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The Romantics sue Activision because Guitar Hero cover was "too accurate"

Um, do they not know that the POINT of hiring other artists is to make it sound as near the originals as possible?

When someone licenses music like this, what they're usually saying is, "We want this song included with our product, but we do NOT want to pay as much cash as you're asking." So, the usual alternative would be to not licence the song at all and not use the song. Using a song's background without the lyrics is a way to legally license a song on the cheap, without using the real vocalists.

Getting the vocals to sound similar is fair game. If they weren't allowed to try to get it to sound similar, there would be little reason to license the background at all, unless it were solely for a commercial.
 
tjhooker said:
If the games sales are so huge then of course they should be recompensed further as well as all the other artists in the game.
Yeah cause that's how the world works. Do the game programmers and artist lose money when their game bombs?
 
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loosus said:
Getting the vocals to sound similar is fair game. If they weren't allowed to try to get it to sound similar, there would be little reason to license the background at all, unless it were solely for a commercial.


as others have said, there are varying levels of licensing of music. We'd have to see what sort of agreement was reached here. Most of the complaints of "horrible" covers in GH games have been due to the gamemaker not being allowed to have the song sound "too much" like the original recording. It's not at all unusual.
 
I somehow doubt the The Romantics had the "as long as they don't sound like us" clause in their agreement. Something tells me they took an offer of $100 split between the band, and now they feel like douche bags and want more money.
 
Kintaco said:
I somehow doubt the The Romantics had the "as long as they don't sound like us" clause in their agreement. Something tells me they took an offer of $100 split between the band, and now they feel like douche bags and want more money.


this song has been licensed over and over again over the years, they'd likely be savvy about these issues.
 
What a bunch of morans. People are so lame.

I can't believe how people nowadays are suing in and out and for everything all the time. It's really getting stupider than stupid.
 
I've never understood the problem with covers sounding like the band. (or why they need covers in the first place) Do they want people to associate a worse cover with their name or something? I would think a good version would have more positive effects for them than a bad one.
 
traveler said:
I've never understood the problem with covers sounding like the band. (or why they need covers in the first place) Do they want people to associate a worse cover with their name or something? I would think a good version would have more positive effects for them than a bad one.


you can license the lyrics and music, then you can also license the particular arrangement of a recording, then you can also license the recording itself. Sometimes you can license a song but not the vocal stylings - don't know the terminology. There's been commercials in the past that use a licensed song and lyrics, but the cover is done with a very different sounding voice, different cadence, sometimes even in a different key.
 
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