Music artists copying old songs and not giving credit to the original

How many times has this happened to you? You hear a song that you think is an original song only to find out many years later that it was actually a remake of a song that existed decades earlier. For me this happens quite often.

I always feel like I've been tricked or lied to by the artist of the new version of the song. Here we were presented a song as if it was new and we were not told that it was actually just a copy of a hit song from years ago.

Sure, if you do some digging and really search for the production details of the song, you might find some fine print mentioning that it samples another song or that is was based on other song, but rarely will this information be clearly published with the song title.

I think this is unfair to the original artist because they are not really getting the credit they deserve. Often new artists just take a hit song and remake it. Then of course the song is a hit because it has already been proven to be a hit in the past. They took something that was already likable and just reintroduced it again.

Although I don't really like when this is done especially when it is not clear that the song was based on another song that already exists, it is not all bad. The fact that the song is being remade shows that the artist likes it enough to be inspired to remake it which can be a compliment to the original artist.

Also as mentioned earlier, this process introduces a song to a new generation who probably never heard the original and may never have known about it had it not been redone.

Overall I think it is ok to be inspired by a song and then make your own version of it as long as the original artist is clearly given credit so people know where it came from.