Immoral to buy/sell track and put your own name on it?

[robogone]

I should have written: "Most of the famous mainstream artists (like Madonna, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus etc.) don't write (i. e. compose & produce) their songs themselves"! Same thing applies to most rappers.

I think that's untrue - Lady Gaga certainly writes her own material, and Madonna has been at least a co-writer on almost all of her material. The Biebers and Cyruses of the world will probably never write a song though as they are given no motivation to do so.

Lady Gaga does all the music too? She program's all the timbres and puts it all down?
I find that very hard to believe...

Why is it so hard to believe? She's a pretty accomplished pianist, and I can't think of a good reason why she wouldn't be adept at programming backing tracks.

[awol9000]

If you look at the way some parts of the music business work, it's hardly a surprise. Rappers routinely buy (or exclusively license) beats that are more less song stems - but the artform revolves around the delivery of the words rather than the backing music.

Stars like Madonna or George Michael are doing a similar thing. They hire a composer and a producer to make songs for them, and then they're delivering only the lyrics and the vocals. Both don't fiddle around with a DAW, some softsynths and a guitar, they still have enough money to pay the best producers out there.

There are only a few artists who compose their songs themselves - for example McCartney...

Yeah but now these DJs are claiming they wrote the music they bought. They get booked as an act to hear their original music that they were so talented they wrote.

If you take that into consideration and its more along the lines of an EDM Milli Vanilli.

[vurt]

I should have written: "Most of the famous mainstream artists (like Madonna, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus etc.) don't write (i. e. compose & produce) their songs themselves"! Same thing applies to most rappers.

I think that's untrue - Lady Gaga certainly writes her own material, and Madonna has been at least a co-writer on almost all of her material. The Biebers and Cyruses of the world will probably never write a song though as they are given no motivation to do so.

Lady Gaga does all the music too? She program's all the timbres and puts it all down?
I find that very hard to believe...

Why is it so hard to believe? She's a pretty accomplished pianist, and I can't think of a good reason why she wouldn't be adept at programming backing tracks.

the madonna one is a little bit of egomania
although im pretty sure she does write a lot of her own lyrics, having spent time with someone she worked with, he claimed the most she would do is say things such as "i want that bit faster" or "make it go woosh there" ...
ie a very basic use of language to get him to do what she wanted. but not actually do the writing. she is more of a "producer" than a musician in the studio, still takes a writing credit though...

i wont say who, but those who know me here should be able to guess who...

[Gamma-UT]

the madonna one is a little bit of egomania

Probably more commercial reality than egomania. You get a bigger slice of the cake with songwriting as well as performance rights.

I think people neglect the importance of taste and decision-making in music writing production - sometimes that is what sets one production apart from others. Would anyone have heard of Rob Playford had he done the music for Timeless on his own? Playford was clearly the guy making the record happen but Goldie saying "make it do that" has to be major influence on the record.

[vurt]

the madonna one is a little bit of egomania

Probably more commercial reality than egomania. You get a bigger slice of the cake with songwriting as well as performance rights.

I think people neglect the importance of taste and decision-making in music writing production - sometimes that is what sets one production apart from others. Would anyone have heard of Rob Playford had he done the music for Timeless on his own? Playford was clearly the guy making the record happen but Goldie saying "make it do that" has to be major influence on the record.

i understand the importance of taste and decision making, and i see no problem at all with the role of a "producer" my issue is when people overstate their own role in a production/album, whether its for a bigger slice of the pie.

the perf rights werent an issue as she hired hi to produce the tracks for her, and in his words "it was a fuckload of cash"
no one argues with a fuckload of cash

[robogone]

the madonna one is a little bit of egomania
although im pretty sure she does write a lot of her own lyrics, having spent time with someone she worked with, he claimed the most she would do is say things such as "i want that bit faster" or "make it go woosh there" ...
ie a very basic use of language to get him to do what she wanted. but not actually do the writing. she is more of a "producer" than a musician in the studio, still takes a writing credit though...

