music plagiarism essay

Musical plagiarism: why it can be admirable to steal

Research Fellow, Music and Politics, University of Cambridge

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In Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical film The Squid and the Whale , the young protagonist Walt performs a song at a school talent show that he claims to have written himself. He wins first prize, his girlfriend loves it, and at dinner his overbearing dad says that it reminds him of his second novel.

But of course Walt gets found out. He didn’t write it, Roger Waters did. It’s the song Hey You from Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall. Confronted by the school therapist, Walt concedes: “I felt I could have written it … so the fact that it was already written was kind of a technicality.”

It’s something most of us have felt before. Plagiarism as an assertion of identity, a misguided sense that we own the things we love. The composer Igor Stravinsky once referred to this affliction as “a rare form of kleptomania” – plundering of the musical past as raw material for the present.

Stravinsky was doing something quite different to Walt. He refashioned his stolen sources into something new: Russian folk melodies were incorporated into The Rite of Spring and material from the classical era gave rise to Pulcinella . And yet Stravinsky tells us that Pulcinella was not only the first of his “many love affairs” with the past, but also “a look in the mirror”. Just like Walt, then, Stravinsky’s plagiarism was a form of deferred and narcissistic self-recognition.

We can look at such acts in one of two ways: either as an unethical infringement of somebody else’s intellectual property or as the symptom of an attitude that underpins creative endeavour across the arts. In one of his Red Hand Files bulletins , the singer-songwriter Nick Cave urges us to embrace the second of these:

The great beauty of contemporary music, and what gives it its edge and vitality, is its devil-may-care attitude toward appropriation – everybody is grabbing stuff from everybody else, all the time . It’s a feeding frenzy of borrowed ideas that goes toward the advancement of rock music – the great artistic experiment of our era.

“Plagiarism”, he writes, “is an ugly word for what, in rock and roll, is a natural and necessary – even admirable – tendency, and that is to steal”. We could tell the history of rock as a twisted genealogy of theft, beginning with Elvis’s debut single – a cover of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s That’s All Right (Mama) in 1954.

Cave likewise treads in Elvis’s footsteps with his 1985 album The Firstborn Is Dead . It features tracks such as Tupelo , a paraphrase of John Lee Hooker’s spine-chilling Tupelo Blues; and Blind Lemon Jefferson , a homage to a blues singer of the same name. These singers had, in turn, written their songs by drawing on a shared tradition of stock or “floating” verses native to the deep south.

The further back you look, the more such hybridity and assimilation comes to the fore. The blues itself, as Africanists such as Gerhard Kubik have noted , emerges from a complex and centuries-old process of creative interplay between the Arab-Islamic world of north Africa and musical cultures of the Sudanic belt, displaced through Altantic slavery.

Of course, Walt’s performance of Hey You would not fit within Cave’s vision of stealing as “the engine of progress”. For Cave, acts of theft are absolved or justified only if the stolen thing is advanced in some way and made yet more covetable. Elvis, in this reading, is effectively pardoned for his appropriation of That’s All Right to the extent that his white-skinned version of the blues (white-washed as rock and roll) was an act of “mutating and transforming” the genre that sparked a new mass cultural form still very much alive today.

Another reading, however, is possible: that this new mode of expression was yet another instance of a dominant culture taking “ everything but the burden ” from African Americans – a longstanding relationship characterised, as the historian of blackface minstrelsy Eric Lott memorably put it, by “ love and theft ”.

But what Cave is really referring to is a trope central to the literary critic Harold Bloom’s theory of the “anxiety of influence”. No doubt we’ve all come across the following quote, variously attributed to Picasso, Stravinsky, William Faulkner, and Steve Jobs: “Good artists copy, great artists steal”. It seems to have emerged during the late 19th century, but was most famously expressed by TS Eliot in 1920 as “ immature poets imitate; mature poets steal ”.

Borrowing, Eliot notes, is perfectly normal – what distinguishes bad thieves from good ones is that the former “deface what they take”, whereas the latter “make it into something better, or at least something different”. In the right hands, Eliot is saying, plagiarism can lead to the creation of “unique” works rather than mere hackneyed replication. This modernist dictum chimes with Cave’s claim that artistic crooks must “further the idea, or be damned”.

So is it ever possible to be original? The lazy answer is no. A better answer is that originality is always a scandalous collaboration with the past.

