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iTunes helps uncover a musical mystery hoax

downloadsquad.com — iTunes, using its song-recognition feature, may have helped discover that some of the records put out by one of the "best classical pianists in the world" may have been in fact copied from another artist's recordings.

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  • streak, on 10/12/2007, -6/+29Clarification: iTunes doesn't recognize songs. It reads a (supposedly) unique identifier on a CD and then looks up the CD description (title and track info) in the CDDB.
    • vuke69, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28Actually it only uses the length and order of tracks, and uses that to compare to known disks in CDDB.
    • raabco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+46Not quite.

      It reads the number of tracks and track lengths on your CD and then matches that to the CDDB, which has user submitted information on CD titles, artists, track listings, etc.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cddb#How_CDDB_works

      (edit: dah! as usual, I'm too slow)
    • Wonotch, on 10/12/2007, -11/+28The article explains it correctly, the submitter just worded it poorly.

      And what does this have to do with iTunes?? Its just a CDDB lookup. Any mp3 player would have done the same thing.

      Oh wait thats right, you have to use stupid buzzwords to get people to read/digg your stories. LAME.
    • naio21, on 10/12/2007, -18/+3"Clarification: iTunes doesn't recognize songs. It reads a (supposedly) unique identifier on a CD and then looks up the CD description (title and track info) in the CDDB."

      Like many other players that use CDDB. Buried as inaccurate. And if I could do it twice I'd bury as Apple spam also.
    • cheeseron, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Nonetheless, the guy still did use iTunes to "uncover" the mystery.
    • Dolomite, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2it just compares track length and name to a user sumitted database. so you are a bit off there.
    • wvdavis, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2In reality iTunes looks at the album art and compares it with that on CDDB. SCNR ;)
    • halleyscomet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@streak

      The article claims that the odds are slim that two CDs would identify as the same album in iTunes. As a long time user of CDEX, I know that it's actually quite common for the CDDB to be less than precise about which CD you have in the drive.

      iTunes will just pick one of the likely albums, while CDEX gives you a list of the possible matches. It's actually fairly common for there to be multiple possible matches for a given CD, often from dramatically different genres and performers.

      What's more, there's a bit of fudge factor in the tracks. A given pressing of an album can, if the album has been remastered in any way, vary by a few seconds. The track "A funny little thing called love" can be two or three seconds longer or shorter on the 2006 pressing than on the 2004 pressing.

      That variance can be withing the margin of error for two artists performing the same score. If both musicians recorded the same Sonata, the resulting CDs could have track lengths within a few seconds of each other, and as a result, one could be identified as the other.

      I got a great demonstration of this when I ripped a cassette tape to CD, and imported the DC into iTunes. iTunes recognized the album correctly, even though my manual rip had tracks varying by a number of seconds from the official CD. This has happened several times as I've been importing my wife's cassette library into her iTunes library.

      The article is more hype than substance.
    • astrotrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Stating that iTunes "knew" this song and not clarifying the CDBB was used, is like saying iTunes made my coffee this morning and not giving credit to the coffeepot.

      All applications that play CD's use the CDBB or a likeness of that, they don't come installed with CD databases. otherwise your 'setup.exe' would be more them a mere 7 MB.
    • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2While it's true that the article is mostly hype about iTunes using recognition techniques (CDDB/Gracenote gets false hits all the bloody time, albeit not as many as FreeDB does) , the actual matches themselves are fairly damning.

      Go to http://www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax.html and examine the visual waveform comparisons made. It's fairly obvious that many of these tracks were ripped off from other sources, compressed or otherwise altered, and passed off as their own work.
    • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1More info here as well: http://www.gramophone.co.uk/newsMainTemplate.asp?storyID=2759&newssectionID=1

      It's also important to note that because many of the tracks were time compressed as part of the alterations, they were of different lengths. Therefore iTunes' and the Gracenote/CDDB algorithim would have found a different disc ID.

      Therefore the article is *wrong*. iTunes was *not* used to identify these tracks originally.
  • tw0k1ngs, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20Horrowitz, the undisputed greatest classical pianist of the 20th century (alongside Rach of course), continued to play live concerts well into his 90's... his last performance at Carnegie Hall heralded as one of the most spectacular moments in recent classical history... How people like this (the woman in question) can disgrace not only so many artists, but so many brilliant composeres as well, is very disheartening.

    Any true "pianist" who continues to make recordings but does not play live is not a true pianist in my opinion. The compositions have been around for CENTURIES, it is within the artist's performance and interpretation that the secondary genius lies... something this lady clearly has no sense of.
    • Scruffydan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13recent classical history... eh?
    • PDubNYC, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4"Horrowitz, the undisputed greatest classical pianist of the 20th century (alongside Rach of course)"

      How can you be the undisputed greatest anything yet be on par with someone? (blah blah blah of course)... Your smugness makes me want to slap the taste out of your mouth.
    • isukeyo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@ tw0k1ngs:

      You are an ***** and clearly a snob. You may want to do a little research before making such stupid comments. She stopped playing live in the 70's after being diagnosed with cancer! Also, how that hell does not playing live make someone a lesser pianist.

    • isukeyo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ tw0k1ngs (continued)


      "Any true "pianist" who continues to make recordings but does not play live is not a true pianist in my opinion. The compositions have been around for CENTURIES, it is within the artist's performance and interpretation that the secondary genius lies"

      That's interesting - are you stating that live performances are the only way to capture an artists performance and interpretation of the material? Why bother recording the music period?


      "Horrowitz, the undisputed greatest classical pianist of the 20th century (alongside Rach of course)"

      It's amazing that snobs such as yourself equate your personal opinion with absolute universal fact. Since when is the greatest anything undisputed? And according to whom?

