Coldplay's Plagiarism Song - A YouTube Fabrication Or Another Viral Hit?

www.LawFuel.co.nz

Coldplay were on a roll - a new album going to No 1, 300,000 sales in three days, concert sellouts and now this! A damn plagiarism claim from a band called Creaky Boards. Who ever heard of Creaky Boards anyway? They issued the standard categorical denial of allegations that they copied the title track to their new record, Viva La Vida Or Death and All His Friends.

In a video posted on the video-sharing website YouTube, Andrew Hoepfner, Creaky Boards' singer and songwriter, claimed that the melody of Coldplay's song, "Viva La Vida", is pinched from a track he wrote last year called, ironically, "The Songs I Didn't Write".

He blamed Chris Martin for the alleged artistic theft, saying that Coldplay's frontman attended a Creaky Boards concert in New York last year. The clip, which was first posted on Sunday, rapidly went viral. By last night, it had been watched by nearly 300,000 people, many thousands of whom had typed comments remarking upon the various similarities between the two tracks. In an industry where even small chord sequences can become subject of costly copyright disputes, allegations of plagiarism are as potentially damaging to a musician's finances as they are to their reputation.

Maybe it's just clever marketing. Hoepfner's video clip has succeeded in gaining a new following for his band, and was driving traffic to their MySpace page. The YouTube video concludes: "I wish Coldplay the best of luck. If they ever want to collaborate, I've got some microphones we could use in my bedroom."

ENDS