• Elvis Presley
• Blues music
• Plagiarism in art

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Music Plagiarism – How It Is Detected & Consequences

There is a lot to be talked about when it comes to music copyright laws . It’s important to learn all the rules so you don’t mistakenly engage with music plagiarism. You have to understand how to detect it and the consequences of going forward without proper clearance. Good thing we are here to help you navigate this complex subject. Keep on reading to get the full scoop on everything about music plagiarism.  

What is music plagiarism?

Legal aspects.

What constitutes music plagiarism?

Consequences to music plagiarism, work within the law.

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The Complex History of Plagiarism in Music

07.02.18 Words by: Tom Watson

As far as dysfunctional relationships are concerned, art and commerce is a broken marriage. And yet one begrudgingly depends on the other for protection of assets and a steady income. Artists uphold the right to defend the worth of their original ideas. Similarly, barons of big business uphold the right to defend their clients in cases where original thought has been appropriated or, at worst, pirated. But how do we define originality in a time where the culture of perpetual reproduction and emulation is universally accepted as the norm?

When pressed on matters of an artist’s creative estate, peace-mongering pacifist, Wayne Coyne put it best. “There is obviously a fine line between being inspired and stealing,” he conceded when asked about the audial similarities between The Flaming Lips’ single Fight Test from the band’s 2003 breakthrough record Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and Cat Stevens’ song Father and Son , which was released over three decades prior. Sonically, the parallels are not only explicit but reportedly non-coincidental. The estate of Cat Stevens put forward the case that segments of Fight Test overtly plagiarised the original intent of Father and Son while the Flaming Lips claimed ignorance over not seeking clearance from the singer-songwriter’s record label before releasing the track. 75% of Fight Test ’s royalties are now beelined directly to Stevens and Coyne admittedly suffers from mild embarrassment over the accusation.

Cases such as this make up the rippled muscles of the music industry’s business arm. Coyne held no malicious intent when unconsciously referencing Cat Stevens in a song. But the similarity was arguably too unsubtle to ignore. This, as we’re currently enduring with Radiohead and Lana Del Rey in the latest of an attention-sapping sprawl of plagiarist accusations, is where the waters between law and artistry are muddied. Where does the fine line that Coyne speaks of sit? Should an artist or musician still be formally penalised if semblance between their art is an unconscious coincidence? And if so, how can an artist vindicate themselves from such accusations?

As history dictates, no matter how trivial the matter, it’s actually easier to incriminate artists over their alleged theft of creative property than it is to absolve or exonerate them from legal action. In most publicly recognised scenarios, the lawsuits are not only justified, but hold the potential to generate tectonic paradigm shifts in the ownership of music. Essentially, if a re-appropriated sample or sound is not cleared by the bodies that own the rights to the original score, levies will be persistently applied to those involved with the theft. Mammoth commercial lawsuits against some of pop’s most successful chart hits seem to have multiplied over the past decade on both a micro and macro scale. Back in 2015, Tom Petty was awarded songwriting royalties and co-writing credits for Sam Smith’s Stay With Me . While regarded as “nothing more than a musical accident,” by the amicable rockstar in an online statement, 12.5% of Stay With Me ’s royalties are now owned by Petty’s estate.

Habitually, as soon as names are made public in copyright infringement cases, suits are settled outside of the courtroom. But sometimes these honest musical mistakes can be financially immobilising. One of pop’s most innocuous songwriters, Ed Sheeran has faced legal action on multiple occasions due to assumed plagiarist activity. A $20million lawsuit for the song Photograph was settled outside of court following accusations the song copied a ‘note-for-note’ (39 to be precise) chordal progression of X-Factor winner, Matt Cardle’s song, Amazing . Writing accreditation was also offered to TLC last year following the success of Sheeran’s record breaking single Shape of You , which mimicked the group’s melodious vocal hook. And now, only within the past weeks, Sheeran faces further accusations of plagiarism by Sydney songwriters Sean Carey and Beau Golden for The Rest of Our Life ; a song the British singer co-wrote for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. Again, the representatives of Carey and Golden have deemed Sheeran’s track to be almost a note-for-note rehash of country song When I Found You and claim that the “copy…is obvious to the ordinary observer.”

