to put myself in the running for the gravedigger awards), I give you:
music-mix.ew.com/2009/09/16/coldplay-satriani-lawsuit/
*********************************************************************
Coldplay settles Satriani lawsuit
by Joseph Brannigan Lynch

Joe Satriani’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Coldplay has been settled, Satriani’s rep tells Billboard. Last December, Satriani sued the British soft rockers, claiming that “Viva La Vida” ripped off his song “If I Could Fly.” But the legal dispute was resolved Tuesday with an undisclosed settlement between the two parties.

Satriani wasn’t the only artist who felt Coldplay was aping his material. Back in May, Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) also claimed “Viva La Vida” was too close to one of his songs, 1973’s “Foreigner Suite.” When asked if he might file suit against Coldplay, he responded: “It depends on how well Satriani does.”

Stevens has changed his tune since then, deciding the musical similarities weren’t intentional. He even offered “to sit down and have a cup of tea with them and let them know it’s okay.”
**************************************************************************

I wonder how much he got? That song must have generated a ton of royalties - even a 10% cut would be pretty good.