Song Fight @ Spin Tunes

[Spud]

The round 2 title references Song Fight. Couldn't pass up the opportunity since it fit the challenge so well.

References Song Fight? Hell, man, it IS Song Fight. That's the name. That's the challenge. It doesn't reference Song Fight. It just steals it outright.

I try to be reasonable. I try to be understanding. I really do.

Some of you in the past have felt that I have been a little harsh on the Spinster. I have been reasonably vocal with my protests of his use of this board as an advertising vehicle for his little competition. I wasn't terribly keen on his sidekick's Negative Reinforcement reviews, either, even though he never reviewed one of my songs, but some of you enjoyed them. Until now, your tolerance, kind reader, has kept me in check. But that's over.



I get it. It's Superbowl Season. It's a fight. About songs. Team songs. One might be tempted to call it Fight Song! as both a pun and homage to our site. But no, no such wit. Just blatant thievery. I looked around the page for credit, both at the competition site and the bandcamp page. I figured if he was going to use the name, he would at least give us credit. No such luck. Here are the credits from the bandcamp page. Matte Schubbe gets credit, but alas, not us.



So the idea of Song Fight is to write a fight song for your favorite sports team? No it's not. Song Fight is a free Web site where Internet musicians enter their work into competition. Every ten days or so, one or more titles are posted, the competitors write a brand new song inspired by one of these titles, and the Internet at large is invited to vote for their favorite song for each title.

I know. "some rights reserved". I guess so. This is why people trademark stuff. This is how attorneys get rich. But that's not my thing. I've just had it with this guy. Someone please explain to me how this is OK.

Sorry, JB. To paraphrase spinny's post in his own personal thread, I couldn't help myself.

[Lunkhead]

That seems pretty lame. It's not like he's completely unaware of Song Fight! I think it would be perfectly reasonable to request that he at least disambiguate, e.g. "Song Fight (not to be confused with "Song Fight!" at http://songfight.org/)".

Beyond that, though, it kind of seems like "song fight" is out there as a generic idea. Other people may have the idea without knowing about Song Fight! and may not Google for it first before using it. It seems like it's kind of imperative to make sure songfight.org and related properties remain the top search results for "song fight", so if other people do use "song fight" anybody searching for them will wind up at the original site.

[anti-m]

(Of course I haven't Songfought in one million years, so, you know, grains of salt, etc.)

These guys have always struck me as slackers riding Songfight's coattails. As a result, I ignored them. The negative reinforcement review thing was deeply odd trolling. (Why devote this much time in a community in which you aren't invested? For page views? Oh, right, got it.)

All that said, I don't think there's much that you can/should do. As the saying goes, DNFTT. I suppose you could ban these guys or at least dis-allow their spammy links to their knockoff site, but I personally wouldn't bother. There's only one true Songfight. Savvy consumers know the dif.

[glennny]

He shoul have called it "fight songs" as so not to confuse his contestants nor people looking for the real Song Fight.

[Spud]

That seems pretty lame. It's not like he's completely unaware of Song Fight

No, it's not. He has been an unpaid advertiser here for a long time. And he knows the value of advertising. Have you been to his boards? His Captcha is a paid ad.

[Spud]

He should have called it "fight songs" as so not to confuse his contestants nor people looking for the real Song Fight.

Like I said, if he would have called it Fight Song! I would have thought it was a clever homage rather than a poke in the eye.

[anti-m]

That seems pretty lame. It's not like he's completely unaware of Song Fight

No, it's not. He has been an unpaid advertiser here for a long time. And he knows the value of advertising. Have you been to his boards? His Captcha is a paid ad.

Oh really? That I did not know. (I didn't know that you could advertise on a non-self-hosted site like Blogspot! Live and learn!)

I did always wonder the campaign to drive people to that site was so relentless. (As far as I know Spin doesn't write or record music?) If the potential for ad revenue is in the mix, that explains a great deal.

Based on this information, I'd like to change my vote. Go ahead and break links to his site. I'd feel differently if ad revenue wasn't involved. I appreciate that Songfight is 100% volunteer effort/ ad-free.

[Spud]

Oh, there are ad revenues involved.

[Ross]

Hey spud.

The spintoons proboard thing is me. And I get no revenue for it. Proboards lets me use it free and they put the ads there to pay for it.

Not that I am trying to skew how you approach his use of the "Song Fight" title for the current round of his competition, but you might as well know that particular site is not his.