This notion of the ‘ordinary observer’ is a cryptic and uncertain definition for a majority verdict in which one piece of music has categorically copied another. Does the ‘ordinary observer’ take note of the similarity between emotive dynamics of songs? In some cases, such as the ongoing battle between Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke and the Marvin Gaye estate, plagiarism extends beyond that of the original sheet music. In the most high-profile music plagiarism lawsuit since George Harrison was accused of copying elements of his rock ballad My Sweet Lord from The Chiffons track He’s So Fine , this embittered entanglement between Williams and Gaye’s heirs has presented musicologists and lawyers alike to establish whether a sound and groove of a track holds enough legal gravitas to prove copyright infringement. “We owe it to the creative world to make sure this verdict does not stand,” said attorney Howard King when appealing against the $7.4million jury verdict in support of the Gaye estate.

But despite those willing to fight against the ambiguity of unconscious creative ownership, many cases, especially in the realm of hip-hop, are due to sheer negligence to clear samples with labels. From Biz Markie being sued in 1991 for not receiving permission to use a sample from Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again , to Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Method Man and RZA being hit with a lawsuit in 2009 for New Wu’s illegal use of The Magitone’s 1971 song I’ve Changed , sampling without the creator’s consent is ubiquitous throughout the genre.

The general rule of thumb is for musicians to give credit where credit is due or suffer the repercussions in or out of court. Yet this was not the case for the most heavily sampled measure of music to enter a producer’s creative consciousness. The four-bar drum solo commonly known as the Amen Break garnered attention from DJs and turntablists from the 1980s onwards and became the staple sound of hip-hop breakbeat, hardcore, drum’n’bass and jungle. Originally performed by Gregory Sylvester G. C. Coleman in the 1960s funk song Amen, Brother , the drummer’s percussive break unknowingly conceived entire subcultures having been sampled over 2200 times. Neither Coleman, nor the song’s copyright owner Richard L. Spencer received any royalties for the sample’s use, inspiring DJs Martyn Webster and Steve Theobald to set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the owner as a humbled thank you. The Amen Break has been a gift to the world that realigned the trajectory of contemporary music for free. And while many of the sample’s abusers have profited from its addition in their compositions, there exists an immorality in the knowing that its creators failed to reap the benefits.

For the most part, songwriters today are incessantly cautious and protective over their ideas. This is what makes the outcome of Radiohead vs. Lana Del Rey equally as tenuous as it is tense. Whether or not the chord progression to Del Rey’s album closer, Get Free , replicates, copies, steals or simply sounds similar to that of Creep (and by default, Albert Hammond Sr and Mike Hazelwood’s song for The Hollies, The Air That I Breathe ), the extremities of copyright infringement in the music industry seem to not only resonate louder upon each passing year but become all the more dubious. If the Amen Break acts as a gross oversight by both the original writers and its plagiarists, then the dilute similarities between a familiar chord progression should hold no grounds for such severe legal action.

That fine line between flattering inspiration and career flattening infringement that Coyne spoke of has become all the more blurred.

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A hit, a writ: why music is the food of plagiarism lawsuits

With Katy Perry and Led Zeppelin’s recent judgments reversing previous rulings, musicians don’t know which way to tread

H ave you written a song? A song so memorable that everyone who hears it starts humming it? A song so good it feels as though it has been around forever and you simply plucked it from the ether? Then a word of advice: get an expert to listen to it. Because somewhere, someone is going to be sure your song was copied from theirs.

An old music industry adage holds that “where there’s a hit, there’s a writ”. It was true in 1963, when the Beach Boys released Surfin’ USA, and Chuck Berry duly noted that the song was simply his own 1958 hit Sweet Little Sixteen with new lyrics (Berry’s publisher, Arc Music, was granted the publishing rights, and from 1966 Berry was listed alongside Brian Wilson as a writer of the song). And it’s especially true now after several recent cases.

March alone saw two important judgments about music theft in appeals courts in California. First the ninth circuit court of appeals ruled that Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven did not crib from Taurus by Spirit. Then a federal court overturned last year’s jury verdict that Katy Perry’s Dark Horse had stolen from the song Joyful Noise by the Christian rapper Flame.

What’s important, though, is not whether anyone was plagiarised, but whether a copyright was infringed. Plagiarism and copyright infringement “are related but they are distinctly different”, says Peter Oxendale, who has been a professional forensic musicologist – someone who offers expert analysis of compositions for legal purposes – for more than 40 years.

