8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

  • 8sided About
  • memora8ilia

Inspiration Or Appropriation?

September 7, 2015 · Leave a Comment

NPR:

Where do you draw the line between inspiration and appropriation when it comes to musical compositions? That question is at the heart of several high-profile court cases, including the recent “Blurred Lines” trial and a current copyright-infringement lawsuit involving “Stairway to Heaven.” But it isn’t always easy to prove a song is yours – particularly when you’re up against one of the biggest rock and roll bands of all time.



But proving a song is yours isn’t always easy, says leading music attorney Ken Anderson. “The first step is establishing ownership,” Anderson says. “That means that the material is original to you, meaning you’re the one who created the material.” [He] says you also have to show that the accused had access to your material.



“We listen to the music if it’s recorded, or we study it if it’s only in written form,” says [musicologist Judith Finell, who has testified in many high-profile cases]. “And usually, we transcribe any section of that music if it sounds similar to the other music we’re comparing it to. Then we start to determine if they have similar pitches in common, similar rhythms. What is it that makes them sound related?”


This is a fun radio piece from NPR, which does focus mostly on Led Zeppelin’s infamous ‘appropriations.’ I wouldn’t put the “Blurred Lines” case in the same category as “Stairway To Heaven”, though … I see some merit in the latter, but, personally, not much in the former. (As I tweeted to a friend the week that the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit went for the plaintiff, “I wonder what the Bob Marley estate is thinking right now.”)

I’ve recently been doing some consulting work for a well-known songwriter, and a recent top 40 hit by an unrelated artist contains a melody line that is suspiciously similar to one of hers. The artist in question (or, more likely, his label) was proactive in that he gave my client shared songwriting credit, but without contacting her. We found out through online press that the song received. No one here is upset – the similar part is brief, and my client is happy for the extra royalty that should come in – but this practice of preventively crediting songwriters that may or may not have been intentionally appropriated is new to me. It’s probably a lot more common than I know, mainly due to the issues raised in the NPR piece.

------------------

Related posts:

  1. Are We Running Out of Notes?
  2. “Blurred Lines” Precedent Won’t Bring Clarity
  3. The “Blurred Lines” Verdict And Dance Music

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Copyright, Legal Matters, Songwriting

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8sided.blog

 
 
 
 
 
 
8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a slightly jaded but surprisingly optimistic fellow who's haunted the music industry for longer than he cares to admit. A former Q-Burns Abstract Message.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."
 
  Learn More →

Mastodon

Mastodon logo

Exploring

Roll The Dice

For a random blog post

Click here

or for something cool to listen to
(refresh this page for another selection)

Linking

Blogroll

A Closer Listen
Austin Kleon
Atlas Minor
blissblog
Craig Mod
Disquiet
feuilleton
Headpone Commute
Hissy Tapes
Jay Springett
Kottke
Metafilter
One Foot Tsunami
1000 Cuts
Parenthetical Recluse
Poke In The Ear
Robin Sloan
Seth Godin
The Creative Independent
The Red Hand Files
Things Magazine
Warren Ellis LTD

 

TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

Newsroll

Dada Drummer
Dense Discovery
Dirt
Erratic Aesthetic
First Floor
Garbage Day
Kneeling Bus
Lorem Ipsum
Midrange
MusicREDEF
Orbital Operations
Sasha Frere-Jones
The Browser
The Honest Broker
The Maven Game
Today In Tabs
Tone Glow
Why Is This Interesting?

 

TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

ACT

Climate Action Resources
+
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers
+
Roe v. Wade: What You Can Do

Copyright © 2023 · 8D Industries, LLC · Log in