I set up that proboard site to try to drive more open discussion when his competitions are running, since most of the participants just post things on their own blogs.

For what it's worth, he seems to me like a genuine online music fanboy who makes some bad choices sometimes.

Those negative reinforcement guys though......

Do what you will - Song Fight! Proper rules.

[Spud]

Ross, maybe I am just getting too old if this is the way the game is now played. I see our own board is now rejecting my avatar. Time to retire. And Ross, I cannot register for your board. I have tried several times. No activation code email. Really. How hard should I have to work to sign up for a god damned forum? I am too tired for this shit. No offense, Ross. It's not you. It's me.

[Ross]

That's what I get for using a cheap, free board. A few people have had this problem and I basically have no control over it. There doesn't seem to be a clear cause.

However, You should be able to post to existing topics without being registered, although I know the basic presentation seems to imply otherwise.

[Spintown]

Before I get into ALL the comments made thus far, let me start off by saying I'm sorry for not crediting the site on the new album. It's something I should have done, but it didn't occur to me for a couple reasons. The first reason being that I have a permanent link to SongFight already on the blog page. It’s been there since I started SpinTunes & the reason it’s there is because I’m a fan of the site, and I think it would be of interest to the people that are interested in SpinTunes. The second reason is that I copy & paste 80% of the updates to the blog or albums. People send me stuff & I throw it up on the albums. For the blogs, if I’m doing a results page...I generally copy & paste & old one I did, and make changes from there...it’s just faster. Sometimes I do overlook things in a rush to get things done, but I always fix them if someone points out a mistake (and I’ve made many...which I continue to blame Heather for).

All that being said...yes I should have credited this site directly on the album. Hell I guess I should have asked to use the name for the album as well, but that didn’t even occur to me. I’m not naming a website after SongFight...it’s a free album that many SongFighers helped make. I thought people from Song Fight would appreciate the connection. For instance I would be thrilled if Song Fight named one of their titles “SpinTunes”. Even if it got 20 songs of people ranting & hating on me...I’d think it was cool.

Song Fight is mentioned in the credits now. I can change the album art I guess, but I’d feel bad about doing that because the guy that does them for the contest does them to be nice & help us out.

Now to address other individual statements in this thread...

“These guys have always struck me as slackers riding Songfight's coattails.”

That’s fine, but if I was riding anyones coattails it would be Ken Plumes (you have no idea how much that hurts me to say). SpinTunes started because Ken Plume stopped running Masters Of Song Fu. I had a lot of friends that competed in that contest and they wanted a similar one that they could continue to compete in. I told them about Song Fight & Nur Ein (and some have competed in those in the past), but they wanted something a little different...more like what they were used to. So I started SpinTunes. Masters Of Song Fu had more to do with SpinTunes than anything. That’s where most of the original competitors came from & where most of the inspiration for the set up came from. Nur Ein would be the second source of inspiration that helped mold SpinTunes.

When the contest first started I did try to spread the word about it through this community & others (YouTube, FAWM, JoCo forums, Nerdcore forums). I hit up these areas because I figured that’s where I would find people that might be interested in SpinTunes. Not to STEAL attention away from SongFight or to be a competitor of SongFight. You make no money for Song Fight...I make nothing off SpinTunes...so why would we be competing anyways?

When you say “these guys”, there is only 1 guy. Me. I run the contest. My friends who compete in SpinTunes often help out by running listening parties, making cover art, or hosting the poll that allows the public to vote. Call me a slacker...fine. Everyone else...they’re no different from the musicians here. They’re just having fun making music together.

“Why devote this much time in a community in which you aren't invested? For page views? Oh, right, got it.”

Page views? Yes...I get soooooo much money from Google that I don’t know what to do with it all. I devote the time to SpinTunes, doing reviews, and stuff because I enjoy the music & the people. I lose money by doing SpinTunes...I don’t make money.

“He shoul have called it "fight songs" as so not to confuse his contestants nor people looking for the real Song Fight.”

That’s a boring title for an album, I should have just credited Song Fight on the album in the first place.

“No, it's not. He has been an unpaid advertiser here for a long time. And he knows the value of advertising. Have you been to his boards? His Captcha is a paid ad.”

Ross already corrected you here, but just to be clear, the only ads I have are the ones on the SpinTunes blogspot page, and those don’t make me jack shit. I give the SpinTunes champion a free t-shirt if they want it...I don’t make enough with those ads to cover 5% of the t-shirt.

