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Idea

Mandatory indication of covers vs originals in song naming

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Povilas S

Povilas S Nov 25, 2022

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Make it mandatory for professional as well as amateur musicians to indicate covered songs as such and to reference the original author when publishing performed songs anywhere public like Youtube, Spotify, Soundcloud, etc., not to mention physical records.
Why?
Make it easy(er) for the listeners to know which songs are written by which authors. I once tried to google which (if any) songs performed by the artist Birdy were written by her because she plays a lot of covers. I didn't manage to do this even when particularly looking for that information on the internet and could only guess. This should be made easy.
Prevent cases where the majority of the public attributes certain songs to unoriginal authors due to their version being more popular and the lack of information about the origin of the song.
Make some musicians gain more popularity (especially relevant for the rising, little-known artists) by referencing their original songs and others not to take illegit credit for songs they didn't write, in other words - make the music industry more clear and fair.
Make it easier to trace back and solve copyright issues.
How it works:
The referencing would be done in a simple form as is often done now, e.g.: "Monarchy - Video Games (Lana Del Ray cover)", just it would be mandatory. When publishing a song on, say, Youtube, the user first indicates the type of content they'll publish, if it's music then the system would ask if it's an original piece or a reproduced work. If it's a cover the system would open a specialized form for creating a title where you'd indicate the name of the song, your name/nickname/ band title, etc., and the name of the original author.
The same system works for remixes. When there's an original song sampling part(s) of other song(s) things get a bit more complicated, but still doable using a similar system, just the title might get bulky.
Music-matching algorithms are well-developed these days and it's easy for the algorithms to identify unoriginal work. The user who posts reproduced music without referencing the original author would be asked to change the title or delete the song.

song naming copyright music

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Creative contributions

An official database where every cover needs to be submitted

Michaela D

Michaela D Dec 16, 2022

Referencing the original artist on the title of the song is ideal. In addition to that, we need an official database, publicly accessible, where every cover published is registered. Either the artist or the record label would have to make the submission. This would help trace all covers made for original songs. There already are a few unofficial websites (like secondhandsongs.com or whosampled.com) that bring together covers. However, they rely on a community of volunteer contributors, so their lists are not always complete, as Povilas S noticed).

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Povilas S

Povilas S2 years ago

This might get tricky because most amateur musicians start with covers of other artists and with the existence of youtube, soundcloud, and other social media platforms there can be literally thousands of covers of the same song and most will be performed by people who have non to very little popularity. I might be exaggerating a bit, but you get the point. So imagine if every such version should get reported to the database. It's both complicated and unnecessary. That's why I think the naming should be enough.
It might be a bit easier to have a database of only original songs, but then we have another problem - who would evaluate the originality of the song that's posted by a random person claiming it's their song? However, some official database to check the original authors of songs is necessary as discussed in the comments with J. Nikola. 

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General comments

Michaela D

Michaela D2 years ago

You may want to check websites like secondhandsongs.com. You can see all songs by Birdy (6 originals and 19 covers) and the 201 songs titled "Smells Like Teen Spirit". That is the original song by Nirvana plus 200 other versions! The site emphasizes the original and it has links to almost all adaptations.
This is a good source of information but I agree that covers should be marked as covers wherever they appear. Something like "Smells Like Teen Spirit -C".

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Povilas S

Povilas S2 years ago

Michaela D Thanks! Didn't know about that one, seems helpful, but they are lacking less famous artists/songs as I see after exploring a bit. 
Concerning the naming I think it would be best to indicate both that it's a cover and the original author, so, for example, Guns n' Roses - Knocking on heaven's door (Bob Dylan cover).

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Michaela D

Michaela D2 years ago

Povilas S you are right. This specific website, and I guess most similar websites, are fan-based. You just gave me an idea :)

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jnikola

jnikola2 years ago

It's a significant problem to tackle but Youtube makes it more complicated. While some authors don't mind covers of their songs (especially if made by fans), many have already made agreements with YouTube that allow their songs to be used in exchange for a portion of the ad revenue generated on YouTube. As I understood, everything depends on the original author. The same principle works in other businesses, where nobody will care if you take Apple's logo, change some colours and shapes and use it for your grocery store. But if you grow big, Apple could sue you. I think your idea should be (from a legal perspective) implemented only if the revenue gained from that video becomes significant. 
Of course, it would be easier to find covers of certain songs, but the Youtube algorithm could od it automatically, too, by adding a hashtag to your video that defines it as a cover of XX.

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Povilas S

Povilas S2 years ago

J. NikolaIt's not so much about copyright but rather about public education. Hashtags won't work as well, because a negligible amount of people ever pay attention to them and if they do they might forget the minute after. The title keeps staring you in the face so it's the most effective part of the content in that regard. "Automatically" do you mean by matching the melody with the original song? This might be technically complicated, it would definitely require more resources than when the user indicates that him/herself. The title indication system is very simple and easy to implement. 
The only part that might be difficult sometimes is for the performers to find the original author, cause some songs are covered too much to make it easy to dig out the original author. Therefore I think an official database could be made for this purpose. It could be integrated into the search function of that streaming platform so that it would automatically show you the original author once you start typing the name of the song. In any case, the self-reported information about the original authors should somehow be checked and approved by the platform to avoid misinformation. 

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