Hi, everyone. Disthony Pointano here, the Internet's most deceived music nerd, coming to you, feeling very sad because I've been tricked, I've been hoodwinked, I've been bamboozled. And it happened in what I thought was like one of the chillest and coolest spaces on the Internet, that is the social media musician space.

Now, I don't know if I need to spell this out, as if it wasn't already obvious, but I myself am not a musician by trade, no, more of music reviewer. But while I don't play music professionally, I do play music and enjoy doing so every once in a while. Mostly bass guitar, in fact.

And as a result, me being a fan of music, of musicians and music gear and that sort of thing, I follow some people who specialize in that sort of thing and have even come to know personally. Some people who operate in this space who are now lifelong friends of mine. People like Rob Scallon, super dope, super cool dude. Emily Hopkins, and her partner Russ, also very cool, sick people.

But recently, the musician space has actually become plagued by a bit of drama. And it's from the type of person who I least expected, an Italian. You guys know I love to see Italians succeed in the music industry. Lady Gaga, that one band. Also my uncle, Rick Beato, that is my uncle right there.

Now, us Italians and Italian Americans, we're a passionate and proud people, but also we've been known to break a few rules. And look, I swear to you, it's just a few bulbs of garlic making the whole team look bad. You gotta believe me, mamma mia. Which is why I felt it important to point out some recent goings on with a creator in the musician space, Mr. Giacomo Turra, a producer, a multi-instrumentalist, somebody who I followed for a few years now on the Instagram platform. He even follows me back.

Now, if you look at Mr. Turra's content, it's mostly short form and seems really innocent and super, super palatable on the surface. Mostly very slick, funky renditions of a variety of different popular songs. Very many jazzy jams featuring a lot of proficient and technical playing.

Now, I wouldn't call his content bland, but it is very much par the course for the music influencer space as far as, like, what it is and what it does. And if there is a defining characteristic to Giacomo stuff, I would say it's surprisingly accessible for content out of the musician space. Like, you don't need to be a super dedicated musician to enjoy it.

There's presumably a very wide net of people who would be enjoying Mr. Tura's stuff. Which is why I think he's received an inordinate amount of attention in comparison with some of his fellow creators in this space.

And this has come in the form of lots of tour dates being booked. He's got signature gear endorsements, lots of views, collaborations, and crossovers with a lot of different musicians who are both in the social media space and the general music industry space. Like he's out there jamming with Blu DeTiger, for example. So when it comes to success in this Internet lane, this guy truly seems to have it all.

However, much of his cred and reputation has come crashing down recently with numerous call outs being made against him across the musician influencer space, be it in comments or in full length videos. And I get it, because when you look more deeply and intently into his stuff, something fishy does seem to be going on.

Like when you look at a lot of his videos, the audio recording that is attached to these performances, it becomes kind of clear that it is all very heavily edited and groomed for maximum perfection and tightness. Which has led to people questioning videos where he's like in more of a live setting and he's not quite playing up to that level of accuracy.

To be honest, very few musicians are actually playing at that level of accuracy. But with that being said, he is kind of like setting up a bit of an expectation when in person, the sound and the performance isn't matching the thing that people are being introduced to you through.

But look, here's the thing. Maybe that's something we could let slide because most things in the influencer space, across all styles and genres, is like a heavily edited, perfectionized version of like a real thing.

However, there are some pieces of content that he has come out with that the legitimacy of them seems entirely questionable. Like in this slap guitar from space performance, where he gestures toward the bridge of the guitar or like a whammy bar that isn't there to create some kind of like crazy bent pinch harmonic effect.

I mean, look, I'm not gonna say I'm like the number one guitar expert on the planet or anything like that. That is a wild sound to get out of multiple guitars, seemingly just by grazing the bridge a little bit. Just giving it a little whack. Jack White and Tom Morello need to hook up with this guy and get access to this like secret guitar tech.

But look, as silly as this all is, it is not as damning as the most grave accusation that Giacomo is at the moment. And that's plagiarism. Now, I don't want to be guilty of plagiarism myself, which is why I will shout out maybe the biggest voice who has been highlighting this in the musician space as of late, Mr. Danny Sapko. Somebody who before all of this I also followed and just enjoyed his bass videos on YouTube, being a bassist myself.

This guy has done quite a bit of content on Mr. Turra, lining up a lot of side by side performances with other musicians where he. He's quite literally like ripping off note for note, arrangements, leads, performances, solos.

