Johnbee1I’m sure many here have heard of the recent ruling regarding Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”.
I know that any loop we use in either ez drummer or ez keys is royalty free for us to use in any original song as we wish. But how would it extend to other fellow users of the product? Let’s say I use a drum pattern from EZD and 50 other users use the same pattern. Which of the 51 of us can sue the other 50 for copyright infringement? I guess the answer would be the first one who uses it. Or is a drum pattern considered arrangement and not subject to copyright? How about keyboard patterns from EZ Keys? The reason this is a cause for concern is the court ruling in the songs mentioned above charged that Thicke violates Gaye’s copyright in terms of STYLE. Is style criteria for an infringement suit now? I thought is was melody and lyrics.
John Bowen Reading PA
Steve McNamaraNo one gets “dibs” for copyright or other purposes. Everyone can use it as much as they want for original work.
Johnbee1No one gets “dibs” for copyright or other purposes. Everyone can use it as much as they want for original work.
Steve. I realize this. But the copyright laws seem to be changing. I know we’ll never have an issue with Toontrack. That’s not the issue. Please check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kt1DXu7dlo
Ed Sheeran was recently sued by Marvin Gaye’s co writer of his hit “Let’s Get It On” from years back for apparently using the same CHORD PROGRESSION and GROOVE! Gaye’s co writer won a settlement for $100,000,000!
I don’t present this as an issue with Toontrack, but something that, in general, those of us who write songs, especially those of us who use pre programmed loops need to think about. Both Sheeran and Thicke need to appeal these ridiculous rulings or everybody who writes songs, pro or amateur could be subject to lawsuit just by re using something like perhaps a 12 bar blues pattern.
Watch the video and decide for yourself if this is fair or not.
JB
DAN DUNSHEEWhether there is a law suit or not probably depends on how much money your song makes. It probably costs at least $15-$20K just to get a lawsuit started, so if the reward isn’t there for a winning law suit, probably nothing will happen other than a letter from their law firm to stop using their piano loop (developed in EZ Keys)! Then you would have to hire a lawyer to fight their claim….
Steve McNamaraIf you ever get a letter from an attorney demanding you cease using a loop from any Toontrack product based on alleged copyright grounds, you can either toss or frame it once you stop laughing. No right of exclusivity passes to someone purchasing a Toontrack midi loop.
1
Thanked by: Raynaldo Martine
Bryan BlockI wouldn’t worry about it. Technically, you can’t copyright an arrangement, only the words (lyrics), and melody – and of course individual recordings are protected, but I suppose individual prominent bass lines or guitar lines – “melody lines” might end up being targeted as they have in this case. But, these cases are only out there because there are 10’s of millions of dollars at stake, and people want a piece of it. If you are that concerned over it, my thoughts would be 1. Don’t write a hit song, then you will never have to worry about it. 🙂 2. Don’t use these products on your final recording – flesh things out and then hire an actual drummer or keyboard player to use those as reference and play something “100% original” or the nuclear option of just not using these products at all – “just in case”.
I don’t know the specifics of how they determined that what Thicke and Williams did equated enough to something that came before that it was actionable, but until there are millions and millions of dollars involved…I’d just enjoy the products and keep making music. 🙂
Creativity is a Work Ethic.
Johnbee1Yeah, I know people on our level of music (income?) have no real reason to worry. It’s just a question of artistic integrity.
JB
JohnThis issue is one of the most important on this entire forum I think, because regardless of technical issues with our favorite products, all of us who create our own songs/song recordings, need to know all we can about copyrights, current changes in the process, recent cases and any significant rulings, and so on. I send a lot of work to the US Library of Congress for actual copyrights, and I would not trust or recommend, any other process. Regardless if I never sell a song, if I ever have to defend it I’d want nothing less than an official copyright to back up any claim. There’s lots of good info out there, and here’s a link that is short, sweet, and in plain english:
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/8-basic-facts-every-musician-should-know-about-copyright-law
Here’s a link to the US electronic Copyright Office which is SO much easier to use than in the “old days” (I been doing copyrights since the late 1970’s).
