There are of course, exceptions to every rule, but most pro writers would be discouraged from doing this as threat of lawsuits. Of course, with much of todays music being sampled, it is hard to say what would be sued over and how anything would stand up. I'm not even sure copyrights will hold up in the future, but it's always an interesting topic.

What happens here that is more predominate is the introduction of BEATS .Endless drum loops, with pretty much the same feels, predominate all music. Rap and hip hop is mostly sampling. All music is now very similar if not direct copies. And publishers do encourage writing things that sound similar to what is on the radio. Since many people are all writing similar things, in fact you will find some writers names on multiple hit songs, so if they are stealing from anyone, they are stealing from themselves.

And as I said, as an excercise, it's a tool people use. In today's "anyone can do it" world, most people will do whatever they can get at the click of a mouse.

For me, it's just not that big a concern, because I don't sit around and listen to what's on the radio and then do that. I have clients that come in that might be influenced and like certain songs or artists, and I'll listen to some of that for reference, but it generally just gets us in the target area, and the similarities end there. Many of things that are on the radio, I have no interest in copying at all, but that is just me. For my two cents, the more you utilize other people's work, the more problems you invite in being accepted. Mostly it would be taking some of that into a legitimate publisher who would simply say "Ahh, we've already got a ton of that. What else you got?"

To each his own.
MAB