It's not that uncommon either. On the occasions when Michael Jackson did get a writing credit, he apparently just hummed a few bars, wrote some incomplete lyrics and then got Quincy Jones or whoever was around at the time to turn it into a complete song and not get a credit.

Then there's Elvis - apparently never wrote a song in his life, but got a 50% writing credit for any song he recorded if the real writer was not well known.

Been going on for years I'm sure.

[debra1rlo]

sorry, not seeing the link between immortality and Madonna writing her own songs.

[robogone]

sorry, not seeing the link between immortality and Madonna writing her own songs.

It's an outrage I tells ya! An outrage!!!!

[lotus2035]

the madonna one is a little bit of egomania

Probably more commercial reality than egomania. You get a bigger slice of the cake with songwriting as well as performance rights.

I think people neglect the importance of taste and decision-making in music writing production - sometimes that is what sets one production apart from others. Would anyone have heard of Rob Playford had he done the music for Timeless on his own? Playford was clearly the guy making the record happen but Goldie saying "make it do that" has to be major influence on the record.

I remember that album well. Goldie took ALL the credit on that one. And back then in 1995 it wasn't easy to find information so me and my friends just assumed that Goldie was the brains behind the whole project because we never heard anything about Playford at all.

[Tricky-Loops]

I should have written: "Most of the famous mainstream artists (like Madonna, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus etc.) don't write (i. e. compose & produce) their songs themselves"! Same thing applies to most rappers.

I think that's untrue - Lady Gaga certainly writes her own material, and Madonna has been at least a co-writer on almost all of her material. The Biebers and Cyruses of the world will probably never write a song though as they are given no motivation to do so.

Lady Gaga does all the music too? She program's all the timbres and puts it all down?
I find that very hard to believe...

Why is it so hard to believe? She's a pretty accomplished pianist, and I can't think of a good reason why she wouldn't be adept at programming backing tracks.

I rather prefer Alicia's Keys...

[Tricky-Loops]

...its more along the lines of an EDM Milli Vanilli.

I'm pretty thankful that those DJ's aren't singing everything themselves. I would get earache...

(Now all singing DJ's may protest... )

[dark_virus]

Do you think it is immoral to buy/sell tracks and put your own name on it?

As long as no animals are being harmed, that's fine.

In a way, it's a natural evolution of the loop samples market.

[funky lime]

pride.

what's more important to you?

-- making a song that tons of people hear and love?
or
-- letting everyone know it was YOU who wrote the song?


some people want everyone to know how great they are.
and some people just want people to be happy.

it's like if i donated a billion dollars to, let's say, cancer research. i don't care if the world knows my name or that it was me who gave the money. i don't want a "halfwalk center for cancer research" or whatever named after me. i just want cancer gone.

if i sell someone a song, i don't need them to go around telling everyone the track was actually made by me. i just want people to enjoy the song. if i didn't want someone taking credit for it, i wouldn't have sold it to them in the first place!!!

some people are better at working behind the scenes. that's why crew members of stage productions wear black. they do just as much work as, if not more than, the actors. but you are never supposed to see them.

[jancivil]

but in this case Bartahsounds is selling their creativity. All the songs they have posted on Soundcloud are their own productions and they are for sale for others to buy... What's your opinion about that?

that it's incredibly cynical. I heard a bit, it's a bunch of ready-made style attributes set out nakedly, it's a loops CD approach via soundcloud. The next step towards total prefabrication of 'tracks'. It's a logical outcome of 'Producers' mentality. As Sendy put it 'results oriented' in extremis.

It's musically amoral if you want a judgment for it. It's bizarre but strangely unsurprising; it's a symptom of a larger disease though.

I don't know how a Madonna production gets brought into it. That's another process entirely. It's like people want to create an apologetics for this; by placing it beside people that are actually involved with the writing of whole songs? That doesn't work.

[Gamma-UT]