I think we all love to use commercial royalty-free loops and patterns like EZDrummer and EZKeys and many others, and there’s a concern that even under the guidelines of that license usage, we should be trying faithfully to alter and otherwise modify the patterns to make them fit OUR OWN original work, and not try to create a song out of the given loop or pattern AS IS.
In fact, just having bought the EZ Keys Ballads2 MIDI pack, I was amazed to hear what sounds to ME like a lot of phrases that I’ve heard Jim Brickman play. (I’ve seen him play live, and he’s one of my favorite artists for piano ballads). I wonder if he provided some actual input to the clips or whether their “professional piano player” as advertised, was as much a Brickman fan as I am! 🙂 But again, I’d feel as though I can’t just drag down a few clips AS IS, paste them together, put some lyrics to it and call it MY song. I feel like I need to create my own melody, then locate what phrases I feel are CLOSE and that I can then make chord and note changes to, in order to fit it INTO my own melody and lyrics. Does this seem to agree with what most of you are doing? Or is there a wide degree of opinion about the whole “creativity” aspect of using these kinds of tools in our own creations, and what is “OK” to do or not to do as far as using the loops in our own works?
I’m not seeing a lot of guidelines from the vendors about this point, but it seems common sense to me. Sure, we might go through our lifetime without ever having any issue come up, we’re not in that tens-of-millions of dollars category, but we should all be trying to use these tools to enhance our own original creations while streamlining our process and enabling us to create a song recording in days instead of weeks (or much longer) as I used to do. I wanted to start a new thread for just the creative aspect of using these tools but was glad to see this one and felt it should do fine for a longer term discussion. How do you all use these tools in your own creations, and using EZ Keys specifically? I’d love to hear more from you about this aspect of songwriting with these EZ-tools. Best wishes to all of you who are creating your own music!
John
using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.
Johnbee1John
I’m so glad you responded this way. I almost forgot that I started this thread. I try not to use the patterns as is. I try to come up with my own chord progressions. I recently bought a product called Scaler by Plugin Boutique and there are some very sexy voicings in there. So I’ll use Scaler for the progressions and feed them into EZ Keys and play around with the articulations. Frequently I have to go in and edit the patterns to make them fit the elements of the chords I’m using. Then I do a little “shopping around” the patterns and chop up the articulations measure by measure and do a “mix and match” on them from different varieties of the EZ Keys patterns I have. I’ve come up with some very interesting combinations. This is how I try to assure it becomes my own creation. I admit I’ve done a handful of songs using the EZ Keys and EZ Drummer patterns “as is”, and I managed to make some fairly good tunes out of them, but when I listen to them I don’t get as much satisfaction from them because it feels more like I’ve co-written them in that the backgrounds have been pre written and all I did was contribute the lyrics and melodies. Some of these pre sets are so great that it’s hard to resist the temptation to just use them as is, but I’m afraid that someday I might hear a song playing somewhere with the same background one of mine has. It’s great though, that Toontrack programmed these patterns with the ability to edit them in such a way as one can customize the patterns. These are great products and I can’t help but think that possibly even some of the Masters might have used these tool if they were alive and composing today.
John B
JohnJohn B: good to hear back from you! Your workflow seems very nearly identical to my own, and the concerns of working with loops in constructing original compositions I think, is a very valid point of discussion. Regardless of whether we ever sell anything or make any large sum of royalties, that doesn’t mean any of us can’t be brought into some legal action by someone who feels their own composition was infringed upon (whether a valid claim or not, who wants to be dragged through a legal process and then we have to dig into every nook and cranny of how we constructed our song…)
Your process describes exactly what I am doing. I don’t think that means that there can’t be certain segments that can’t stay the same as the original. Since we started this thread, I looked back and reviewed the patterns I used in approx 10 songs now since I’ve started using EZKeys, and it seems that it’s in the Intro and the Ending sequences that I’ve used nearly identical patterns here and there just because it happened to exactly fit the rhythm, style, and chord progression that I needed to lead the song off with (or close it). But once I got to verse and chorus, I find that about the only aspect that I search for are sequences that have the right “feel”, the right style in the tempo that I’m writing the song in – once I have that, then I can change lots of chords and even go into the MIDI and adjust individual notes if needed. Then as far as I understand it, once we drag the sequences together and meet it up with our (original) melody, it takes on our own uniqueness. So we should also realize that if we had to defend our song’s unique composition in a court, (and I’m not claiming any expertise on this issue, especially with what’s going on nowadays), it seems to me that the burden is more on the prosecutor to prove that there’s a sufficient degree of “copying” to support a copyright infringement. And I don’t see how that could be justified given the processes that we are outlining here – there may be a couple of measures the same, yes, if we utilized the same original EZKeys sequence. But that in itself should not ever be sufficient to justify an infringement suit – because once we begin the editing process to match our own original melody line, everything changes and the song should be quite different in many characteristics, than anyone else’s.