“Copyright, for example, does not protect ‘ideas’ but rather the fixed ‘detailed expression’ of those ideas. Copyright infringement is a legal matter known as a tort,” he says. “Plagiarism, on the other hand, is an ethical matter and occurs when someone uses the ideas or works of someone else in their own work without giving the appropriate credit to the original source.” The cases that come to court are not about plagiarism; they’re about infringement of copyright.

The Zeppelin and Perry cases have been hailed as important because they appear to offer songwriters the latitude they seemed to have been denied by a crucial earlier trial. In December 2018 the long-running and highly controversial case involving the song Blurred Lines came to a close, when Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, two of the song’s writers, were ordered to pay just short of $5m to the estate of Marvin Gaye, for Blurred Lines’ similarity to Gaye’s 1977 song Got To Give It Up.

“Blurred Lines certainly stirred up the music community,” says Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist based at Berklee College of Music, in Boston. “The reason it had so many musicians concerned is that the two songs are demonstrably different in their melodies, lyrics, and underlying chords. It hasn’t set a legal precedent exactly, because every plagiarism case is judged on its individual merits, and every comparison is different, but it certainly has shifted the culture among songwriters, and made many worried about unintentional similarity leading to unfair accusations of copyright infringement.”

What the Blurred Lines case did was to allow something previously unheard of: the notion that the “feel” of a record could be copyrighted. Given that the musician who didn’t want to replicate the feel of a beloved record, if not its chords and melody, has yet to be born, the verdict sent shudders through the industry.

“Much of the feel of a song is created by instrumentation, production techniques and other elements that many people consider to not be part of the ‘song’ itself,” says Peter Mason, a music law expert at the solicitors Wiggin LLP. “The difference is starkly demonstrated by comparing Blurred Lines to the Stairway to Heaven case, in which the jury was limited to considering only the notes of the composition, as registered at the US copyright office.

“Taking away the similarities in ‘sound’, ‘feel’ or ‘playing style’ reduced the similarity between the compositions. Importantly, much of what remained was commonplace and therefore not protected by copyright.”

Nevertheless, says Oxendale, “We are aware of a number of well-known clients who have been told to never cite the source of their inspiration in public or in print. This, in my view, has resulted in the stifling of creativity to the extent that inspiration is now being confused with appropriation.

“Conversely, we are also seeing a growing number of instructions from clients who wish to pursue claims for infringement of copyright based on the use of nothing more than similar musical or lyrical ‘ideas’. I believe the Blurred Lines verdict has had a significant impact on the music industry as a whole and this is reflected in the number of cases coming into our office.”

For all the high-profile court cases, though, many music copyright infringement claims never see the light of day. One major star – who must remain nameless – employed a musicologist for the specific purpose of listening to new releases in order to note any resemblance to their own works. The writer of any offending song received a polite note expressing the desire to avoid any embarrassment, and suggesting the whole matter might be resolved by a payment, without the need to shame the writer by going public or forcing a change to the songwriting credits.

Since the Blurred Lines case, notes Mason, other songwriters have pre-empted litigation by adding writers who might conceivably have had a claim to writing credits – famously, Mark Ronson ’s worldwide hit Uptown Funk ended up with 11 writers. “The average number of writers on hit songs has increased dramatically over the last five years or so,” Mason says, “and part of this is due to composers agreeing to add the authors of past songs that are somewhat similar.”

Why, though, do all the best-known copyright infringement cases come from the worlds of pop and rock? After all, one rarely hears of classical composers fighting it out in court, or jazz players arguing furiously about whether one has ripped off the other’s saxophone solo.

“I think there are two reasons,” Bennett says. “First, popular song is a constrained art form, with a palette of statistically predictable phrase lengths, song forms, scale and chord choices, lyric tropes and song durations. These norms are largely defined by market forces, through massed listener preferences over time affecting the kind of creative decisions that songwriters are likely to make.

“It’s a type of cultural Darwinism, in a sense, but that’s not to diminish the songwriter’s art – writing a world-class hit is incredibly difficult, and needs everyone in the artist’s production team to excel.

“Second, pop is where the money is. A plagiarism lawsuit is a financial matter – party A is pursuing party B for compensation, so there’s little point in going after someone whose work has not generated significant income.”

You might think, of course, that musicians and songwriters are pinching from each other all the time – we’ve all listened to songs and been reminded of something else. There are some artists, in fact, who seem to have made careers out of sounding like someone else: neither ELO nor Oasis would deny their respective debts to the Beatles.

