Someone tried copyrighting all the possible pop music melodies. "Most pop melodies run fewer than 12 notes. If you generated every possible melody with just the eight notes of the C scale, that’d be 8^12 melodies, which is 68,719,476,736." So they generated all of them, as MIDI sequences, and stored them on a hard drive.[1][2] Arguably, all those are now public domain.
That was back in 2016. If you applied machine learning to pop music, you could probably establish a classifier for melodies that don't sound awful, and get that number down into the millions. Spotify has about 100,000 uploaded tracks. The space of listenable pop music may become fully populated. It would be amusing to have something that classifies songs as "Standard melody #67426564".
Note that "standard melody #3473" was literally exactly how European medieval church music was (and still is) categorized. There are 7 notes in the scale and certain rules that eliminate some possible sequences, but the space of possible canti firmi was finite and studied as a closed space by medieval music theorists.
People fish in the ocean and think that the fish is theirs. Huge companies do that and they act and profit as the fish is theirs. But isn’t the (now depleted) fish something that belongs to humanity. For popular music is so much you can pull out of the pond, in my opinion it can hardly be somewhere own property. Maybe a too advanced thought? When the white man landed in America they said this is ours, the aborigines reply. Yes, meaning this belongs to everyone and it is yours too. Can we transcend this ownership thing?
The exact same logic applies to many things that by rights ought to be commons, but are not. Most notably: land.
The idea that, for example, any person claiming sole ownership/usufruct of a piece of land owes to the public a rent for the value of the undeveloped land is called Georgism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism).
Even if the claim that most pop melodies consist of 12 notes is true (which is dubious), the 8^12 number excludes variation in rhythm or the timing between the notes which can make a significant impact on the overall feeling of the melody. If you hum/whistle some pop song you know in your head, it is easy to see that the notes aren’t all equally spaced apart in time.
Agree, but a jury just needs to decide a song sounds similar for it to be a copyright infringement. So a jury may hear the same melody and exclude the variation in their comparison.
with a 4/4 (which is most of music is these days) there's only so much slicing you can do to have relative times between notes differ.
There are also a number of things that change the expression but not the melody. eg Hallelujah vs Zombie:
- have different melodies but use the same chords
- can be sliced and diced both with various rests and palm mutes and arpeggios and strumming yet still have them individually identifiable (and sometimes very close, possibly even overlapping in some sections, but that's perfectly normal and how one does a good mashup)
Even the time signature doesn't mean much, one could play Zombie on a blues shuffle and it would still be distinctively Zombie-esque.
Throw in music theory and keys and I IV V and chords and whatnot which I still don't master but I get the idea, it severely reduces what one ought to do to compose something enjoyable.
With that you can mathematically reduce you problem space to some extent.
In any case it's all completely moot because fundamentally the creation process is a) ingest ideas, b) digest, c) excrete ideas, which ultimately come from a mixture of a). Everything new looks like something else to some extent, and there's a fundamental reason why artists are told (or themselves tell) they're "influenced by" this or that other artist.
If we were to truly strictly enforce copyright nothing would ever get created anymore. So I don't know if copyright itself is right or wrong, but I feel copyright enforcement is truly fucked up these days (and not just in music)
As a beginner composing in my living room I'm truly scared (on top of fear of inadequacy) to push something out there I put my heart and soul into and get sued to oblivion (or at the very least have it destroyed and claimed by some entity that is not even involved in creation)
That ignores rhythm and chords which are important and distinct. Also given current court rulings stating such non-creative computer generated things are not copyrightable, it's irrelevant to copyrighted music.
100,000 tracks seems like an awfully low estimate, how did you arrive at that number? Just as a spot check, I've liked ~6500 individual tracks, and it would be very surprising if that represented 6% of their total catalog - I'd expect that actual percentage to be orders of magnitude lower.
Emphasis is regarded as an interpretation of the notes. Interpretation doesn't invalidate the claims of the original author according how copyright is currently applied.
It's like interpreting Shakespeare. You can emphasis this sentence over that one, and this word over that one. It is still Shakespeare.
I think this ignores what actually makes a pop song popular and a hit. It isn't the chord progression or melody, at least primarily. It is the marketing.
Plus, I assume that major studios have already been using stastical-based software for decades to help craft songs to fit the current vogue. There's a reason why many songwriters and producers write songs for Kpop and state those songs could never be released in the U.S.
