Atlast here's a good news and a bad news - Good news for music directors who try to be Original (Like ARR, Shankar Eshaan Loy, etc) and Bad news to music companies.
TIPS faces $320,000 charges for the lack of creativity of music director Pritam. Pritam has blatantly ripped the song "Deep in the Bamboo Groove" that belonged to Taiwanese singer Wang Lee-hom. He has ripped this for the song "Zara Zara" in the movie "Race". Since the complete ownership/royalty of the Race songs were with the music production company TIPS, they now face a serious law suit...ARR has been fighting for royalty / ownership for the musicians' creative work... But let's hope that atleast after these kind of bad incidents, music companies think twice and come to a decision to share the ownership to the musicians. Whatever be the reason, if this happens then it's good for composers like ARR and Shankar Eshaan Loy. Here's the story from NDTV! http://music.ndtv.com/story.asp?id=ENTEN20080060353 Indo-Asian News Service Wednesday, August 6, 2008: (Taipei) : Taiwanese singer Wang Lee-hom has accused an Indian filmmaker of plagiarising his music and is seeking $320,000 in damages. Lee-hom, 33, a US-born singer popular in Southeast Asia, is seeking damages from Tips Films, distributor of the Hindi film*Race*, which was released in March, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Ltd said in a statement. "The lead song in *Race* - *Zara Zara touch me*, resembles Wang's song *Deep in the bamboo grove* (Chu Lin Shen Chu). Its rhythm and tempo are similar to that of *Deep in the bamboo grove*. The similarity is nearly 100 percent," added the statement. Sony BMG said it reserves the right to take legal action against distributor of*Race* for plagiarism. In the film, *Zara Zara touch me* was picturised on Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif. *Race*, also starring Akshaye Khanna, Anil Kapoor, Sameera Reddy and Bipasha Basu, has been showcased in India, the US, Britain, Australia and Malaysia and its original soundtrack has also been released in these countries. *Deep in the bamboo grove* is part of Wang's album *The Sun and Moon in My Heart*, a collection of 12 Chinese-language songs released in Dec 2004. The song mixes a Tibetan woman's singing with hip hop and Chinese drums and flute. Cheers, Madhavan.R Love, Music, Peace,...and A R Rahman for Life.