Sometimes, though, musicians don’t even realise they are borrowing. On a recent edition of the Reply All podcast, Prince’s longtime recording engineer Susan Rogers remembered him sitting at the piano and picking out a melody. He liked it, he noted. But had it already been written?

Subconscious recollection is called cyrptomnesia, and it has been responsible for some notable copyright infringements: in the 1976 case where George Harrison was sued for the similarity of My Sweet Lord to the Chiffons’ He’s So Fine, the judge described the similarity as an example of unconscious copying. Sam Smith’s Stay With Me ended up getting Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne added to its writing credits, because of its similarity to their song Won’t Back Down, and Petty observed, without rancour: “All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by.”

As Bennett puts it: “Most melodic similarity is coincidental, and most accusations of melodic plagiarism are unfounded. In the rare cases when the similarity is so striking that it appears to be evidence of plagiarism, then yes – it’s usually unintentional. Songwriters have almost zero incentive to copy melodies verbatim, and enormous economic disincentives to do so.”

The miracle, perhaps, is not that there are so many accusations of musical copyright infringement, but so few. Consider that thereare just 12 semitones in an octave. Or think about how many songs that derive from the blues use the 1-4-5 chord progression (Twist and Shout; Blitzkrieg Bop; Louie Louie and Wild Thing – and thousands more). What makes a song special is not its chords, or its top-line melody, or its lyrics, or its feel. It is how it combines all those elements.

“Listeners don’t hear songs as simple linear sequences of pitches – they hear everything all at once, and it’s that combination of elements, in a recording or at a live show, that produces the powerful emotional response that we find so intoxicating,” Joe Bennett says. “If the cultural value of a song subsisted only in its melody, the world wouldn’t need performers, lyricists, producers, or artists.”

And, as everyone sitting in their living room gazing at the empty world outside knows, the word really does need all those people, for the sake of its sanity.

• Intellectual property
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• Pop and rock
• Led Zeppelin
• Robin Thicke
• Pharrell Williams

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Copyright Laws for Music: What Constitutes Music Plagiarism?

• June 29, 2023

Almost all musicians have been accused of plagiarism sometime in their career. Everyone from the Beatles to Coldplay has had to face legal battles or out-of-court settlements for copyright infringement accusations. We’ll outline some copyright laws for music to help you learn more about music plagiarism.

Almost all musicians have been accused of plagiarism sometime in their career. Everyone from the Beatles to Coldplay has had to face legal battles or out-of-court settlements for  copyright infringement  accusations.

Very recently, musician  Lana Del Rey has been sued by Radiohead  for plagiarizing “Creep” in her song “Get Free.” Ironically, Radiohead was accused by the Hollies for copying “Creep” from their hit composition “The Air That I Breathe,” in 1992. Radiohead had to give co-writing credit to the Hollies and now they are planning to fight it out with Lana Del Rey for protecting their pecuniary and creative rights on the song.

So, in a creative field like music writing where composers often get “inspired” by contemporaries or veterans, what makes a song a rip-off and a case for music plagiarism?

What constitutes music plagiarism?

Under the  Copyright Law of 1976 , whenever a person writes a song, a copyright automatically exists on it. Though registration of the song with the copyright office is advisable, it’s not a must. Copyrighted elements of a song include chord progression, lyrics, melody, and rhythm- anything with a spark of creativity can be said to be “owned” by the creator and protected by copyrights.

One exception to this rule are songs published in the public domain, i.e. before 1923. These are not protected by copyright laws.

How to prove copyright infringement?

If a composer feels a song has been infringed upon, she (the plaintiff) will have to prove two things before a court of law- “access” and “substantial similarity.” Music plagiarism law is a “strict liability tort” that means that if the plaintiff is able to prove that the accused (defendant) had access to her composition and the two songs have substantial similarity, it amounts to copyright infringement.

The defendant may not have the intention to infringe but the presence of these two elements is sufficient to label her culpable.

To prove access, the plaintiff has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant had access to the allegedly infringed song before creating her own song. For this, the judge will examine the existence of a relationship between the two parties and the popularity of the original song.

To prove substantial similarity between the two songs, “the ordinary observer test” is carried out where a layperson can identify any common elements between the compositions. Since average jurors cannot read music, experts (musicologists) are called upon by both parties to give their opinion and plagiarism cases often end up being battle of the experts.

What are the defendant’s options?