I worked in the business for 15+ years and was involved in a lot of campaigns for artists and music you’ve heard a lot.
Everyone says this but once you get in the actual music business you end up seeing the vast amount of stuff that gets the exact same amount of marketing, checks all the boxes, has all the right people and money behind it, and goes absolutely fucking nowhere.
You realize very quickly it’s not really about the marketing. People get to decide what music they like, and do.
That doesn’t mean bad music doesn’t get popular. It does. You just don’t like the taste of the massive number of people that enjoy it.
I get it I can’t fucking explain Pitbull either. I want it to be a conspiracy.
> “But Riehl and Rubin’s point, they say, is not actually to obtain legally sound copyrights, but to illustrate that there are a finite number of ways to combine notes to create pop melodies, and these combinations existed before any songwriter actually put them to paper. All of these melodies can be generated and represented mathematically, suggesting that writing the melody for a pop song is, in some ways, a lot like selecting and portraying a pre-existing—and non-copyrightable—mathematical fact.”
Some deep concepts right there. Would the same thing apply to any sequence of things? The AACS cryptographic key? The words in a book? Is there some breakpoint in number of permutations where human creativity and memorable history allow for copyright?
So they generated all of them, as MIDI sequences, and stored them on a hard drive.[1][2] Arguably, all those are now public domain
Not really though. If this were accepted as a creative work, then it also violates the copyright of every modern song. But, as exemplified the the story in the OP, where the author gets the idea from is really important. So, you could look a jury in the eye and say you were just browsing through a hard drive full of melodies and picked one that seemed good, but that likely isn't going to fly.
It's a neat idea, but copyright protects against copying, if someone copies your work, even if your work is derived from the public domain, then you have reasonable grounds on which to sue. You'd have to have added something creative to the public domain melody, however.
In short copying from the public domain does not make one's whole work public domain.
This maybe helps against specious claims?
It may be useful to consider how Pantone's copyright on shades of colour relates; they don't get to sue people for using those colours (in general).
Pantone doesn't get its money from copyrighted nuance names. They get it from putting together and selling all the processes and chemicals which deliver you the exact same color over all thinkable media. How would this translate in the musical world?
I think they meant to write 100,000,000. I was about to say that sounds insanely low, because I have 15k songs "Liked" on Spotify and there's no way I've liked 15% of practically all songs.
The defence would be that you copied from the public domain to make a derivative work, the other aspects -- timing, lyrics, repitition, instruments used, etc. -- would be where your copyright lay. You couldn't successfully sue someone for using that sequence of notes on your melody (common ancestor) but could if the result shared your timing or other aspects; provided those choices passed the bar for making a creative work.
My only nitpick is I don't think you need AI or machine learning for automatic music generation. Instead, we've allowed tastes to be so dumbed down you could achieve success with MIDI, a RNG and a couple of if/then statements.
Copyright cases around music are a great demonstration of many of the problems caused by our approach to intellectual property:
* Artists are generally inspired by other artists and societal context.
* Most artists make very little, some become fabulously wealthy.
* Artists with few resources must be extremely careful not to "infringe" the copyright of a powerful artist.
* Powerful artists have access to legal resources that allow them to, intentionally or unintentionally, take from smaller artists without facing similar repercussions.
There is a complete failure of the system to acknowledge that people produce similar works independently or that human progress has often been driven by conscious or subconscious inspiration.
The current regime would have us paying royalties to the dynasty of the guy that came up with the wheel. I don't think there's any justification that we'd be better off as a society if that were the case.
On top of that, many cases (including this one) aren't even artists suing other artists. They're estates or companies that bought the rights suing. Oftentimes the creators themselves would be aghast at this!
Oftentimes the creators themselves would be aghast at this!
Obviously anyone who has sold the rights to their music gives up that particular claim that though.
And (in my opinion) the rights of any musician should die with them, so if they haven't sold the rights to their music while they're alive their music can't fall into the hands of a private equity company.
Copyright and patents have an age limit - for good reasons. If anyone would have a patent for the wheel, it would have expired by now - letting everyone use the design for free.
