A brilliantly laid out article with various great examples demonstrating how a self-proclaimed ‘creative’ industry is ceasing to be just that.
A business slowly but surely consuming itself and its children aided and abetted by the legal profession in pursuit of profits, the bulk of which will surely be enjoyed by the very rare few.
Basically, anyone writing a piece of music today is not only duty-bound to be aware of every other piece of music literally ever written, however seemingly completely different, particularly to the ‘untrained’ ear, but also extremely wary that the recognition that they likely crave for it might be a cruel double-edged sword should it succeed.
Very sad.
G Harris
3 years ago
‘Plagiarism laws are killing music’
I’m still ‘young enough’ to remember when ‘Home Taping’ was in the frame.
The slogan used by the music industry’s copyright police was: “Home taping is killing music – and it’s illegal”.
Pop music, I have noticed, did not die. Performers of moderate talent continue to get rich. In the era of the MP3, Spotify, YouTube etc, where a vast catalogue of the world’s music is widely available, pop music is more repetitive and derivative than ever.
‘In the era of the MP3, Spotify, YouTube etc, where a vast catalogue of the world’s music is widely available, pop music is more repetitive and derivative than ever.’
Maybe a bit unfair, but I partly blame the Scandanavians, the Germans and, more specifically, the Swedes for this.
Around about the beginning of the Britney era, much sought after, highly talented producers there seemed to have pretty much nailed the formula for the perfect pop song in terms how the human brain reacted favourably to its tune, breaks, chorus, lyrics etc.
They inadvertently were responsible for turning an art into far more of a more of a science, seemingly lowering the risks of bombing involved by creating a template for what was, by definition previously, a creative, often random, largely serendipitous process with a famously costly, high failure rate.
The result, of course, was the ‘derivative and repetitive’, yet undeniably more consistently ‘good’ pop music we know today.
Your final paragraph suggests you are congratulating rather than blaming the Germans and the Swedes for their successful creation of the perfect pop song formula. In this (not very brave) new world the quality musical product can be offered to the public with minimal risk to backers’ capital.
Are you by any chance a marketing consultant?
David Barry
3 years ago
As Branford Marsalis said when discussing improvisation in jazz: “… there’s 12 notes, what’s going to be new? You honestly think you’re going to play something that hasn’t been played already?”
robert.kaye
3 years ago
I don’t think the problem really lies with plagiarism laws so much as that the use of juries and the ludicrous flexibility they have in relation to damages in the US adds a huge amount of unpredictability that creates a litigation industry.
James Pelton
3 years ago
This is a problem that ultimately has to do with much more than music. It has to do with there being too many lawyers with nothing better or more ethical to do. We in the West have tied ourselves in copyright knots in culture, tech industries and countless other arenas. What started out as a way to ensure that creators were fairly rewarded has become an appalling deterrent to innovation. China has no qualms about ignoring our copyright laws and laughing at the stupid things we do with them while they charge forward building on our innovations while we persecute each other legally instead.
mike otter
3 years ago
I think this comes down to personal perceptions, subjective aesthetic taste etc for private individuals, juries and judges alike. Attitude to/knowledge of music are important too. I think the shared “minor line cliche” in Taurus, Stairway to Heaven, Freebird and All Along the Watchtower (plus many more) absolve Led Zep here. However i think Thicke/Williams DID rip off “Got to Give It Up” because to me the sound, rhythm and phrasing are lifted. I may be wrong as who knows if Thicke/Williams came up with it by co-incidence? I do know i have a lot of respect for Marvin Gaye’s work despite his short, chaotic life and not much for Pharrell/Williams. I expect most American jurors feel the same. The intellectual property aspect is pretty much un-navigable in most cases….some melodies/rhythms are so old as to be untraceable…apply thi slogic to 1-4-5 note blues progressions: Malian Lute player sues Ibo slaves who sue cotton pickers who sue gospel singers who sue Leadbelly who sues Eddie Cochrane who sues the Rolling Stones who sue George Thorogood etc etc You could also do the same thing from Mali Lute Man to Berber to Clesmatic to Jewish to Gypsy buskers to Rock n Roll etc. Bear in mind that until popular music went industrial-scale people often traded or gave away songs. I have always suspected Mozart Jnr got some of his material from earwigging Gypsy camp fire parties and using auto-didactic musical memory. I don’t doubt Slayer realise that Myxolidian, Dorian and Locrian scales are Indo/Jewish/Arab/Afro origin but are no more copywritable than a screwdriver or a hammer – didn’t stop them making some of the best music ever written IMO!
Michael Tomlinson
3 years ago
Quite right. Composers have been engaged in a conversation with each other, bouncing off each other’s ideas since the age of Handel and Bach. Placing this within a clunky legal framework is the enemy of creativity. As a minimum, the prosecution should have to demonstrate that harm has been caused, the original musician has suffered loss. Most of these examples would fall to the ground on this basis. The harm is being caused by the litigation of a free creative process.
