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July 18

When a new song copies exactly the music of another song

What is it called in the music industry when a new song with different lyrics takes exactly the same nonvocal music from another song? Examples: Ice, Ice, Baby by Vanilla Ice taking the music of Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie, and MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This taking the music of Super Freak by Rick James 75.75.42.89 (talk) 20:51, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In general, it appears to be under the umbrella of Cover version. If they didn't have permission, it's called a "copyright violation", as with the songs "My Sweet Lord" and "Blurred Lines". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:38, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See Sampling (music) and also Legal issues surrounding music sampling. Nanonic (talk) 21:45, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That would be a subset of the concept. But the music to the song "Sweet Little Sixteen" was used in its entirety, with maybe just a few changes in isolated notes, for "Surfin' USA". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:54, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Musical plagiarism. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:54, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So Weird Al escapes this by virtue of the special concept of "parody" since the content of his lyrics are funny? The Gaye family went after Robin Thicke for Blurred Lines and got millions, but I haven't heard of them getting $$ out of Yankovic for Word Crimes. 73.147.123.98 (talk) 17:20, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Parody and Satire don't even have to be funny, or even intend to be funny. That's not what is at issue here, though. The deal is, Yankovic always a) gets permission for his parodies and b) always credits the original composers. The only time he hadn't been given permission was for Amish Paradise, and that was only a case of mistaken due diligence on his part: he thought he had permission, but due to miscommunications hadn't gotten said permission, and there was some friction which has since been ironed out. It should be noted, however, that Yankovic is not required to get permission, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. clearly established that the use of a piece of music for the purpose of parody does not require permission, though credit is still required. --Jayron 32 19:48, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here are eleven artists who (allegedly) said no. To be fair to Eminem, he only didn't want a video making him look silly, and was nice enough to grant Al an interview against his will. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:15, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Weird Al also c) gives the original artists a share of the royalties (usually 50%, I think).

It's not clear that Weird Al's "parodies" would qualify as fair use. In many cases he doesn't comment on the original work or artist at all, he merely writes new and unrelated lyrics while slavishly copying the sound of the original (e.g. "The Saga Begins"). Even when he clearly makes fun of the original (e.g. "Smells Like Nirvana"), the extent of the copying is so large that it wouldn't obviously pass a fair use test. -- BenRG (talk) 19:59, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to inform the Supreme Court of the United States that they are wrong then, because they seem to disagree with you. --Jayron 32 22:14, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What is parody, if not needing to relate to the target or being or even trying to be funny? 75.75.42.89 (talk) 02:49, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron, the court didn't (in your words) "establish that the use of a piece of music for the purpose of parody does not require permission". In fact they emphasized that the decision shouldn't be interpreted that way, in a passage that's quoted in the Wikipedia article. What they held is that commercial parody shouldn't be presumed to fail the fair use test just because it's commercial. This is clearly explained in the article lede, sidebar, and article body. I also don't know where you got the idea that "credit is still required" for fair use; it isn't. -- BenRG (talk) 05:56, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]