I see Ed Sheeran's (as well as Katy Perry's) successful copyright defenses as evidence song writers are doing fine. Katy Perry's earlier defeat (for Dark Horse) luckily reversed on appeal last year. Toni Basil also had an interesting copyright victory last year related to 1980's "Mickey" - although her result seems very narrow and technical (related to copyright termination and works-for-hire) and only about the recording, since she never wrote the song in the first place.
Whereas Marvin Gaye's heirs' successful litigation against Blurred Lines is very concerning (see: https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2018/07/blurred-lines-b... ), although as has long been the case with copyright litigation in the USA - it really all depends on the jury !
Personally, when I listen to Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" right next to "Blurred Lines" I really cannot comprehend the jury's result. I guess they both employ a cowbell very prominently? But I wasn't a member of the jury, so it wasn't up to me. I find the Katy Perry result to be at least a little bit of a close call based on my own listening.
Honestly, I think if I wrote something significant enough that I got sued for it - that's probably a VERY good sign about my own prospects and future as a musician.
Lil Nas X was completely independent when he created Old Town Road with a complete copy & paste of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's music. So even in cases of absurdly blatant copyright infringement the artist might still do okay !
Marvin Gaye's estate is one of the most notorious copyright trolls in the music industry. We've only heard about the big songs (Sheeran, Blurred Lines) but they've gone after a number of indie musicians as well.
Not precisely (or at least not in this instance), from TFA:
> The claim over Thinking Out Loud was originally lodged in 2018, not by Gaye’s family but by investment banker David Pullman and a company called Structured Asset Sales, which has acquired a portion of the estate of Let’s Get It On co-writer Ed Townsend.
I think Sheeran was lazy and lifted Gaye song too close. But since it's the estate trying to milk everybody without real respect to Marvin Gaye's legacy[0] .. I'm ok with them losing.
A friend of mine who is a managing partner at a law firm specializing in IP law once told me that "once a case goes to a jury trial, it's a 50/50 chance that you win--and the odds only go down from there."
Amusingly, Warner Music themselves can't tell the difference between Dark Horse and Joyful Noise (the song supposedly being infringed upon in Dark House)
I've only really looked into the case involving “Thinking Out Loud” and Marvin Gaye's song, “Let's Get It On". I'm not music buff, but when you listen to them, they are completely different. There is no similarity at all.
Sheeran's claim to the court he was going to quit music stuck me as beside the point - I hope the jury didn't hear that, lest it influence their verdict. The question for them was if there was infringement. There obviously wasn't.
This meritless lawsuit was always going to fail. But Sheeran was fortunate to have deep pockets. He can afford to defend meritless lawsuits. The bigger issue is how to deal with large companies suing independent artists, and the consequences they should suffer for instituting meritless lawsuits.
The two songs are very similar in some ways -- similar enough that even Sheeran played them as a live medley. I think the strongest argument is that the common elements are mostly shared genre markers, and courts have consistently held that genre similarities aren't evidence of copying.
They have a similar (but not actually the same) chord progression. They're in a different key and the melody is different. If you could copyright similar chord progressions then that would be the end of new pop music.
> similar enough that even Sheeran played them as a live medley
That doesn't really mean much, any good sounding diatonic (chords all from the same key) song is going to share the progression with lots of other songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
They're similar in terms of tempo, chord progression, chord rhythm, and chord voicing - despite that the second chord is actually subtly different between the two. When you transpose one, you can hear the similarities.
But that shouldn't even be close to enough to be infringement. I'm one to think they got Satriani/Coldplay wrong as well, though. There are just too many examples of songs that make really good mash-ups. 4 Non Blondes What's Going On and Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry Be Happy, for instance. I'd say those are more similar that Sheeran/Gaye.
There shouldn't even be a copyright issue for a work released in 1971 - over 50 years ago. Surely the work should be in the public domain in any reasonable system.
Adam Neely does a better job, and includes multiple examples of other songs that Gaye could have "ripped off" by some definition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpzLD-SAwW8
This is a bit frustrating because Neely did a better job covering the "Blurred Lines" case but Beato has more viewers, I guess.
I think this is actually the point. Sheeran was sued not because he made a song that sounded the same as another song, but because the song he made earned a lot of money.
So this problem only happens to rich musicians who have earned a lot of money making music. That doesn't make it right, or reasonable, obviously. But it also means that the vast majority of musicians will never have this problem. The whole "copyright is threatening music" headline is a little overblown. "Rich douchebags are using copyright to bully rich musicians with meritless court cases" would probably be more accurate.
