Recently, someone made an audiotool account called "frechsmach" and stole https://www.audiotool.com/track/lglybu6k/ and uploaded it to SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/frechsmach/vannski), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/6wELl7tkEwnw7omrv34lO5?si=f6FgiDTxQwC8HaauFthoxw), and more, and then deleted their audiotool account. I tried to report it with photo evidence on SoundCloud, and I almost got banned because apparently I don't own the copyrights to the cover me and Ksword007 created in Audiotool even with video proof. I won't be reporting the stolen song on Spotify because I fear that my lack of knowledge of copyright laws will just get me banned.
This is NOT an uncommon problem, there've been multiple cases of people stealing audiotool songs via remixing, and then distributing them everywhere, and I feel that this could be prevented if some kind of safeguard were to be implemented in Audiotool. I know that if someone REALLY wants to steal it anyway, they'll find a way to ruin things somehow, but we don't have to make it easy for them.
Idea 1 - [You need to ask (X) for permission before you can remix]: Clicking on the remix button will let you view the song in the studio, but not make any changes or be able to download or publish it until the artist grants you permission to remix it, which they'll see first on their home page as a notification above latest tracks by people you follow. This can also be an option that artists can choose to toggle in their preferences. I'd say that this should be the new default option. Still, it'd definitely be controversial since it'd bar people from truly making remixes of tracks that are from great, but inactive artists, even though they'd still be able to open and view the track in the studio.
Idea 2 - [You can't remix just yet. Your account is too new]: This could weed out the thieves that make new accounts for the sole purpose of stealing a track, but it's more limited and probably more restrictive to new artists who aren't thieves.
Aaand I'm already out of ideas :(
Comments (10)
Idea 1 seems like the better solution, but it gets kind of tricky since it kind of scuffs the original intent (that I know of) of the remix feature - to learn from other people's work. It's not a bad idea, and this kind of thing is unavoidable, so I feel that the remix feature needs to be scuffed a bit to keep this from happening.
Sorry to hear about your track - hope it gets figured out.
bump; it was recently discovered that a LOT of audiotool songs were stolen by several people :(
i freaking love this
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Thanks. I put it on the list
If someone was desperate enough, it'd definitely be possible to use OBS or an audio recording software (like another DAW with a virtual cable) to just record the track. You can also download the track directly using F12 (inspect element).
I would also like to note that there is a very easy way to exploit this in the workstation itself too, but also has a solution. If you remix something and copy everything to another draft, then it will no longer be a remix while retaining all elements of the remix. If this would be done, you can do one of 2 things (or both):
• Have the original author(s) of the track being remixed added to that track since you have copied elements from their track
• Send a notification to the original author(s) that elements from their track have been copied. How detailed the notification will be is up to the developers.
My idea is a certain amount of things/devices/audio samples etc. must be added in order to publish.
or they just wont let you publish until you add or delete something
I just realize that this is a problem on audiotool
I am gonna turn off remix for my recent projects I worked really hard on now
Disabling mixdown on remixes