Charles Rense
3 years ago
All art is built upon thousands of years of art that came before it. The completely original idea is a powerful illusion because most people can barely grasp the last fifty years of artistic influences that fed into a given piece.
G Harris
3 years ago
Funny how they barely ever go after cr@p tunes or artists no-one’s ever heard of.
‘Where there’s brass there’s muck’, to subvert a well known phrase, and in this case ‘the muck’ normally wears a sharp suit and carries a brief.
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Great piece. And as the pot of money associated with making music has shrunk – first due to streaming and now the ending of live performances due to Covid – the problem will only be magnified.
mike otter
3 years ago
I suppose it comes down to juries knowledge of music for the first court judgement, but with the ladder of appeals i imagine more judges can read music/musical theory the higher you go. With 6:3 for conservatives on the SCOTUS i expect the majority will have some sort of musical training. They could even form a band, perhaps Jazz, Chamber Music or whatever and leave the 3 liberals to form a Drill outfit: “Cholita” Sotomayor and “Skag” Kagan feat. “Bruiser” Breyer…..
No idea what that means – but it sounds hilarious.
NIGEL PASSMORE
3 years ago
Surely on this basis, in the World of Blues, every song that started #Woke up this mornin’..# and featured dah, dah, dah dah at some point would mean every second Blues track every written would be a breach of original copyright?
Regards
NHP
Brian Dorsley
3 years ago
There was a time when people created music simply for the pleasure it brought others rather than for the dollars it raked in. We don’t need the music industry to create music, we have it already in ourselves,
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Interesting – I knew there was a lot of this going on but I didn’t know that it was all-pervasive and extending to ‘a groove’ or a basic chord progression.
John Stone
3 years ago
Perhaps it just adds to the entertainment – it is better than having to listen to them.
Kevin Henderson
3 years ago
I am 100% with the author on this, but how do you decide if music has been plagiarised? The problem has been identified but I would like to have seen some thoughts on how to solve it.
perthside
3 years ago
As has been said many times before: all the best music has been written. Going by most of the trash released these days by so called artists does in my opinion tend to support that thesis.
mindovermud
3 years ago
I daresay if someone could copyright “the Wheel”, they would.
But must be difficult for “THE BLUES”…. as its about all i can play on guitar, and yes generally it is only 3 chords-ish, + the occaisional 6th, 7th or minor thrown in. Yes it comes as an 8bar, 12 bar or a 16bar, but I normally cant count that well, so alternate a bit.
But Hey! every blues song is Unique, but also every blues song has similar family roots, and some can be very similar. Songs are frequently reminescent of each other, that shouldnt be a crime.
Imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.
David J
3 years ago
Just listened to these two afresh, and they really are very different. Not the first time a judgement has seemed utterly bizarre.
Crazy, but inevitable, I suppose.
A brilliantly laid out article with various great examples demonstrating how a self-proclaimed ‘creative’ industry is ceasing to be just that.
A business slowly but surely consuming itself and its children aided and abetted by the legal profession in pursuit of profits, the bulk of which will surely be enjoyed by the very rare few.
Basically, anyone writing a piece of music today is not only duty-bound to be aware of every other piece of music literally ever written, however seemingly completely different, particularly to the ‘untrained’ ear, but also extremely wary that the recognition that they likely crave for it might be a cruel double-edged sword should it succeed.
Very sad.
‘Plagiarism laws are killing music’
I’m still ‘young enough’ to remember when ‘Home Taping’ was in the frame.
Followed by Napster!
The slogan used by the music industry’s copyright police was:
“Home taping is killing music – and it’s illegal”.
Pop music, I have noticed, did not die. Performers of moderate talent continue to get rich. In the era of the MP3, Spotify, YouTube etc, where a vast catalogue of the world’s music is widely available, pop music is more repetitive and derivative than ever.
‘In the era of the MP3, Spotify, YouTube etc, where a vast catalogue of the world’s music is widely available, pop music is more repetitive and derivative than ever.’
Maybe a bit unfair, but I partly blame the Scandanavians, the Germans and, more specifically, the Swedes for this.
Around about the beginning of the Britney era, much sought after, highly talented producers there seemed to have pretty much nailed the formula for the perfect pop song in terms how the human brain reacted favourably to its tune, breaks, chorus, lyrics etc.
They inadvertently were responsible for turning an art into far more of a more of a science, seemingly lowering the risks of bombing involved by creating a template for what was, by definition previously, a creative, often random, largely serendipitous process with a famously costly, high failure rate.
The result, of course, was the ‘derivative and repetitive’, yet undeniably more consistently ‘good’ pop music we know today.
Your final paragraph suggests you are congratulating rather than blaming the Germans and the Swedes for their successful creation of the perfect pop song formula. In this (not very brave) new world the quality musical product can be offered to the public with minimal risk to backers’ capital.
Are you by any chance a marketing consultant?
As Branford Marsalis said when discussing improvisation in jazz: “… there’s 12 notes, what’s going to be new? You honestly think you’re going to play something that hasn’t been played already?”