This is my favourite rejoinder to the idea that "the chorus sounds really similar, it must be plagiarism!", from the KLF's "The Manual" (https://www.tomrobinson.com/resource/klf.txt):
We await the day with relish that somebody dares to make a dance record that consists of nothing more than an electronically programmed bass drum beat that continues playing the fours monotonously for eight minutes. Then, when somebody else brings one out using exactly the same bass drum sound and at the same beats per minute (B.P.M.), we will all be able to tell which is the best, which inspires the dance floor to fill the fastest, which has the most sex and the most soul. There is no doubt, one will be better than the other.
Admittedly this is from a book that explicitly recommends ripping off other songs as the basis for your own short-lived masterpiece.
In the desert there is only a single place to drill for water, but there is enough water if you drill there to serve everyone.
The king, in an attempt to find this well, issues a proclamation, that whoever finds this place to drill will own all of the water that comes out of it for the rest of their lives.
Most of the desert dwellers recognize that searching for this well wont keep them fed in the meantime, so an enterprising young duke offers a different deal. He says that he will pay people to search for the well, in exchange for the rights to the water if they find it.
Many desert dwellers take him up on this deal, its a good job, and it pays well enough to subsidize the searching.
When the well is finally found, the king grudgingly hands the duke the rights to the water, and with the wealth that the exorbitant prices he charges for water brings him, the duke eventually owns the whole desert and deposes the king.
That's it, thats the whole story. If you thought it was stupid, and that the king should have done things differently, we are in agreement.
I think the king should have made the duke point out who actually found the water, and then the king should have stuck to his proclamation and awarded all of the rights to that person.
> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
It doesn't say a transferable right. and "securing" and "exclusive" seem to argue against transferability. Beats me why the courts and congress decided otherwise.
> There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, I find very sad the fact that pop songs have become nothing more than 4 chords just repeating over and over, with a thin veneer of inconsequential melody over them, serving a never ending stream of banal lyrics. Is this really the best of what award-winning musicians like Sheeran et al can do? I mean, they don't even bother changing the harmony for the chorus, and where has the bridge gone?
There is more to music than harmony and melody. Some styles of music even don't have harmony at all, like Indian classical music. Or have pitch at all, like some African styles of drum music.
If modern pop doesn't seem to focus on melody or harmony, it's interesting what it focuses on instead. It doesn't seem to be rhythm or form either. It might be the timbres of sounds (interesting singing voice, unique singing manerisms, or difference between clean or dirty bass, etc.), trying to create a unique listening experience on common speakers. There's a reason why physical instruments are used ever less in pop while use of human voice is ever more in the focus.
It might also not be the music at all but instead the lifestyle and drama surrounding the artists. In that case, all I have to say is that there's more than pop and there has never been more amazing music in all styles you can imagine being produced. It also has never been easier to find and access. If you're not listening to it yet, you probably don't care that much about harmony, melody and whatnot.
Oh, I'm right there with you man. Modern pop is mostly dreadful. I think music producers have homed in on "the most appealing chord progression possible", and are reluctant to deviate from it, like an arms race. What boggles my mind though, is that some people don't seem to get bored by it. Tbh modern pop isn't even really music any more, it's much more a multimedia thing - with visuals (hot performers, cool videos etc) playing a massive part in its appeal.
Always makes me laugh when people put on their "modern music is rubbish" hat to complain about the 'Axis of Awesome' progression which is a slight switcharound of what is widely known as the '50s progression' or 'oldies progression' because so many songs from the good old days when music was fresh and vibrant and performers had real talent used it...
It is subjective though. Personally I really enjoy it, even when most of it is just basic 3-chord stuff.
The reason for this is partly the liberation of production. Anyone with a laptop can produce a track that rockets in popularity. There's plenty of really interesting pop too like The Weeknd.
There has also been a shift in the purpose of music for young people. Putting aside the use of music in things like TikTok, young people have zeroed in on simplicity to communicate an emotion. Music is more ambient, designed to provide something that resonates emotionally but isn't intrusive. Almost a self-medication with music.
This is, I think, because music became more portable. If you can have music on for 8 of 12 hours in the day, are you going to be sat doing critical listening to classical or 1970s prog? No, you're going to put on a background vibe that makes you feel good.
