Is it true some musical artists still steal the melodies from other artists and claim as their own later on?

Question

I DON'T NEED TO FIND EXAMPLES

YOU PEOPLE CAN CHECK FACTS OUT BY YOURSELF

Answer 1

Yes its true...don't you hate when you hear an opening riff and you think its one song, but it turns about to be some other song you don't really like...I'm always thinking...HEY>>THEY STOLE THAT RIFF.

Answer 2

During my undergraduate music training at Florida State, I was dating a music producer from California.  Inbetween our monthly visits (since he was on one coast, and I was on the other), he would call me to find out my ideas on "his own" compositions.  I didn't know it at the time, but he had no idea how to read music, or notate it.  He would ask me if he should move up to certain notes, or transpose to another key, and things like that.  At first I told him what to do, but later I told him that I didn't feel comfortable telling him this anymore because if I did, it would be my composition and not his.  He needed to learn to do these things himself.  At that time, he agreed with me, but the next time he came to visit, he stole my music project (one that I needed to turn in the next day for class!) off my piano.  Apparently he had some computer program that he could feed my written sheets into and the computer would play the written music and print out a copy of it.  I never spoke to him again, but I did notice that on the next CD he released, he included the music he stole from me and reported it as his own.  What a thief!  Since it was a music project, of course, it was not copyrighted, and since I no longer had the original documents because he stole them, I could not prove the music was mine.  Ugh!!  My only recourse was to chalk it up to experience, and realize that although he is making a 7 figure income, I know that he has no idea what he's doing.  He will always have to turn to someone poor fool like me to keep going.  Ultimately, he's just an idiot.  

Garrison, your story about that music con job was incredible!!  I wonder if any of the students who submitted their work were able to take any kind of legal action........

Answer 3

When I was younger and studying THEORY and HARMONY, the teacher told a story about how at some time in the past, a famous Music School in Europe had offered FREE TUITION to anyone who could write a simple 5 MEASURE MELODY of music that had NEVER BEEN PLAYED... and they never did have to give away a single scholarship.

There is so much music in the world, that it is just not possible to write ANY music that doesn't sound like something you have heard before... and any song writer can tell you that.  The trick is, to keep anything that even remotely sounds familiar to a minimum in the song and, the MORE familiar it sounds the LESS you use it in the song.