Drawing on interdisciplinary research methods from musicological and legal scholarship, this book maps the historical terrain of forensic musicology. It examines the contributions of musical expert witnesses, their analytical techniques, and the issues they encounter assisting courts in clarifying the blurred lines of music copyright.

This ground-breaking book examines the multifaceted dynamics between copyright law and music borrowing within a rich diversity of music genres from across the world. It evaluates how copyright laws under different generic conventions may influence, or are influenced by, time-honoured creative borrowing practices. Leading experts from around the world scrutinise a carefully selected range of musical genres, including pop, hip-hop, jazz, blues, electronic and dance music, as well as a diversity of region-specific genres, such as Jamaican music, River Plate Tango, Irish folk music, Hungarian folk music, Flamenco, Indian traditional music, Australian indigenous music, Maori music and many others. This genre-conscious analysis builds on a theoretical section in which musicologists and lawyers offer their insights into fundamental issues concerning music genre categorisation, the typology of music borrowing and copyright law's ontological struggle with musical borrowing in theory and practice. The chapters are threaded together by a central theme, ie, that the cumulative nature of music creativity is the result of collective bargaining processes among many 'musicking' parties that have socially constructed creative music authorship under a rich mix of generic conventions.

Popular music and its listeners are strongly associated with newness and youth. Young people can stay up late dancing to the latest hits and use cutting-edge technology for listening to and sharing fresh music. Many young people incorporate their devotion to new artists and styles into their own developing personalities. However, if popular music is a genre meant for the youthful, what are listeners to make of the widespread sampling of music from decades-old R&B tracks, sold-out anniversary tours by aging musicians, retrospective box sets of vintage recordings, museum exhibits, and performances by current pop stars invoking music and images of the past? In Same Old Song: The Enduring Past in Popular Music, John Paul Meyers argues that these phenomena are part of what he calls “historical consciousness in popular music.” These deep relationships with the past are an important but underexamined aspect of how musicians and listeners engage with this key cultural form. In chapters ranging across the landscape of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, Meyers finds indications of historical consciousness at work in multiple genres. Rock music canonizes its history in tribute performances and museums. Jazz and pop musicians cover tunes from the “Great American Songbook.” Hip-hop and contemporary R&B singers invoke Black popular music from the 1960s and 1970s. Examining the work of influential artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Kanye West, Prince, D’Angelo, and Janelle Monáe, Meyers argues that contemporary artists’ homage to the past is key for understanding how music-lovers make meaning of popular music in the present.

Drawing on research methods from musicological and legal scholarship, the present dissertation examines extant court records and judicial opinions of prominent cases chronologically from their origins in the mid-nineteenth century through to recently-decided lawsuits. In situating the role of the musical expert in the context of the legal similarity inquiry and considering their contributions to it, the study reveals the essential role that experts have historically played. It then recasts contemporary problems with case outcomes as a result of the similarity inquiry itself and looks to expert testimony as one potential area of reform. Such study of musical expertise sheds light on the courtroom as a forum for musical experts, particularly contemporary musicologists, and elucidates their understudied, yet often significant, relationship to the American judicial system. It is through a greater understanding of this role that musicologists should be better equipped to assist courts in resolving the blurred lines that separate, and bind together, so many works of music.

The high-profile copyright infringement trial featuring Robin Thicke's 2013 international hit single "Blurred Lines" raised significant issues regarding the borderline between musical influence and straightforward copying of a commercially successful composition. Thicke and his collaborators--co-writer and producer Pharrell Williams and rapper T.I.--allegedly infringed on Marvin Gaye's 1977 chart-topping single "Got to Give It Up (Pt.1)." Immediately after the release of "Blurred Lines" in March 2013, numerous print and online observers highlighted significant similarities with Marvin Gaye's song that were also recognized by the legendary singer's family. Due to the unusual circumstance of the alleged infringers initiating pre-emptive legal action later that year by suing the party whose property was affected, Thicke and his associates are effectively the plaintiffs in this case while the Gaye family members are the defendants. Critics of the Gaye family's contention argued that any verdict against Thicke and his associates (also referred to as the Thicke Parties) would unduly limit musical creativity by restricting the scope of composition to exclude similarities to pre-existing copyrighted works. Conversely, the Gaye family contended that any failure by the court to recognize the sanctity of their intellectual property would open the floodgates to irresponsible and unauthorized misuse of copyrighted works. Victory in the case by Marvin Gaye's estate has established a new threshold of copyright infringement liability in popular music, demonstrated in cases emerging since the "Blurred Lines" verdict. How does this legal decision ultimately affect the compositional freedom of active songwriters and producers, and how does it protect the intellectual property of song authors whose work has already reached wide audiences?

Is music property? Under what circumstances can music be stolen? Such questions lie at the heart of Joanna Demers’s timely look at how overzealous intellectual property (IP) litigation both stifles and stimulates musical creativity. A musicologist, industry consultant, and musician, Demers dissects works that have brought IP issues into the mainstream culture, such as DJ Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” and Mike Batt’s homage-gone-wrong to John Cage’s silent composition “4’33.” Demers also discusses such artists as Ice Cube, DJ Spooky, and John Oswald, whose creativity is sparked by their defiant circumvention of licensing and copyright issues. Demers is concerned about the fate of transformative appropriation—the creative process by which artists and composers borrow from, and respond to, other musical works. In the United States, only two elements of music are eligible for copyright protection: the master recording and the composition (lyrics and melody) itself. Harmony, rhythm, timbre, and other qualities that make a piece distinctive are virtually unregulated. This two-tiered system had long facilitated transformative appropriation while prohibiting blatant forms of theft. The advent of digital file sharing and the specter of global piracy changed everything, says Demers. Now, record labels and publishers are broadening the scope of IP “infringement” to include allusive borrowing in all forms: sampling, celebrity impersonation—even Girl Scout campfire sing-alongs. Paying exorbitant licensing fees or risking even harsher penalties for unauthorized borrowing have become the only options for some musicians. Others, however, creatively sidestep not only the law but also the very infrastructure of the music industry. Moving easily between techno and classical, between corporate boardrooms and basement recording studios, Demers gives us new ways to look at the tension between IP law, musical meaning and appropriation, and artistic freedom.

"First Published in 2004, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company."