It is easy to be cynical about the commercialisation of music, but there's no black or white, the reality is more nuanced and there's innovation going on not only with the sounds and production ... but also what music means.
Ignore young people at your peril, or you'll be an old cummudgeon who only listens to Pink Floyd or whatever and misses out on so much.
But.....you yourself called it "most appealing chord progression possible". If it's appealing, why is it surprising that it's POPular?
And I don't really see what is there to be bored with - it's just music. You put a POP playlist on Spotify or whatever and it's enjoyable music that you can have on for 8 hours while you work. If you want stuff that deviates from it, there's plenty to choose from - but I don't understand why anyone is surprised that this isn't what most people listen to.
Unfortunately, it's what makes Pop Music, POPular. As long as it sells, it won't change. I remember Lady Gaga getting a lot of criticism early on in her career, then later, she showed how talented she is musically.
On a sidenote, we see it on the web, you can argue that most marketing websites look the same, it follows a formula that sells.
There's an amazing amount of fantastic music and it's hard to even keep up. You should be able to find something you like! I've been enjoying Pomme lately.
Why judge people for what they like? There has never been more choice in music, listen to what you like and be happy that others are doing the same. I think the incredible amount of choice is the largest reason for why pop music has become so formulaic. People who are interested in music all have their own playlists so pop has to focus even more on people who are largely uninterested in the complexities of music.
Readit News
That was back in 2016. If you applied machine learning to pop music, you could probably establish a classifier for melodies that don't sound awful, and get that number down into the millions. Spotify has about 100,000 uploaded tracks. The space of listenable pop music may become fully populated. It would be amusing to have something that classifies songs as "Standard melody #67426564".
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/whats... [2] https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/a...
The idea that, for example, any person claiming sole ownership/usufruct of a piece of land owes to the public a rent for the value of the undeveloped land is called Georgism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism).
Don't know what you mean by rythm.
Did you ever played by notes and as such learned to read them?
Uh... That's off by an order of magnitude. 100 million tracks according to https://newsroom.spotify.com/company-info/
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The notes C-D#-G-D are a totally different melody with each note varied between 32nd and whole note, with rests between them, and using triplets.
I don't disagree with the point; independent constriction and collision are inevitable. But the math underestimates the space.
There are also a number of things that change the expression but not the melody. eg Hallelujah vs Zombie:
- have different melodies but use the same chords
- can be sliced and diced both with various rests and palm mutes and arpeggios and strumming yet still have them individually identifiable (and sometimes very close, possibly even overlapping in some sections, but that's perfectly normal and how one does a good mashup)
Even the time signature doesn't mean much, one could play Zombie on a blues shuffle and it would still be distinctively Zombie-esque.
Throw in music theory and keys and I IV V and chords and whatnot which I still don't master but I get the idea, it severely reduces what one ought to do to compose something enjoyable.
With that you can mathematically reduce you problem space to some extent.
In any case it's all completely moot because fundamentally the creation process is a) ingest ideas, b) digest, c) excrete ideas, which ultimately come from a mixture of a). Everything new looks like something else to some extent, and there's a fundamental reason why artists are told (or themselves tell) they're "influenced by" this or that other artist.
If we were to truly strictly enforce copyright nothing would ever get created anymore. So I don't know if copyright itself is right or wrong, but I feel copyright enforcement is truly fucked up these days (and not just in music)
As a beginner composing in my living room I'm truly scared (on top of fear of inadequacy) to push something out there I put my heart and soul into and get sued to oblivion (or at the very least have it destroyed and claimed by some entity that is not even involved in creation)
Perhaps OP meant to include a time period, like 100,000 tracks per month or something?
0: https://newsroom.spotify.com/company-info/
It's like interpreting Shakespeare. You can emphasis this sentence over that one, and this word over that one. It is still Shakespeare.
Plus, I assume that major studios have already been using stastical-based software for decades to help craft songs to fit the current vogue. There's a reason why many songwriters and producers write songs for Kpop and state those songs could never be released in the U.S.
I worked in the business for 15+ years and was involved in a lot of campaigns for artists and music you’ve heard a lot.
Everyone says this but once you get in the actual music business you end up seeing the vast amount of stuff that gets the exact same amount of marketing, checks all the boxes, has all the right people and money behind it, and goes absolutely fucking nowhere.
You realize very quickly it’s not really about the marketing. People get to decide what music they like, and do.
