Musicology

Not in any way that matters, it isn’t. And by the way, this has got to be some sort of record. Just a few days after Dua Lipa was sued because the chorus from her monster hit “Levitating” sounds quite a bit like an Artikal Sound System track, “Live Your Life,” she finds herself sued …

When a song as big as Levitating gets sued for infringement, it’s news, and everyone has an opinion. I have one too. But rather than just tell you my opinion, how about I take you through a thought process and let you formulate your own? With that… A reggae band called Artikal Sound System has …

This is a repost from a few years ago, but the case was just refiled, March 3, 2022, so I’m putting it back among the current posts. There could be some new information. We’ll try to stay on top of it, but this is where we left it in 2019. It was an interesting situation. …

Forensic Musicologist Brian McBrearty’s Deep Dive on “Thinking Out Loud” and “Let’s Get It On.” We’ll do the short version first, then go into the more esoteric and pedantic aspects of the most high-profile and interesting case out there. “Let’s Get It On” versus “Thinking Out Loud” follows a series of other high-profile cases said …

Apple and other streaming services were accused of “willful” piracy or of something akin to looking the other way while piracy took place on their platforms. And that’s dumb. But we might consider the question, “should they be made example of anyway? And to whose benefit?” The case concerns some of the greatest songs ever …

And such has been known to backfire. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but on one famous occasion, it certainly might’ve been. This is not a musicological issue really, it’s more of a legal one, and I’m not a lawyer, but it’s Jimi Hendrix, and so it’s too interesting for me to ignore. The …

How do you find a musicologist? First, which sort of musicologist are you looking for? There are two. (basically.) A musicologist who studies music as it relates to the culture and society of the people who have made the music over the centuries? This would be an ethnomusicologist. A musicologist who applies music analysis and …

Of course Campaigns that put music to picture do carry intellectual property risk, and when infringement cases involving Taylor Swift, Led Zeppelin, or Ed Sheeran make the news, it certainly raises awareness and concern around copyright, plagiarism, and infringement. So it’s no surprise that advertisers, creative agencies, music supervisors, and composers want preemptive and preventative …

Bad Bunny is being sued by BM Records, which controls the rights to a bunch of mixtapes from the 1990’s by DJ Playero. BM Records and DJ Playero get a lot of credit for the development of reggaeton. (Thanks a lot for that, by the way.) And they claim Bad Bunny’s hit Safaera contains material …

The biggest record in the world, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” has been under constant fire since it came out at the beginning of summer. Early on, she gave Taylor Swift a songwriting credit for “deja vu,” Sour’s third track? After that it was pretty much open season. Next, the promotional art was too much like a …