      What's also amazing is that your entire response to the article has nothing to do with the fact that this woman plagiarized works (which in my opinion is disgraceful) - but simply that her music was recorded and not live?
  • bremstrong, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Does hoax apply here? It appears someone has taken other artists recordings and released them as her own.

    Seems like there might be a better word for that than "hoax".
    • Matri, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Copyright infringement. The TRUE reason for Intellectual Property laws.

      Copying and claiming it as someone else's isn't wrong. Copying and claiming it as yours is.
    • zigziggityzoo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3theft?
  • jeriqo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7If you want real song recognition, try MusicBrainz :
    http://musicbrainz.org/

    It's pretty amazing, I had a live crappy-quality recording of Johnny Cash covering the song "The Dock Of The Bay", and it actually gave me the original artist, Otis Redding.
    • warbird, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18In other words, it failed? :)
    • chroko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12MusicBrainz is useful, but limited to music in a collection. The most handy "real" recognition software I've found is Tunatic:

      http://www.wildbits.com/tunatic/

      It reads the audio line-in (by sampling what's playing [use Soundflower on a Mac] or via a microphone) - and it'll try to identify what it can hear. I've used it on everything from unknown MP3s to the background music in movie trailers. And yes - provided it can get a long enough, clear enough sample - it usually works.
    • vultureboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@warbird

      LOL!!!
    • MotionAesthetic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm waiting for one that tags with the year of first release/performance, rather than the year the CD was released.
    • dhollidator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ Chroko:

      Thanks for the heads up, that app is pretty cool.
  • insovietrussia, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The Gracenote database is hardly an authority, anybody can submit track names for a CD that they have input themselves. Look in iTunes under the Advanced menu - "Submit CD Track Names".

    Somebody may have incorrectly labeled a track before submitting it, or it could be an elaborate hoax (though unlikely).

    Wouldn't it be simple enough to compare the two tracks? I'm sure an audio engineer isn't needed to tell if two recordings are identical.
  • kylesherman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Listen to the results of the hoax test. Unreal. This is a direct link from the blog.
    Scroll down to check out the comparisons.
    http://www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax.html
  • Tarnum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"All the Pristine Audio music... is newly copyrighted material derived from public domain recordings."

    DERIVED from PUBLIC DOMAIN? It is like a thief yelling: "Catch the thief!"
  • bubba9999, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Phew - I'm glad that John Tesh wasn't named in the article.
  • dimplemonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I've had "iTunes" (CDDB) misidentify plenty of my music in the past and I never thought twice about submitting the incorrect entries to the authorities. BFHD, he got a false positive! Move on folks, nothing else to see....
    • pu-z, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5No, the sound was compared and found to be identical. Not just the CDs. http://www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax.html
    • graemee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1
      @dimplemonkey
      It may seem like an error to most, but when combined with other CDs doing the same and other aspects regarding the "artist" it made for a closer examination. It's this examination, follow @pu-z link, that shows the hoax and it's magnitude.
  • BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'd guess it's a bootleg disk before a hoax. There just wouldn't be any motivation to rip off someone else's performance unless she physically couldn't play anymore or something.

    • stevewmn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The article says she stopped performing in public decades before her death, but doesn't say why. It's entirely possible that she stopped performing because she couldn't play anymore, either from some physical disability (arthritis?) or stage fright. And since she wasn't performing maybe she stopped practicing, or just slacked off to the point that her playing wasn't as sharp as she wanted, so she started to steal from this other artist.
    • Jugglerbob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@stevewmn

      She stopped performing in public because of she was (supposedly) battling cancer.
  • Pelapp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Once again Apple and iTunes saves the day.
    Wow, thanks so much Steve! I love you!
  • rochester, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Explains why my David Bowie/Queen cut of "Under Prressure" keeps coming up as Vanilla Ice in iTunes..
  • 3Den, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I'm not buying the aritcle...

    This lady was found as a fraud recently, but due to extensive spectral analysis of her recordings compared with others.

    It's almost like someone read that article when it hit blogspace a week ago, and then made up this thing about iTunes to make it look fancier.

    - She didnt' copy entire albums, just movements.

  • michaelcorcoran, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I had a Soul Coughing CD that when I inserted it, asked me whether it was Soul Coughing or Pavement (I think..could have been another band...either way, I had both). They didn't have the same number of tracks either.
    • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The identification methodology is not perfect. It uses number of tracks, song lengths, etc to create a small value which it then looks up in a database. And there are many collisions in this database.

      Nevertheless, this particular case is deeper than that. The actual audio matches.
  • sw96, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1iTunes has wrongly identified my CDs before and it looks like thats what happened here. iTunes checks the number of songs, track lengths, ect to identify CDs you insert, not some crazy space age tone analysis system. I find this hard to believe.
  • NutraAmy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This is the thing that bothers me- if this woman was copying these famous pianists, why didn't anyone notice? Two songs that are exactly the same by two different artists (one being Chopin) and NO ONE figured it out. Chopin and no one saw the similarities? This seems hard to believe.
  • NutraAmy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Listen to the radio interview on this website. After I listened to it I am seriously doubting the validity of these claims. First, the man being interviewed said flat out iTunes not Gracenote, not CDDB, using it's unique song identifying properties (those it doesn't have) to identify these songs as copies. Then the second guy comes on and can't really give any specifics other than they compared the tracks and "they looked the same." How? He just some says other methods. Yeah, so um unless this gets a lot more compelling I'm for now- highly suspicious.
    http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/02/itunes-fingers-musical-fraud.html
  •  

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