That doesn’t mean bad music doesn’t get popular. It does. You just don’t like the taste of the massive number of people that enjoy it.
I get it I can’t fucking explain Pitbull either. I want it to be a conspiracy.
Some deep concepts right there. Would the same thing apply to any sequence of things? The AACS cryptographic key? The words in a book? Is there some breakpoint in number of permutations where human creativity and memorable history allow for copyright?
In short copying from the public domain does not make one's whole work public domain.
This maybe helps against specious claims?
It may be useful to consider how Pantone's copyright on shades of colour relates; they don't get to sue people for using those colours (in general).
That seems really high and really low at the same time.
https://newsroom.spotify.com/company-info/#:~:text=over%2010...
But using the defence that a melody is public domain surely also invalidates your own copyright?
* Artists are generally inspired by other artists and societal context.
* Most artists make very little, some become fabulously wealthy.
* Artists with few resources must be extremely careful not to "infringe" the copyright of a powerful artist.
* Powerful artists have access to legal resources that allow them to, intentionally or unintentionally, take from smaller artists without facing similar repercussions.
There is a complete failure of the system to acknowledge that people produce similar works independently or that human progress has often been driven by conscious or subconscious inspiration.
The current regime would have us paying royalties to the dynasty of the guy that came up with the wheel. I don't think there's any justification that we'd be better off as a society if that were the case.
Obviously anyone who has sold the rights to their music gives up that particular claim that though.
And (in my opinion) the rights of any musician should die with them, so if they haven't sold the rights to their music while they're alive their music can't fall into the hands of a private equity company.
Music is born free and lives by sharing, but the Musical-Industry Complex thrives by other rules.
It sucks and it is another stifling of culture. Literally nobody cares to do anything about it.
Even worse than that. They want us to pay royalties to the person who has a piece of paper saying they own the idea of a wheel.
Obligatory: "Good artists copy, Great artists steal!" (attributed to Picasso and Steve Jobs)
Whereas Marvin Gaye's heirs' successful litigation against Blurred Lines is very concerning (see: https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2018/07/blurred-lines-b... ), although as has long been the case with copyright litigation in the USA - it really all depends on the jury !
Personally, when I listen to Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" right next to "Blurred Lines" I really cannot comprehend the jury's result. I guess they both employ a cowbell very prominently? But I wasn't a member of the jury, so it wasn't up to me. I find the Katy Perry result to be at least a little bit of a close call based on my own listening.
Song writers backed by huge companies are doing fine, but what about independent producers?
Lil Nas X was completely independent when he created Old Town Road with a complete copy & paste of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's music. So even in cases of absurdly blatant copyright infringement the artist might still do okay !
Not share earnings, not demonitize, straight to strike.
Not precisely (or at least not in this instance), from TFA:
> The claim over Thinking Out Loud was originally lodged in 2018, not by Gaye’s family but by investment banker David Pullman and a company called Structured Asset Sales, which has acquired a portion of the estate of Let’s Get It On co-writer Ed Townsend.
Are you aware of any specific instances?
[0] personal opinion but still
https://youtu.be/KM6X2MEl7R8
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Sheeran's claim to the court he was going to quit music stuck me as beside the point - I hope the jury didn't hear that, lest it influence their verdict. The question for them was if there was infringement. There obviously wasn't.
This meritless lawsuit was always going to fail. But Sheeran was fortunate to have deep pockets. He can afford to defend meritless lawsuits. The bigger issue is how to deal with large companies suing independent artists, and the consequences they should suffer for instituting meritless lawsuits.
> similar enough that even Sheeran played them as a live medley
That doesn't really mean much, any good sounding diatonic (chords all from the same key) song is going to share the progression with lots of other songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
But that shouldn't even be close to enough to be infringement. I'm one to think they got Satriani/Coldplay wrong as well, though. There are just too many examples of songs that make really good mash-ups. 4 Non Blondes What's Going On and Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry Be Happy, for instance. I'd say those are more similar that Sheeran/Gaye.
Last time this was on the front page we were a few who posted different medleys.
I’ll repost my favorite, pachhelbels rant: https://youtu.be/uxC1fPE1QEE
This is a vacuous observation. Any two songs are similar "in some ways".
> even Sheeran played them as a live medley
I think that says more about Sheeran's skill as a performer than it does about the similarity of the songs.
