by Olivia Brown, Communications Intern

When Jarrod Bramson of the indie-folk band The Solvents discovered that someone named Aron Lyrd was passing off Solvents songs as his own and selling them on iTunes, CDBaby and Amazon, he was understandably frustrated. As Bramson explained on his website:

“I joined a website called sonicbids.com because I wanted to submit an application to Bumbershoot. I was looking around the site, checking out other services they had to offer. I came across this company that helps artists submit their music to television and movie producers. I was interested so I started looking a little deeper. I noticed that at the bottom of their page, there are comments from artists that have submitted. For some reason or another, I noticed this guy, Aron Lyrd. His profile picture was him in a ninja suit with some nunchucks!

 …..he just made me laugh for some reason. I had to check out his music…

…so I click on the featured song “orange ambition” on his E.P.K.(electronic press kit) and… MY SONG CAME ON!!!”

Upon further investigation, Bramson realized this nunchaku-bearing, big-talking musician was an amalgam of no less than five fairly distinct and acclaimed bands; all of the music Lyrd was selling appeared to be other people’s sound recordings with the song titles and artist data changed.  Bramson contacted the digital retailers to try to have his appropriated songs removed from Lyrd’s catalog with mixed success. As of this week, CDBaby and iTunes have both yanked the infringing tracks, but they remain available for purchase at Amazon.