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 …

** Update: 3/20/23, this case was settled a few days ago. We don’t know the terms and can’t read too much into it. The Weeknd has excellent counsel, as you would expect, so although I think everything I outlined in this analysis a couple of years ago makes perfect sense, we don’t get to know …

Olivia Rodrigo’s debut record was about as big a deal in my house as any release in a long time. Drivers License had worn out its welcome, and Good 4 You, which was 10x better in every way, was all I heard for a week. Then I thought about the Paramore song and imagined, “I’ll …

TMZ reports there’s a lawsuit out there today because a couple of songwriters heard Jake Owens’s “Made For You” and its “Do, Mi, Re… Do” melody along with the lyric, “I was made for you.” They rightly thought it was very similar to the cadence in their own “Made For You” song. And THEN they …