It’s an interesting point of discussion also, that various “loop” vendors in their USLA (user licensing agreement statements) are NOT all exactly the same. MOST of the ones I’ve seen and used, are general and perhaps even a bit vague, in their agreement that as long as we use the loops in our own compositions and we are NOT repacking them into a library for sale in any way, we’re free to use them. Period. Whether we copy them as is or whether we modify. Several of the ones I use have a further statement saying that the intent is for us to “use layers, and various editing modifications” in order to keep our original works “sufficiently unique” as an end-product. One vendor I looked into, Elastik, has a statement that they expect that we will NOT use a loop “as is” but will use the tools in their editing plug-in to MAKE the loop unique as an end result, and then insert into our original composition. So I thought that was a bit of a different stance on this issue. So I do think it’s key when working with loops, that we should be insuring that our song if using loops, has at least a certain DEGREE of uniqueness to it. I can’t speak as to what degree copyright lawyers have to go by these days – things are so much more complex now than ever before due to the kinds of digital tools we have available. I wish we had some musicians here who were also copyright lawyers and could give us some current legal pointers on the issue of loop usage! But until we can find something more definitive, I think our own guidelines have to suffice.
Up above, another user Bryan, made a good point. That we use real players in any final recordings. In other words, before any of us go to publishing and let our works be signed on to a contract deal, we or they, would NOT use the recording WE made anyway. All tracks containing such loops would be replaced by real performers and that would not be a direct copy of the original loops, it would be introducing live playing differences & nuances, perhaps even in slightly different styles & instrumentation. So this would be further steps taken to insure that such a direct copy of even a few measures of a loop, would not be an issue. But at my level at least, here I am uploading my “never completely finished” songs (lol) onto my own musician website. Loops or not, I consider that the works are original in the ways that will be important to defend I guess, if needed. On another note, what exactly constitutes a work to be “published” is another good look-up. The copyright office has some guidelines. The type of sales, the type of medium sold, and several other areas of concerns of even posting songs up on a website, all come into play. Another good topic for discussion on down the road…!
Hey, your mention of the Scaler plug-in got me looking, because I’ve been on a kick to better organize and use MIDI especially, such as EZKeys does. As a Studio One 4 Pro user, (I switched from Sonar when Studio One 4 came out), I’ve been totally impressed with how it handles all kinds of audio loops and I’ve invested heavily into many acoustic guitar bundles… MIDI just recently. Using EZKeys makes it easy to work in MIDI and I also EZDrummer2 which I rely on now as well. The workflow with tools like this is just amazing. Scaler looks like a very possible new addition to my toolkit plugins, thanks!
Oh one final thing, I made mention before someplace, that what I found most difficult in using EZKeys was how easy it WAS to make major modifications to the sequences, and then that presented a problem – what if I had to go back in at some later time and re-create that exact same sequence? At first, I started a text file and just write down where I got each segment – Intro, Verse, etc – and then what my own resulting chord changes were. But then I realized, how can I account for chords that occur prior to the next measure or several chords within one measure…. finally I began using a graphic screen capture as I went, and I build up a sheet I call my “EZ Keys Map” for each song I build a piano track for. I’m attempting to attach that here just to show anyone what one idea is in order to solve this issue. It does take a little bit from the workflow of course, to stop at each phrase I correct before racing on, but it does result in a sheet that would allow me to go back if I had to, and re-create it. I use rich text format file being a windows user. I don’t know what mac uses, sorry. Happy recording!
using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.
