08/10/2019

Music and Copyright

Office Hours (D. Elphick):

Tuesday 12-1
Thursday 11-12
Room WT100

Polemic Statement: ‘Copyright laws hinder musical creativity’

- What is copyright and do we need it?

- How has technology affected music ownership?
- What happens when musicians are accused of ‘plagiarising’ others?

Ownership

- Historically, music has been difficult to ‘own’

- Music is hard to conceive of as an object
- Copyright law started as a way of acknowledging ownership of ideas, concepts,
designs…
- Copyright is explicitly linked to money (royalties)
- Copyright has no purpose if the ‘owner’ would never be making money anyway
- Controls social use and creation of music, as to own music means money
- Copyright essential to capitalism to commodify music (quantifies its value)

History of ownership

- In the earliest days of music scores, when relatively few copies of a piece were
made, the ‘owner’ was literally the person who owned the score
- Higher demand = increased piracy
- The first signal of more abstract music ownership was large-scale music publishing,
beginning c. 15th century
- This peaked into the 19th century (Pianos cheapest late 19th), the height of amateur
music-making in the home
- The era of recordings changed this drastically – a fixed version of music could be
owned by millions of people at once. The technology also became increasingly easy
to copy and share

The Law

- 1988 – main copyright law introduced

- Under the law, copyright begins as soon as a piece is documented (via recording or
score)
- The rights-holder has sole authority to; copy the music, give, lend, sell or rent copies
to the general public, perform, show or play the music in public
 08/10/2019

Before the Era of Copyright

- Earliest version of ‘copyright’ was in the 16th century, when you had to be licensed to
own a printing press. As such, strict control could be exerted.
- A 1709 law by Queen Anne protected all newly published works for 14 years.
- Other attempts include ‘curses’ printed in forewords, warning against plagiarism
- Composers were more likely to pursue copy-cat publications for inaccuracies in
copying, rather than chasing up lost royalties (i.e. Beethoven and English publishers)

Case Studies

- The Winstons – ‘Amen Break’

- Jungle, House, Hip-hop facilitated sampling
- N.W.A. – ‘Straight outta Compton’ (1988)
- The Prodigy – ‘Firestarter’ (1994)

- ‘Muzika na robrakh’ – Music on bone

- A method of pirated distribution of ‘banned’ music in the USSR
- Examples include Chuck Berry, The Beatles, Ella Fitzgerald…

- Led Zeppelin
- One of the most successful British bands to ‘appropriate’ American Black music and
repackage it to White audiences
- They were also one of the first groups to be sued for taking lyrics and riffs (‘Whole
Lotta Love’, 1969)
- Muddy Waters - ‘You Need Love’, 1963
- ‘Stairway to Heaven’, 1971 and ‘Taurus’, 1968
- ‘Got to give it up’, 1997 and ‘Blurred Lines’, 2015 (Claimed the ‘groove’ had been
copied, won $5.3 million + 50% of future royalties)

Should music be free?

- Accessibility (expanding audiences)

- Passion vs money (musicians should work ‘for the love’ of music)
- Most music royalties go to major corporations who don’t produce anything anyway –
why do they need the money?
- Intellectual property rights increase scarcity