We\’re all blessed to be living in a time of such a boom in electronic music. Talent is abundant and widespread. However, with such hordes rushing to cash in, there Is bound to be the few that try and take blatant advantage of EDM\’s blossoming popularity. Enter exhibit A: Pop Coorn.
Yes, we have another snack themed DJ. Already in play we have the helmet-clad Marshmello, Skrillex-endorsed Slushii, and a few others. All named after deserts, some anonymous, but in the end that only matters so much, because the music speaks for itself.
And then we have Pop Coorn. This guy seems to be a shameless Marshmello ripoff, with the cylindrical helmet and eyeholes. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, we could at least be fair and say if the music is good, good for him. But his first ever release \’Bear\’, a hybrid trap and dubstep fusion sounded a little familiar… lo and behold, it turns out to be a straight copy of an Ableton Live Project file sold by Cymatics. Check out this side-by-side comparison courtesy of Rave Faced:
video Credit: RaveFaced.com
Cymatics, an electronic music production tools company, recently released their Ableton Projects Collection, a series of Project files for Ableton Live (a popular music production suite) with the intent on educating up and coming producers on how to make some of their favorite music. The product description reads:
Imagine if you could see how any producer makes their songs…
Songwriting. Sound Design. Mixing. Automation. Organization.
You would be able to cut years off of the learning curve.
Ableton Projects Collection lets you do exactly that.
Despite the product\’s success, there have been those who misconstrued or abused them. In the case of Pop Coorn, he quite literally opened a project file, messed a little bit with the intro and added a vocal sample. Save. Export. Profit? Luckily, it wasn\’t long before the hordes of producers on the internet started pointing this out, and after a little bit of abuse, Mr. Coorn deleted the track off his Soundcloud and started erasing the evidence from his Facebook page.
To get some perspective, I reached out to Kyle Hagberg a.k.a Kompany who was responsible for creating some of these Ableton projects including this one. He has been working with Cymatics for a while, so I was curious about how he felt about this:
- When did you first hear about Pop Coorn?
I first heard about Pop Coorn when scrolling through my feed on Twitter. I noticed quite a few of my producer friends posting about him and didn’t really pay any attention to it until I saw more and more people getting involved on the subject. That’s when I decided to check his soundcloud to see what all the hype was about, which is when I realized he used a slightly modified template I made for a Cymatics project file pack. - Do you think he misused the Ableton projects?I mean that’s kinda hard to say. We intended for these to be learning tools but people can do with them what they will. I think that in his situation it would have been better for him to break down everything in that project and take that knowledge into a fresh project and apply everything he learned while adding his own touch to it.
- What is your intention in creating these projects?Like I stated in the previous answer these projects were intended to help producers get an idea of how a finished track operates. I think one of the best ways to learn and pick up new techniques is by collaborating with someone and we’re essentially giving people the chance to collaborate with Cymatics.
- How could he have better gone about using them?Anything to make it a bit less noticeable to be honest. Mess with the Serum patches, change the drums around, or even throw some of his own synths in there. It would be one thing if I listened to the track and thought “Is this made from my Mask template”, but that wasn’t the case because it was clear the second I heard the drop that it was my project slightly tweaked. And again, no hate for this guy at all he’s just doing his thing and trying to make it in a competitive industry, I just think that he could have gone about using the template better!
- Does Cymatics have more plans to release further Ableton Projects? Will this change anything about how you go about releasing them?Yes we do. And no this doesn’t change anything, this just goes to prove that if people try to pass off any of our templates as their own creations that they will get shut down for it rather quickly.
Basically, although Pop Coorn didn\’t do anything wrong legally – he\’s not going to get sued over this – he did pull a horribly tactless move that compromises the integrity of the entire community of hard-working producers in EDM. Luckily, as Kyle pointed out, those that try to pull this type of stunt will get called out rather quickly.
Currently Pop Coorn is sitting with 7,000 Facebook likes and 1,800 Soundcloud followers, suspicious figures without one single track available. Moreover, the publication Global Dance Electronic named him \”EDM\’s New Favorite Helmet DJ\”. Marshmell0 who?? This review seems to be a little more gracious than accurate, neglecting to point out any grounds for merit other than the track in question, \”bear\”, which he didn\’t actually produce. It\’s not unreasonable to infer that this guy likely finessed the internet from several angles.
One could argue that putting Pop Coorn on blast is only fueling his undeserved fame, and that argument holds water, it\’s true; but, alternatively, if everyone that had noticed had let this slide, he could possibly have duped thousands of non-producing listeners into supporting him for something he did not create. Thanks to publications like Rave Faced and numerous individual artists calling him out, Pop Coorn has recoiled from this maneuver. Here\’s hoping that this will deter similar acts in the future, and artists can continue receiving credit where credit is due.