JohnFollow-up to the topic of Copyrights, and can we make commercial use of songs that we create using royalty-free loops? I was searching the web on this subject area and noted a relevant article (and pretty current, dated Feb 2018) on the Magix.com site on the use of Music Maker loops. They state the following points in the article (in their FAQ listing) as such, and here’s a link:
http://magazine.magix.com/en/commercial-use-of-music/
“To put it simply: If you are using sounds or loops from Music Maker or Music Maker Jam for commercial purposes, you need permission from MAGIX to do so. To make this process as easy as possible, you can easily purchase Audio Pro licenses for commercial use online. ”
“These (loops) are created by professional musicians and developed and recorded exclusively in the MAGIX studios. Copyright, which protects intellectual property, applies to these. Although the loops and sounds are the property of MAGIX, they may be used for commercial purposes upon the payment of license fees. . . . ”
OK so, at least in the use of the loops from Magix Studios, this is how THEY are stating the issue of commercial use of material built with their loops. I’d love to hear from a Toontrack Rep on whether they have anything like this or what particular guidelines they have on use of their loops IF or WHEN an artist wants to go into “commercial use” with his own song, if it includes use of any of the EZ-x loops?
As I stated in my earlier post, we may all want to be cautious about making the distinction of creating a song with loops for NON-commercial use, verses the sudden difference when we reach a point where we want to do something commercially, with that finished song product. The Magix link above also includes some details about the categories of licensing and costs, but to me it doesn’t read very clearly. If we have any Magix Music Maker loops users out there perhaps they can offer more. But in general, we may be looking at the need to dig in and find out a lot more about the “commercial use” aspect of our song writing if we want to go any further with it than our own DAW systems or personal websites. Say, anybody know Taylor Swift’s email address, surely SHE “has some people” who would know about this stuff!?? HaHa Happy recording everyone!
(just don’t try to sell it without being REALLY sure…! ) John D.
using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.
Johnbee1You know, I remember right before I bought EZ Drummer 1.0 about 9 or 10 years ago, I saw a commercial for it on YouTube by a professional. That commercial no longer exists but he said that (paraphraising) “These loops are completely royalty free and you are free to use them for anything. Even professional songwriters are using this product IN THEIR PRODUCTIONS”. I took that to mean that people were making records and selling them with the loops and they didn’t have to pay Toontrack any royalties or cut them in on any deal. Now, as I said, this particular commercial is no longer up on YT but there are are others by Rikk Currence on Toontrack products. I don’t remember off hand whether he went too much into this issue but I kind of remember him saying something about they are royalty free and the users can use whatever, whenever just so long as we don’t try to sell the RAW LOOPS in the form of a library, which is understandable.
This didn’t become an issue until Marvin Gaye’s co writer started taking Thicke and Sheehan to court. I remember when all you could copyright was lyrics and melody. Chord progressions were not covered, neither was arrangement. If we think hard enough I’m sure any one of us can think of at least one or two songs that have the same chord progression. Rick Beato, on YouTube recently published a video he called “Has Every Song Been Written”? and it addresses these particular lawsuits. If this is the case, then perhaps we hobbyists had better find an new one and even the pros might want to change their profession. It’s getting scary.
I sincerely hope that Thicke and Sheeran appeal these judgements against them.
John B
JohnHi guys,
this has been brought up and answered many times.
In short: any Toontrack MIDI used in your own songs will not infringe any copyright on Toontrack’s behalf.
You cannot sell or distribute Toontrack MIDI as it is sold to you, you can only use it as part in the context of a musical composition.
The same goes for any samples/sounds, you use them in context of your work and cannot distribute them individually.
Of course, you can not use Toontrack MIDI to copy another composer’s work and claim that you are using Toontrack “copyright free” MIDI and get away with it but I guess that’s pretty obvious, right? ?
