
Someone Is Stealing Tracker Songs and Selling Them - blackhole
https://erikmcclure.com/blog/someone-is-stealing-tracker-songs/
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petee
Am i the only one who has no clue what a "Tracker Song" is?

The article barely touches on this, saying vaguely _" The songs that were
stolen were often used in keygen cracking software that was popular in the
2000s to pirate software"_ \-- so the music was used as a key for the keygen?
Or was it just included for giggles? Or is it a fingerprint intended for
actual tracking?

edit: thanks for all the replies, some really great info below!

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myself248
A "tracker" is a piece of music composition software, sort of a glorified
spreadsheet. Imagine a virtual piano roll, with note and instrument data laid
out over time.

The vast majority of tracker music was initially in a format called MOD, since
it originated the format. MOD's specification was matched to the capabilities
of the Amiga sound chip, which proved limiting as time went on, so other
formats emerged. Formats and file extensions now include STM, S3M, XM, and
countless more. The collective term "tracker music" is easier than trying to
enumerate them all.

Trackers are differentiated from note-data formats like MIDI in that a tracker
song includes the samples themselves, little snippets of WAV-like data which
are played at sped-up or slowed-down sample rates according to the note data.
Whereas a MIDI file only includes the notes and timing information, which gets
sent to "instruments", which are responsible for translating those commands
into sound. Different instruments may do it differently, so a MIDI can sound
vastly different depending on what player you're using. A tracker song will
sound roughly the same everywhere, barring bugs, with the only difference
being that certain player software may have higher-quality math (higher CPU
usage) for the sample-rate adjustment and mixing.

Because of their self-contained nature, containing only the sound samples
actually used in a given song, tracked music was popular in video games and in
the game cracking scene alike. (All the music in Star Control 2 is embedded
MOD files, for instance.) And like anything else in what became the demo-
scene, the mantra of doing more with less, making enjoyable music in just a
few K of note data and samples combined, became its own factor to compete on.

Modarchive.org is the place to go to experience tracker music now; there are
players that run in your browser. Click through the top couple songs and
you'll get a feel for not just the format but also the era, since the heyday
of MOD was the early 90s, much of it fits right into what we now nostalgically
think of as 90s electronica.

~~~
SyneRyder
Just to add that while most tracked music in the 90s was electronica, there
were others who tried different genres. My favorite example is Leviathan's
"Dust To Dust", a Scream Tracker 3 composition that tended towards jazz / soft
rock with something like a saxophone sound for the lead - once it gets going
about a minute in. You can even see briefly in the song notes at the start,
Leviathan says "I hopefully will never be forced to return to the typical
demomusic genre":

[https://youtu.be/gFWrHFQdb7E](https://youtu.be/gFWrHFQdb7E)

But even with the original MOD format, Bjorn Lynne / Dr Awesome wrote a lot of
Prog Rock MODs inspired by Genesis and other bands.

~~~
myself248
Oh absolutely! And thank you -- I didn't mean to minimize the genre but I
guess I did.

I think my favorite opposite-of-electronica would be Joegir Liljedahl's
"Guitar Slinger", which he somehow manages to fit into a 4-track MOD, but it
sounds like there's so much more going on.

Smallest-favorite would be "echoing", which is 43k uncompressed, and manages
to be pretty listenable despite its simplicity. It's really fun to watch the
rhythm track in a player that shows you the scrolling data...

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lolc
The way I understand the tracker scene, most don't care about restricting
distribution of their tracks. But when others are actually selling, I'd think
some authors might disagree with that.

The original authors can sue. And given the extensive documentation on these
tracks, it would be an easy case. But whether there'd be any money to recover
is unclear. Given the paltry damages you likely get when you're not selling
yourself and tolerating copying anyway. Also the seller might be hard to reach
legally, and you'd still have to actually sue, which comes with costs.

So the other route is sending notices to at least damage the business model.

~~~
mikekchar
Just a quick note because it's often confused: the fact that you tolerate
infringement in one place will not affect a judgement in another. That _will_
happen with trademark, but not copyright.

~~~
lolc
Yes, I didn't want to imply that not suing in other cases would change the
legal options. And while I'm not deeply familiar with the topic, I just
remember that determining damages depends in part on the price you charge for
licences. So I think when you don't licence but tolerate unlicensed
distribution, it becomes harder to argue for damages.

Though as another commenter has pointed out, in the U.S. at least there are
statutory damages.

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rjmunro
Is it possible that the original author of these tracks is the one who has
uploaded them to DistroKid? In which case it's not stealing at all. I guess
it's fairly unlikely, though.

~~~
kortex
It's possible but I doubt they would change their artist name. Usually when
artists have multiple handles, for both legal and artistic reasons, they re-
release a song using the original name.

The exception is when a solo artist wants to "cover" a song they wrote as part
of a band.

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harel
I believe Pud is on HN. He can perhaps provide the DistroKid response?

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blackandblue
despicable.

i am curious what legal protections these kinds of art forms/music have?

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29athrowaway
There are people not only hijacking copyrights in this genre, but in every
genre.

~~~
tsukurimashou
doesn't make it less disgusting, does it

~~~
dmos62
Others among us find copyright off-puting.

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joosters
There's some irony when people are complaining about music stolen from _keygen
cracking software_. How dare they steal from us while we stole from others!

~~~
archi42
I believe the author just gave this as a popular example where tracker music
can be found. Not a lot of people are fully aware of the "demoscene", where
this music/tech is still quite popular. The cracker scene and demoscene have
some common roots (and I think still some personnel overlaps), but I met/know
plenty of people who aren't into stealing/distributing cracked software, but
are very much into the demo scene, producing wonderful pieces of art without
breaking any copyright or other laws ;-)

If you have no idea what I'm talking about (and mind that I'm not involved
with either scene), check out
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene)

