Tom Petty to get songwriting royalties for Sam Smith song "Stay With Me"

Its the same melody, like exactly. And its in the same key.

Difference is, Smith's song has no balls at all.
 
An annoying thing about songwriting. You spend a couple of hours/days working out this idea you have in your head and start to wonder if it sounds a little too familiar. Next thing you know, you realize you have been working out some song you casually heard a week ago.

Maybe some of these people don't catch it at all, and maybe some say "fuck it" and go forward with it anyway.
 
So Sam Smith has to pay royalties to Tom Petty because he sounds like him?

I think he should pay Boy George royalties cos he looks like him
 
My friends were banging on about this sam smith guy and how awesome he is so I looked him up and nearly flipped my shit when I heard his song 'stay with me'. I told them it was an obviously slowed down copy of Tom Petty's won't back down but they weren't having it. Won't back down is one of my favourites too, so i'm glad they gave him credit for it. I personally don't believe it was a coincidence. Tom pettys a well known artist and that's a pretty well known song so I reckon either sam smith or his label knew of it's likeness in some way or another before they decided to release it.
 
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Can't believe they caved on this.

Smith is British. Why shouldn't he be allowed to have eight seconds of a song be the same melody and key (while changing the lyrics, tempo, timbre, meaning, etc) of an artist from a different country? How many American pop artists have stolen entire lyrical sections or melodies from lesser known American artists, much less foreign artists? Literally every Tom Petty song ever written could be stolen from the most popular Estonian artist of all time and no one would know or give a shit. All music is stolen. I Won't Back Down is a fuckin three chord song. All of its components are unoriginal.

So bizarre. I didn't think much of Sam Smith until I heard him live a while back. I don't know what his songwriting ability is like, but his vocals are insane. He's earned his bread.
 
didn't this happen to coldplay a few years ago
 
The most blatant rip-off I've ever heard was when Radiohead stole The Hollies song The Air that I Breathe and renamed it Creep.

 
Good for Tom Petty.
 
Atheist said:
The most blatant rip-off I've ever heard was when Radiohead copied The Hollies song The Air that I Breathe and renamed it Creep.

Click to expand...


The Flaming Lips/Cat Stevens ripoff was pretty blatant too.
 
puppybird said:
So Sam Smith has to pay royalties to Tom Petty because he sounds like him?

I think he should pay Boy George royalties cos he looks like him
Click to expand...

Nice. I'm gonna steal that if this topic ever comes up irl.
 
Sonofa..

As a huge Petty fan I'm surprised I hadn't noticed this before.
 
puppybird said:
So Sam Smith has to pay royalties to Tom Petty because he sounds like him?

I think he should pay Boy George royalties cos he looks like him
Click to expand...

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I just assumed it was open season on "sampling" these days.
 
The Eagles "Hotel California" chord progression was a rip off. They took it from a Jethro Tull song.
 
brits ripping off americans? not really news
 
It's ridiculous to say that someone copied a simple chord progression. Pull 3 chords out of your ass randomly I guarantee it's been used in a gazillion songs before.

When you copy a melody line from a popular song though, especially the main hook, you're gonna have problems. Probably why there wasn't much argument in this case.
 
isor said:
It's ridiculous to say that someone copied a simple chord progression. Pull 3 chords out of your ass randomly I guarantee it's been used in a gazillion songs before.

When you copy a melody line from a popular song though, especially the main hook, you're gonna have problems. Probably why there wasn't much argument in this case.
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This is pretty much how LZ got away with ripping off so much shit over the course of their career. They kept their plagiarism more subtle and never straight up jacked hooks/choruses.
 
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