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Jonathan Coulton Song Used By Glee Without Permission

Posted by timothy on from the perhaps-they-can-call-it-willful dept.

FunPika writes "Jonathan Coulton, who is known for songs such as "Code Monkey", is claiming that his cover of "Baby Got Back" was used without permission on Glee, a television show aired by Fox Broadcasting Company. When the Glee version appeared on YouTube last week, Coulton suspected that it sounded similar to his cover, and several of his fans confirmed this by analyzing the two tracks. Despite Coulton contacting Fox, they continued with airing the episode and have placed the song on sale in iTunes."

3 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Re:speed of takedowns by Brucelet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The question is whether Glee crossed the line from "sounds similar to" to "used the same background recordings as". Coulton has a karaoke version available, and at one point it was possible to purchase a usb drive containing source tracks of this song (among others) as part of a creative commons fundraiser, so it's certainly feasible that the Glee version simply stuck new vocals on top of JoCo's existing tracks. There is some strong evidence that that is exactly what happened.

  2. Re:I've heard note-for-note covers that accurate by spazdor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Listen to the Soundcloud link I posted. Use headphones. This is not a hyper-accurate note-for-note cover. If it were that, there would be all sorts of stereo phasing wildness going on in your ears, because they would be all confused by the Haas effect. That is not going on because the instrumentals are the same instrumental.

    http://s9.postimage.org/qq104s1zh/joco_glee_comparison.gif

    Here is a spectrogram comparison I made from the first 15 seconds of each song, starting from the attack of the second 'clap' sample. They're not identical obviously, owing to different mastering and compression on the tracks, in addition to the differing vocal performances going on over top. But, the spectral components they share in common are clear. If you look at that clap sample by itself, before the vocals and other instrumentation start up, they are obviously the same sample.

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  3. Re:frist post? by DaTrueDave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This was a triumph.
    You could at least have used the first post to point out that this is the artist who wrote and performed "Still Alive" from the video game Portal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI
    Not sure how this wasn't in TFS.