T-Pain Sues The Creators of AutoTune… Wait That's A Joke Right!?

posted in: Music News • Urban

Love it or hate it, AutoTune has been a key ingredient of countless chart topping hits in recent memory. For those of you less familiar with Top 40 radio, AutoTune is a vocal manipulation software that can correct the pitch of a singer and manipulate the singer’s voice, sometimes making it sound almost robotic. One of the artist’s at the forefront of the AutoTune movement has been singer and producer T-Pain. While most artists wouldn’t be so keen as to let the entire world know that their voice needs manipulating, T-Pain embraced AutoTune with open arms. He’s endorsed AutoTune in advertisements, he’s released his own iPhone app that let’s you AutoTune your own voice and he’s even poked fun at himself and his AutoTune use in one of the greatest parody videos ever.

It’s safe to say that AutoTune is largely responsible for T-Pain’s success, and in turn T-Pain is largely responsible for the popularity of AutoTune. They need each other like Lennon needed McCartney; like Jordan needed Pippen; like Bonnie needed Clyde. So when word got out that T-Pain was suing Antares Technologies, the creators of AutoTune, for $1 million, I thought it was a joke. Was he really suing the company that helped make him one of the most successful artists in the industry? This had to be a joke.

Except no one was laughing. Turns out that back in June, T-Pain announced that he would no longer be using AutoTune and ended his partnership with Antares. What most of us didn’t realize was that instead of just singing the old fashioned way, T-Pain had partnered with a new company, Izotope, to create his own pitch manipulation software called “The T-Pain Effect.” His suit against Antares claims that the company has continued using his image and likeness in advertising without his permission, and that it could cause confusion in the marketplace and hurt sales of his product. This just seems like the biggest slap in the face to Antares. He ditches the company, partners with a new company to make his own version of what is essentially the same product and to top it all off sues the company he just ditched. Really T-Pain? A cease and desist would have sufficed. It’s obviously going to take more than a month to remove all of the T-Pain related AutoTune products from the marketplace; a million dollar lawsuit just seems unnecessary. And considering T-Pain just released a product that’s really similar to AutoTune, Antares could easily hit him back with a countersuit. The whole thing is playing out like a messy divorce. I guess even the most fruitful relationships have to end eventually.