I don’t think the problem really lies with plagiarism laws so much as that the use of juries and the ludicrous flexibility they have in relation to damages in the US adds a huge amount of unpredictability that creates a litigation industry.
This is a problem that ultimately has to do with much more than music. It has to do with there being too many lawyers with nothing better or more ethical to do. We in the West have tied ourselves in copyright knots in culture, tech industries and countless other arenas. What started out as a way to ensure that creators were fairly rewarded has become an appalling deterrent to innovation. China has no qualms about ignoring our copyright laws and laughing at the stupid things we do with them while they charge forward building on our innovations while we persecute each other legally instead.
I think this comes down to personal perceptions, subjective aesthetic taste etc for private individuals, juries and judges alike. Attitude to/knowledge of music are important too. I think the shared “minor line cliche” in Taurus, Stairway to Heaven, Freebird and All Along the Watchtower (plus many more) absolve Led Zep here. However i think Thicke/Williams DID rip off “Got to Give It Up” because to me the sound, rhythm and phrasing are lifted. I may be wrong as who knows if Thicke/Williams came up with it by co-incidence? I do know i have a lot of respect for Marvin Gaye’s work despite his short, chaotic life and not much for Pharrell/Williams. I expect most American jurors feel the same. The intellectual property aspect is pretty much un-navigable in most cases….some melodies/rhythms are so old as to be untraceable…apply thi slogic to 1-4-5 note blues progressions: Malian Lute player sues Ibo slaves who sue cotton pickers who sue gospel singers who sue Leadbelly who sues Eddie Cochrane who sues the Rolling Stones who sue George Thorogood etc etc You could also do the same thing from Mali Lute Man to Berber to Clesmatic to Jewish to Gypsy buskers to Rock n Roll etc. Bear in mind that until popular music went industrial-scale people often traded or gave away songs. I have always suspected Mozart Jnr got some of his material from earwigging Gypsy camp fire parties and using auto-didactic musical memory. I don’t doubt Slayer realise that Myxolidian, Dorian and Locrian scales are Indo/Jewish/Arab/Afro origin but are no more copywritable than a screwdriver or a hammer – didn’t stop them making some of the best music ever written IMO!
Quite right. Composers have been engaged in a conversation with each other, bouncing off each other’s ideas since the age of Handel and Bach. Placing this within a clunky legal framework is the enemy of creativity. As a minimum, the prosecution should have to demonstrate that harm has been caused, the original musician has suffered loss. Most of these examples would fall to the ground on this basis. The harm is being caused by the litigation of a free creative process.
All art is built upon thousands of years of art that came before it. The completely original idea is a powerful illusion because most people can barely grasp the last fifty years of artistic influences that fed into a given piece.
Funny how they barely ever go after cr@p tunes or artists no-one’s ever heard of.
‘Where there’s brass there’s muck’, to subvert a well known phrase, and in this case ‘the muck’ normally wears a sharp suit and carries a brief.
Great piece. And as the pot of money associated with making music has shrunk – first due to streaming and now the ending of live performances due to Covid – the problem will only be magnified.
I suppose it comes down to juries knowledge of music for the first court judgement, but with the ladder of appeals i imagine more judges can read music/musical theory the higher you go. With 6:3 for conservatives on the SCOTUS i expect the majority will have some sort of musical training. They could even form a band, perhaps Jazz, Chamber Music or whatever and leave the 3 liberals to form a Drill outfit: “Cholita” Sotomayor and “Skag” Kagan feat. “Bruiser” Breyer…..
No idea what that means – but it sounds hilarious.
Surely on this basis, in the World of Blues, every song that started #Woke up this mornin’..# and featured dah, dah, dah dah at some point would mean every second Blues track every written would be a breach of original copyright?
Regards
NHP
There was a time when people created music simply for the pleasure it brought others rather than for the dollars it raked in. We don’t need the music industry to create music, we have it already in ourselves,
Interesting – I knew there was a lot of this going on but I didn’t know that it was all-pervasive and extending to ‘a groove’ or a basic chord progression.
Perhaps it just adds to the entertainment – it is better than having to listen to them.
I am 100% with the author on this, but how do you decide if music has been plagiarised? The problem has been identified but I would like to have seen some thoughts on how to solve it.
As has been said many times before: all the best music has been written. Going by most of the trash released these days by so called artists does in my opinion tend to support that thesis.
I daresay if someone could copyright “the Wheel”, they would.
But must be difficult for “THE BLUES”…. as its about all i can play on guitar, and yes generally it is only 3 chords-ish, + the occaisional 6th, 7th or minor thrown in. Yes it comes as an 8bar, 12 bar or a 16bar, but I normally cant count that well, so alternate a bit.
But Hey! every blues song is Unique, but also every blues song has similar family roots, and some can be very similar. Songs are frequently reminescent of each other, that shouldnt be a crime.
Imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.
Just listened to these two afresh, and they really are very different.
Not the first time a judgement has seemed utterly bizarre.