And there are multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple examples of this from a wide variety of inspirations and other creators, some of which are very, very small, very obscure. Like you would have to be digging for hours and hours and hours to like randomly stumble across this stuff, because some of it has just hundreds of views in total.

And again, the source of inspiration is so obscure that it's unlikely that Mr. Turra would just like, I don't know, somehow happen upon a similar idea or melody or lead or arrangement just by maybe hearing it casually or something in passing.

Between all the videos on the Internet exposing these similarities, they've all gotten like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views. And as a result, I wouldn't normally have anything else to say or to add to the discourse, but since all of these exposure videos, Giacomo has come out with his own apology in response, trying to explain away the whole thing.

And there are some issues with it. And who's surprised? Biggest issue off the bat is with the placement of the apology. Because if you follow this guy's content, you know a lot of the exposure that he gets and a majority of his audience is over on Instagram, but there is no video from what I see on his Instagram currently that lives there permanently pinned at the top where he is giving this apology and explaining things.

No, this apology was uploaded to YouTube, where obviously less people in his audience are going to see it. He also did a bit of, you know, a talking straight into the phone update for his broadcast channel on Instagram, where he didn't really get too deeply into the accusations. He just mostly kind of talks about how his community there supports him, and so on and so forth.

"I always feel like I credit the people that I took arrangements from and most of them even shared or commented on the videos that I tagged them in. But apparently it's clear that these credits were not clear enough." - Giacomo Turra

And if that wasn't already enough proof of him trying to mitigate the damage of these allegations and the apology itself, he has since taken down the apology from YouTube.

I don't know, maybe I'm like ignorant here on my YouTube history, but this is one of the few instances I can recall where a YouTube apology has included an immediate upload and then an immediate deletion. But the video is still floating out there.

And it's about as mediocre an apology as you could expect, where when it comes to these plagiarism allegations, he does reference and point out and take ownership to an extent of maybe the most inoffensive examples are the ones that could be, you know, maybe easily explained away as like a harmless mistake.

And then he further goes on to highlight that, in fact, under a lot of the videos in the descriptions where he's doing these performances and arrangements, where he's sourcing ideas from other players and other creators in the music social media space, he's got like a little reference or a credit in there, just saying, oh, hey, this is like inspired by this person or this comes from this person.

But when you look at the views and the exposure that Mr. Turra is getting on a regular basis and compare that to the musicians who he is clearly just taking these ideas from, you see a very vast gap in overall engagement, which pretty much shows that these credits and references that we're seeing in the descriptions of these short form videos, they are just nearly worthless because not only are they bringing little to no exposure to the musicians that he's borrowing from, but also it's pretty clear that a majority of Turra's audience is coming away with the impression that he's like, writing and coming up with all this stuff on his own.

I mean, when you dig past all the hate comments he's been getting as of late, there's no other comments in there saying like, oh, hey man, you perform that other person's solo or lick, really great. I love it. And I'll say personally, as somebody who's been following this guy for a few years now, like, when I first came upon this stuff, I was like, yeah, this guy's a great player, cool. I had no idea he was playing other people's shit. If I had known that from the get go, I probably would have gone and followed a few of the people who he was borrowing ideas from. In fact, I did actually go and do that after I found out.

And honestly, this apology video he's done, this is like the first time I've heard the guy say more than two or three words. Because again, his videos and his performances don't leave a whole lot of space for talking or discussion. He's just kind of playing and grooving and doing licks and so on and so forth. And you as the viewer are pretty much left to presume he must just be coming up with this stuff on his own.

I mean, that's kind of the presumed thing with any random musician influencer on the Internet. I don't think I'm an idiot for not digging into the comments. Be like, oh, actually was, was this solo an arrangement created by somebody else and you're just rehashing it for your own video? Let me go check the description credits for that. Oh, there they are.

So yes, even if there are some small little references and notations going on here and there in the description of these videos, the message is not getting across.

Again, through his success on social media, this guy has been getting all sorts of promotional opportunities, endorsements, things that obviously put quite a bit of money in his pocket. And if a lot of these things that he's doing in his videos are not original ideas, it makes you wonder why are these opportunities going to him and not the people who he is getting these ideas from?

He's not making himself look any less guilty by apologizing and then immediately taking the apology down. That makes it all seem like there actually is something to the claims that are being made here.

But yeah, screw me, I guess, for making the foolish decision to trust a musician.

I think I'm gonna leave it there for now anyway, unless there's any further developments. Let me know what you guys think about all of this craziness down in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. Instagram. Music. Plagiarism? Forever.