Pop quiz: what do Outkast's "The Way You Move", Daft Punk's "Technologic", White Stripes' "We're Going To Be Friends" and The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" have in common? Answer: they've all inspired music house knockoffs that, as of press time, were still being broadcast in commercials for major North American clients.

Soundalike music. It's an issue that has remained a thorn in the collective side of the commercial music industry for over a decade now. And although you'd think increased access to information and the looming threat of litigation would be enough to deter houses from the practice, it remains as prominent and as nettlesome a problem as ever. So why does it keep happening, and where is it coming from? "It's never the music company's idea," says Keith Haluska, managing director of Massive Music, New York. "I'll give my colleagues enough credit to say that nobody gives them a spot and they're like 'You know what would be good? A ripoff of this song!' It's the editor and the agency sitting around with rough cuts with a pop song and getting stuck on it."

As a prominent New York-based musicologist who frequently works with music houses on copyright infringement issues, Donato Music's Anthony Ricigliano has seen that scenario play out time and time again. "It happens because the commercial's producers fall in love with their temp track," he says. "They put the music houses between a rock and a hard place. They ask the musicologist to sign a statement saying it's original music, and push the [houses] to get closer all the time. And since a music house wants to make a living and they're afraid they won't get the job, they try to get a little closer."

In other words, 'demo love', the industry's tongue-in-cheek descriptor for what happens when an agency falls in lust with a scratch track. Where more established music houses often have the experience and the financial leverage to avoid being forced into anything, Haluska says it's not hard to see how a fledgling music house could get reeled in. "Sometimes you'll have done three rounds of demos, finally made the agency happy and then all of a sudden you'll get 'The client wants what they originally heard, which is this AC/DC song'," he says. "By then you've blown through the demo budget and you're never going to get that as a kill fee, so you've got to try to figure out a way to make it legal. It's either that or you've spent [money] to work on a job and not finish it."

While smaller houses aren't exclusively to blame, the sudden sprawl of freelancers and boutiques has certainly made the problem harder to curtail. "The [low] cost of the technology is allowing a lot more people to make music," says Massive New York's managing director Kerry Smith. "Someone who doesn't have a lot of experience may think its okay to get closer, whereas someone who's been in the business longer is really aware of what you can't do." If true, that would certainly explain Joel Kipnis' observations. While the president of New York's Pulse Music says he hasn't noticed a marked increase in soundalikes, he has noticed that "people seem to be more blatant" with their homages. "I couldn't tell you statistically whether there's more or less, but I do know that the people who've been ripping them off aren't doing such a great job."