iTunes Is Not a Place For Fakers!
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Ever since we began ad services for iTunes releases, we’ve noticed how many customers are trying to promote unofficial songs there. “Bobby-High-Roller-Wannabe featuring Lil Wayne – OMG OMG I DID A SONG WITH LIL WAYNE (Super Duper Official Version)”, “Rihanna – Umbrella (Karaoke) [IN STYLE OF RIHANNA]“, or better yet “Ivan-The-Brainless Featuring Ludacris, Drake, Jay Z, Britney Spears, & Nicki Minaj – Ivan Is The Best Artist Ever (Radio Remix)” Yes, yes we did see lots of these that are very similar. Some of the songs do actually have these “featured” artist in them, but the verses are taken from the REAL songs. Some of the verses are taken from mixtapes that not too many people heard about and some of the releases on sale didn’t even have the featured artist in the song at all! So basically they’re using the famous artists’ names to impress clueless girls making them think “Wow he is so cool and this must be official since it’s on iTunes” while people are actually buying the songs thinking it’s the real deal.
Not only is it wrong, stupid, moronic, idiotic, foolish, douchebagful (is that a word??)… it is absolutely illegal! These fakers are breaking a major copyright law which may..nay, WILL eventually cost them hundreds to thousands of dollars in loses.
The question is, how the hell do they get on iTunes in the first place. Well mainly iTunes doesn’t care at first. They’ll allow anything in the store as long as it’s coming from a trusted distributor. There lots of distributors that can get your song up on iTunes within a week with a simple upload feature. Because of this simple procedure, tens of thousands of songs are added to iTunes every Tuesday. It would be humanly impossible to go through all of them checking and making sure that the songs are copyright compliant. iTunes sells the songs, holds the money in their bank and pays distributors on a quarterly basis. Distributors in turn pay the artist either by PayPal, check, or direct deposit. Quite simple.
Major record labels have highly ambitious unpaid interns who sit on places like Google, YouTube and iTunes and exhaustively check everyday on what’s been said about their designated artist which is on their roster. For example, Mary interns at Young Money/Universal. Her job is to google “Drake” and record every website that mentioned “Drake” in the last 24 hours as well as the nature of the mention.
“Date: 06/10/10
Website: YouTube.com/watch?v=blskblskblsdbd”
Title: Drake – Over
Description: User “Loser5894″ uploaded “Over” video again. Recommended to YouTube staff for immediate removal and suspension.”
or
“Date: 06/10/10
Website: SoManyMp3s.com
Description: CherryPop called Drake a “bitch” again. Hired Boba Fett to take care of her” =)
You get the point.
Eventually they find these unauthorized songs on iTunes and contact them. While these fakers think they’re getting away with it, iTunes is investigating although still reporting sales to the distributor. So the doucheb..sorry, faker logs on to their distributor’s website and checks the stats – “Holy crap! I’ve sold 24,068 songs this week of the song with Will Smth!! I’m rich bieettcch!” WRONG The faker will never see that money!
Once the investigation is complete, iTunes will not release the funds to the distributor and the distributor will never pay the artist EVEN THOUGH in that certain album with the unauthorized track the faker had songs that were actually his. The distributor then has to turn over every piece of information about the artist to the proper authorities, iTunes, and the record label for further punishment.
So why would we refuse to promote such fakers? We don’t want to get yelled at for promoting BS releases! Unlike certain distributors, we carefully check the releases. Making sure that songs don’t sample other songs, famous artist names featured are confirmed by their labels or managers, and finally… enough with the damn KARAOKE REMAKES!
You are breaking the law if you sell the following on iTunes (or anywhere else)
— You doing a cover of a copyrighted song without written permission or clearance.
— You are using another artist name anywhere in the official song title without their written permission.
— You are taking a sample out of other artists’ instrumental or acapella without written permission or clearances. This includes remixes using the acapellas EVEN THOUGH you completely changed the music part.
— Placing autotune on the copyrighted acapella doesn’t make it your own.
— Playing a guitar riff over a copyrighted song doesn’t make it your own.
— You are remaking the instrumentals of an already released copyrighted song and titling the release as “In style of [Artist Name]” or “In Tribute to [Artist Name]“. This includes karaokes, remix stems, synthapellas, piano versions, guitar versions, etc.
— And finally, placing “No Copyright Infringement Intended” in the title of the song…Well you’re just an idiot and we did have this [blank] trying to sell a compilation of popular Lil Wayne songs on iTunes. Needless to say the release was pulled from the library within days.
Posted on 06/9/10
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Back To Blog - Tags: Editorial, iTunes, Lil Wayne, Usher
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