This is a bit frustrating because Neely did a better job covering the "Blurred Lines" case but Beato has more viewers, I guess.
So this problem only happens to rich musicians who have earned a lot of money making music. That doesn't make it right, or reasonable, obviously. But it also means that the vast majority of musicians will never have this problem. The whole "copyright is threatening music" headline is a little overblown. "Rich douchebags are using copyright to bully rich musicians with meritless court cases" would probably be more accurate.
Sportify, for example, is paying ~$0.003 / steam.
We await the day with relish that somebody dares to make a dance record that consists of nothing more than an electronically programmed bass drum beat that continues playing the fours monotonously for eight minutes. Then, when somebody else brings one out using exactly the same bass drum sound and at the same beats per minute (B.P.M.), we will all be able to tell which is the best, which inspires the dance floor to fill the fastest, which has the most sex and the most soul. There is no doubt, one will be better than the other.
Admittedly this is from a book that explicitly recommends ripping off other songs as the basis for your own short-lived masterpiece.
The king, in an attempt to find this well, issues a proclamation, that whoever finds this place to drill will own all of the water that comes out of it for the rest of their lives.
Most of the desert dwellers recognize that searching for this well wont keep them fed in the meantime, so an enterprising young duke offers a different deal. He says that he will pay people to search for the well, in exchange for the rights to the water if they find it.
Many desert dwellers take him up on this deal, its a good job, and it pays well enough to subsidize the searching.
When the well is finally found, the king grudgingly hands the duke the rights to the water, and with the wealth that the exorbitant prices he charges for water brings him, the duke eventually owns the whole desert and deposes the king.
That's it, thats the whole story. If you thought it was stupid, and that the king should have done things differently, we are in agreement.
> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
It doesn't say a transferable right. and "securing" and "exclusive" seem to argue against transferability. Beats me why the courts and congress decided otherwise.
Dead Comment
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, I find very sad the fact that pop songs have become nothing more than 4 chords just repeating over and over, with a thin veneer of inconsequential melody over them, serving a never ending stream of banal lyrics. Is this really the best of what award-winning musicians like Sheeran et al can do? I mean, they don't even bother changing the harmony for the chorus, and where has the bridge gone?
If modern pop doesn't seem to focus on melody or harmony, it's interesting what it focuses on instead. It doesn't seem to be rhythm or form either. It might be the timbres of sounds (interesting singing voice, unique singing manerisms, or difference between clean or dirty bass, etc.), trying to create a unique listening experience on common speakers. There's a reason why physical instruments are used ever less in pop while use of human voice is ever more in the focus.
It might also not be the music at all but instead the lifestyle and drama surrounding the artists. In that case, all I have to say is that there's more than pop and there has never been more amazing music in all styles you can imagine being produced. It also has never been easier to find and access. If you're not listening to it yet, you probably don't care that much about harmony, melody and whatnot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
The reason for this is partly the liberation of production. Anyone with a laptop can produce a track that rockets in popularity. There's plenty of really interesting pop too like The Weeknd.
There has also been a shift in the purpose of music for young people. Putting aside the use of music in things like TikTok, young people have zeroed in on simplicity to communicate an emotion. Music is more ambient, designed to provide something that resonates emotionally but isn't intrusive. Almost a self-medication with music.
This is, I think, because music became more portable. If you can have music on for 8 of 12 hours in the day, are you going to be sat doing critical listening to classical or 1970s prog? No, you're going to put on a background vibe that makes you feel good.
It is easy to be cynical about the commercialisation of music, but there's no black or white, the reality is more nuanced and there's innovation going on not only with the sounds and production ... but also what music means.
Ignore young people at your peril, or you'll be an old cummudgeon who only listens to Pink Floyd or whatever and misses out on so much.
And I don't really see what is there to be bored with - it's just music. You put a POP playlist on Spotify or whatever and it's enjoyable music that you can have on for 8 hours while you work. If you want stuff that deviates from it, there's plenty to choose from - but I don't understand why anyone is surprised that this isn't what most people listen to.
On a sidenote, we see it on the web, you can argue that most marketing websites look the same, it follows a formula that sells.
Who cares if it's "pop"? Listen to what you like.
I've checked her out out of curiosity. Sounds like a French copycat of Llana Del Ray.
Deleted Comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU