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iTunes Uncovers Musical Hoax
holy_calamity writes "The reliance by iTunes on the CDDB has burst open a musical fraud in the usually staid world of classical piano. Albums by the much vaunted British pianist Joyce Hatto, who died in June 2006, are identified by the iTunes player as belonging to other performers. A more scientific analysis by an audio remastering firm has found that none of Hatto's works appear to be hers. Her husband, who produced all her albums, says he 'cannot explain' the similarities."
If there was justice in the world, Ben & Jerry would have made a Milli Vanilli flavor - fudge and Nilla wafers (which contain no vanilla at all).
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
So if her recordings were so masterful, and they were identical to other recordings, then why didn't the critics recognize the similarity for so long?
This confirms my belief that music critics are mostly full of shit. If those recordings were so good, then the artists she copied from were obviously superb. However, one was apparently a very obscure Japanese pianist, so his brilliance wasn't recognized, and since no-one noticed the copy for so long, the others can't have been very prominent either.
Well, in the case of Minoru Nojima (the "very obscure Japanese pianist,") any critics would not have been wrong in recognizing that the playing was obviously superb, even if they couldn't discern who the actual pianist was. "Nojima Plays Liszt" is a wonderful CD, with a combination of both masterful playing and excellent sound quality. Too bad Nojima is as obscure as he is to the general public -- he just hasn't recorded much. But that just makes it all the more special to me that I got to see him play in a small junior college auditorium just minutes from my house!
I can see the CDs being rips, but didn't she play publicly? Be kinda hard to fake that :)
:)
Girl, you know it's
Girl, you know it's
Girl, you know it's
Girl, you know it's
Ashlee Simpson can hodown too
I completely agree.
What I believe happened is that someone already figured this out and changed the artist and song titles _for that cd_ in cddb. Then this person comes along and pops in the cd and it pulls down the scandalous info and they think they're onto something....
There is no way iTunes is actually doing song fingerprinting to figure out what the songs are. I mean, maybe, but I really doubt it.
If you go read the Wikipedia article on the pianist it says that this was all figured out by a couple of groups at universities. So I think the timeline goes like this:
1. Someone thinks it is a fake.
2. University group studies it and finds it is a fake.
3. CDDB gets updated so the correct musicians names are attached to the work.
4. Person comes along and pops in a CD and "finds" a scandal...
Friedmud
The whole Hatto hoax is an internet phenomenon, specifically a usenet phenomenon. Hadn't there been two shills on the group, playing good cop, bad cop and drawing other bystanders into the game, this would not have happened.
Before those Hatto recordings were on the radar of the professional reviewing magazines in the UK, the entire promotion for these CDs was done on rec.music.classical recordings by the two shills and on the website of a CD retailer with a close affiliation to the record producers. People were praising the CDs into the sky and the exclusive retailer is a regular on the newsgroup, too.
This thing had SCAM written all over it, but overcoming groupthink in the presence of two shills is difficult. Godwin's law,you know.
It's hilarious to see the two shills in action: The one is a loud, foulmouthed ex-classical-music-producer from Canada and the other one an English gentleman with impeccable style, manners and a deep love for classical music. What they staged was drama on a very high level, flaming residents into the ground at the slightest hint of a suspicion as to the authenticity of the recordings. Anything from Jew to Nazi was good enough to be hurled at the detractors of the holy trinity of Hatto, Barrington-Coup and Music.
They almost murdered me when I told the group that the whole thing was a total fake, based on all the oddities that I named.