BR,
John
John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
3
Thanked by: Raynaldo Martine, Eric Kaiser and JohnJohnJohn B., and John R., thanks for the responses – I hadn’t had a chance to get back here and report till now, but yesterday I did a fair amount of research, what I did was look up the individual End-User License Agreements for all the major loops producers I have known of and done business with over the past few years. As I mentioned they are not all the same, but the majority DO support the full “royalty free usage” as WE are understanding it (that is for both commercial and non-commercial use), pretty much as our Toontrack Adviser mentioned above. So we know that Toontrack is fine as well as I checked ProducerLoops and several others (I don’t have my notes handy at the moment but will provide a list shortly). As I mentioned before, the Elastik German-made loops outfit is also pretty much on board, their wording is just a bit more detailed and they specifically mention not to use loops on an “as is” basis but strongly encourage the “modification” of loops as a means to “further distance your work from the original”. This is not negative for us, really, as we all should be trying to do exactly that. So I think we can all feel confident about using loops (be them audio or MIDI) from reliable sources that clearly specify the usage to include production, commercial use as John R. stated above, clearly not for sale or redistribution as is but used in context of our work in songwriting creation.
It may seem strange to us that for instance, any 2 – 3 of us (or more) COULD theoretically have the same or basically the same, piano introduction or ending from an EZKeys session, (I think it’s much more difficult to recognize an identical drum intro?) but what is supposed to be important is the ways our individual melodies in verse and chorus etc, will branch off and thereby have plenty of uniqueness to them. At least that’s how I’m understanding things as we now leave off (hopefully) on the issue. I’m much more eager now at this point, to join in discussions of EZDrummer2 and EZKeys – specific comments of features, fun discoveries, solutions to any issues, and the like! Let’s play ball! Happy recording.
John D. (sheesh, too many Johns around here?!) Might as well assign numbers! 🙂
using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.
Johnbee1Too many Johns around here. You’ve taken notice to that too! LOL.
Thank you John R for pointing out in your last sentence about users not being able to litigate against each other for using Toontrack loops. I’ve always trusted Toontrack on this. It’s the other users I had some doubt about. But I’m glad you made that clear. My concerns are not so much the loop issue, but what is going down and what is setting precedent in copyright laws, especially with the Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke/Ed Sheeran lawsuits. I encourage anybody who makes music, whether they use Toontrack products or not to check out Beato’s video mentioned above “Has Every Song Been Written?” Rick raises some good questions about these issues that should concern every songwriter, amateur or pro. As I said, I hope Thicke and Sheeran appeal these judgements against them for not only their sake, but the sake of every music maker on the planet. What would be nice is to have judges that are more educated in music as it applies to copyright laws and being able to know what they should be looking for when presiding over a copyright infringement case. A lot of them are probably tone deaf and can’t distinguish one note from another, or don’t know the difference between a beat and a melody.
Where the heck are the emodicons?
JB
JohnI really enjoyed Rick Beato’s video “Has Every Song Been Written” and several of his others – he’s a great musician and the points he’s making are really important. (and listening to them both take turns playing those beautiful riffs, wow!) Further searches I did including many cited examples of music copyright infringements with court rulings, make very interesting reading. I bumped into a series of articles along the way, called “Music Law 101…” and these are produced by some legal experts, at the bottom of the article it states:
“The Music Law 101 series is provided by Coe W. Ramsey and Amanda M. Whorton of the law firm Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard LLP. Brooks Pierce provides sophisticated and strategic counsel to a wide variety of clients in the entertainment industry, including artists, musicians, songwriters, record producers.. . . “ The link to this particular article is here:
https://blog.reverbnation.com/2018/08/16/music-law-101-copyright-infringement-fair-use/
I think all of this is good for any of us that compose/create music especially in these days of using such tech-tools and samples, sequences, loops – and it just behooves us all to continue to educate ourselves as much as possible so that we can hopefully avoid any troubles if/when we move our own music into a published, commercial environment. A highlight of this article was learning what two key points are (still) used in determining a copyright infringement:
To establish copyright infringement, you must establish that you own a valid copyright in the work and that:
The work has been copied; and
The copy is “substantially similar” to the protectable elements of the original work.
The article goes into further detail about how Courts evaluate that “substantial similarity” and makes for some interesting reading.
John (D.) #92210 :-))
using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.
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