DOOM Soundtrack Plagiarized by KSHMR? KSHMR Apologizes

[Reisal]

Hmmmm, sounds a lot like the DOOM tracks according the track samples in TheQuartering's video here:

 

 

[Ralphis]

After listening to the examples, all of the sounds seem to be recreations and not actually sampled so what exactly is the big deal? News flash: all of the music you love has elements "ripped off" from somebody else in one way or another. Now perhaps we can we reorient this thread and focus on pointing some faux outrage against Bobby Prince, the king of ripping off other people's music for commercial use!

[Reisal]

Yeah, that came to mind when I was typing my comment on the video, Ralphis.

[Dark Pulse]

The irony of people getting miffed off at a vague soundalike when that's exactly what Bobby Prince did is amusing as hell to me.

[Eurisko]

You gotta be careful these days , look what happened to Ed Sheeren and more so Robin Thicke

[Jaxxoon R]

The thing is, Bobby Prince made those tracks as examples and didn't intend for them to be used ingame. Once he found out they were, he immediately started worrying that they would be sued. Oddly enough, I don't think I've seen much discussion on why they weren't, whether it was just the luck of being overlooked, or if the various artists that did notice liked the game enough to let it slide.

[Velvetic]

Some of these are certainly NOT recreations, and are actually grabbed from the sountrack.

"KSHMR_Industrial_Grime_01_F.wav" is just a sample from BFG Division transposed 2 semitones down:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndliijgpe4k1n47/sample1%2B2semitones.wav?dl=0

 

"KSHMR_Industrial_Grime_02_90_E.wav" is just a sample from Damnation (my favorite from the soundtrack) transposed a semitone up, and a slight decreased in playback speed:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p81fa3y3j5w9fxr/sample2-1semitone1.1xspeed.wav?dl=0

 

If you doubt any of this, just download the video (or find the KSHMR sample pack) and do these changes on any audio editing software.

 

[ENEMY!!!]

I agree, I listened to several of the comparisons from Mick Gordon's soundtrack and I can believe that some of them are recreations but two or three of them came across as so similar that either someone spent ages doing as faithful a recreation as possible or (far more likely) ran the original tracks through audio editing software.

 

I had a listen to the Ed Sheeren and Robin Thicke cases, and can detect strong similarities between Ed Sheeren's songs and the ones he was alleged to have plagiarised (one has a near-identical melody and harmony, the other sounds near-identical apart from the melody but a semitone lower), but with the Robin Thicke one it is mainly the style and beat that are similar and the melody and harmony are totally different, so as a hobbyist musician I find the Robin Thicke verdict concerning.

 

As for Doom I and II's soundtracks, I think until recently it was generally assumed that as a lawyer Bobby Prince determined how much he could get away with, before he revealed otherwise in his interview.  I guess that the likes of Metallica and Slayer most likely held off because they liked Doom and/or thought that the music in the game would be unlikely to detract from their music's revenue streams, as I doubt they'd have overlooked the similarities given how insanely popular Doom was in the mid-1990s.  Also, suing can be a costly procedure and suing over the Doom soundtrack would have been likely to generate a large backlash which would have adversely affected the bands' popularity.  Another factor that may have contributed was that MIDI music, particularly on primitive 1995 sound cards, generally didn't sound anything like the original metal music, even when riffs were copied note-for-note.

[Kristian Nebula]

They definitely sound to the ear of a seasoned sound engineer like me like clipped copies which have been pulled through various compression / distortion plugins / mid/side processing which is basically a secondary depth stereo image within the left/right stereo image. Besides that they've been pitched up or down, because I work a lot with samples I know how they will sound. Definitely a ripoff IMO.

 

Besides his body language is vague and definitely looks like he is pulling a story from his head in the explanation / apology video. Lying, in other words.

 

EDIT: Heck, I believe it would be possible for me to recreate exactly same-sounding samples from cutting and processing just to prove my word above but I don't really want to waste my time doing it :D

Edited January 8, 2019 by Kristian Nebula