“I did always wonder the campaign to drive people to that site was so relentless. (As far as I know Spin doesn't write or record music?) If the potential for ad revenue is in the mix, that explains a great deal.”

See all of the previous statement I already made. And no...I don't make music.

“I appreciate that Songfight is 100% volunteer effort/ ad-free.”

SpinTunes is the same, unless you want to count the 20 bucks total I’ve probably made on blogspot ads over the past 3 years. (a lot of that even came from Spintown...not SpinTunes)

Next time just drop me a message if you have a problem with me. I'm pretty easy to reach via e-mail & Twitter. I still drop in here sometimes after downloading songs, but less lately since I haven't been reviewing. If public ranting is more your style...that's cool...just let me know about it so I can at least respond. Thanks, and again, sorry.

[Spud]

Next time you want to use our name, drop US a line, eh, dude?

[RangerDenni]

Ken Plume????

*sigh*
I'm gonna have to disagree, man that hurt to Hear!!!

[Mike Lamb]

Ross, maybe I am just getting too old if this is the way the game is now played. I see our own board is now rejecting my avatar. Time to retire.

I think it's the remote URL .. http://www.workshop3d.com/spud/avatar.cgi.jpg returns a 500 for me.

Please don't retire

[Ross]

Please don't retire

+1

[RangerDenni]

Please don't retire

+1

"like"

[Spud]

no charge:

[BoffoYux]

I can see people being upset. Credit should be given, and I saw it as a nod, not a theft. But it wasn't something I've sweated inside for over 10 years. So the anger is justified.

I will say BYD hasn't done a SongFight! yet. But we've been in NurEin and Gift of Music for the last few years. Spin isn't coming at this from a theft angle, but it was an oversight in attribution that should be corrected.

Spin had been after us to listen to and join SongFight for years. He'd do reviews of the songs. We checked out Niveous after he was a judge, and decided to try the 'simpler' Nur Ein. Yeah. Baptism by Fire on that one. We did make it to round 2 once, and had a great time while dodging the flames. In the last few contests, I've seen a lot of cross pollination between the groups. That's a good thing. It's how new ideas happen. New artists collaborate. and new feuds entertain us.

So where does this leave us? Playing the hater game? Spin says 'sorry' and we move forward?

There's no money involved in this puppy. Trust me on this one. Spin organizes it at his own detriment as far as funds. There's a bunch of volunteers, but when 'Masters of Song Fu' collapsed under Ken Plume, there were a bunch of us who wanted to continue, but SongFight wasn't the fit we were looking for. And it would have been odd to have two dozen artists descend on that contest in one mass. So SpinTunes popped up out of that phoenix.

So be angry. But don't think it's because you've been ripped off by some sort of commercial monster. Boffo Yux Dudes wouldn't have known about this place at all without SpinTown, and it's a solid group of musicians with a few total assholes. Just like most groups, which makes things interesting. If you think it was meant as a rip, that's your opinion. But I don't think it came from that place. It was more a homage, but went sour without the attribution.

Tom
Boffo Yux dudes

[BoffoYux]

Ken Plume????

*sigh*
I'm gonna have to disagree, man that hurt to Hear!!!

Truth does hurt. I was surprised that Song Fu did return under a different banner and then again faded away. At least The DoubleClicks and Hello the Future! got to use it to make new music.

[RangerDenni]

I'm just a little cheesed off he didn't tweet me back about the SXSW thing, Tom. I have a tragic flaw in that I think I'm just the same as famous people and thusly not really beneath their notice, so I tend to get snotty when ignored .... He did tweet me after my epic WTF post during "new" Fu tho... go me, I guess.

oh, and I thought it was pretty funny that a certain Master wasn't able to keep up with the rigorous writing schedule. The Double Clicks and even more, the "unofficial" forum participants seemed just fine for a while!

[Billy's Little Trip]

In Sammy Kablam's defense, positive reinforcement would not be funny.

As far as Spin is concerned, he clearly uses this site for recruiting and it's traffic. I'm sure it's not to take away from SF as he stated, but more to share the wealth (of independent musicians).
I'm sure he has an end goal though. Even if it's just building an image or internet persona for merchandising. Everyone has an end goal. I never blame a person for being entrepreneurial, as long as they aren't stepping on backs to get there. So keep that in mind, Spin. For what it's worth.

And by simply asking for the use of the SF name for his fight song competition, he probably would have been supported. It's just common courtesy.