Defense strategies include:

• Convincing the court that the plaintiff is not the real owner of the song. To have ownership rights to a composition, one has to have either written it herself or been given the ownership rights by the writer.
• The defendant’s lawyers can argue that the infringed elements are commonplace and used in most compositions of the genre, hence there is no ground for plagiarism.
• According to the U.S. Copyright Law, infringement cases must be filed within three years of suspected infringement. If this statute of limitation expires, courts may not entertain a lawsuit.
• If the infringed song is a parody of the original song, it may be exempt from infringement lawsuits since comment and criticism of songs falls in the “fair use” category.
• Another defense tactic is to argue that the infringed element is too unnoticeable and fleeting. Such elements would include certain words or phrases used in the song.
• A last resort can be to claim that the song is the defendant’s independent creation and not a copy of the original song.

What are the consequences of plagiarism?

The infringers might have to pay serious damages plus attorney’s fees, and also lose rights to the song and all future pecuniary gains by its sale or subscription. As juries are very subjective and the line between infringement and inspiration is murky, many composers who suspect plagiarism of their creations, prefer to settle out of courts.

An experienced  copyright at t orney  can prepare a strong lawsuit or settlement offer that enables you to get the best compensation for your claim.

At  Paul & Paul  we have been helping artists save protect their creations by bringing infringers to justice for over two decades. If you need help with your copyright infringement case or you think you have been falsely accused,  contact us  or give us a call at 866-975-7231 for a free consultation today.  

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Retrospective Analysis of Plagiaristic Practices within a Cinematic Industry in India – a Tip in the Ocean of Icebergs

• Open access
• Published: 24 January 2020
• Volume 18 , pages 143–153, ( 2020 )

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• Paneerselvam Umamaheswaran 1 ,
• Sharavan Ramachandran 2 &
• Shivadas D. Sivasubramaniam   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7014-5000 3  

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Music plagiarism is defined as using tune, or melody that would closely imitate with another author’s music without proper attributions. It may occur either by stealing a musical idea (a melody or motif) or sampling (a portion of one sound, or tune is copied into a different song). Unlike the traditional music, the Indian cinematic music is extremely popular amongst the public. Since the expectations of the public for songs that are enjoyable are high, many music directors are seeking elsewhere to “ borrow ” tunes. Whilst a vast majority of Indian cinemagoers may not have noticed these plagiarised tunes, some journalists and vigilant music lovers have noticed these activities. This study has taken the initiative to investigate the extent of plagiaristic activities within one Indian cinematic music industry. A list of plagiarised songs was produced by using YouTube® searches for “comparative videos” made by the vigilant music lovers about accused/detected music plagiarism. Some of these individuals were also interviewed to understand their views on this. During the investigation, it was possible to identify a vast number of plagiarised tunes, snippets, or even the full songs. In fact, some of these examples’ dates to 1954, during the era when no one would have noticed plagiarism. The paper would highlight the similarities of these music files. It will also show some examples of the excuses/denial given by the composers and would try to highlight the attitudes of general public towards these types of activities.

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Introduction

From the beginning of this century, public awareness on “academic integrity” and avoiding plagiarism has considerably increased. The concept is wilfully embraced by academics around the world and governments are in consultation with respective higher education organisations to curb this academic offence (Glendinning 2014 ). However, it is not clear whether similar focus has been made in the music industry. For many years, music industry is controlled by “customary laws”, which are not obligatory and therefore subject to violation (Stav 2014 ). In contrast, as a “creative art”, music is subject to Intellectual Property, and Copyright Laws. Music plagiarism is defined as using tune, or melody that would closely imitate with another author’s music without proper attribution (Keyt 1988 ; Stav 2014 ). Plagiarism is relevant to different musical styles in different ways. It may occur either by stealing a musical idea (a melody or motif) or sampling (a portion of one sound, or tune is copied into a different song). Melody (or motif) is a linear succession of musical tones which are composed of pitch (or memorable series of pitches) and rhythm (or even tone) (Music-Dictionary – www 1 n.d. ). Therefore, the listener would easily detect the “melody”, if it is plagiarised to produce another song. However, it is worth noting that melodies are often re-written in another language via collaborative partnerships. For example, in 2014, Indian music composer AR Rahman collaborated with American recording artist will.i.am and singer Cody Wise, to produce a single called “ It’s my birthday ” (www 2 n.d. ) which is based from a 1994 Tamil song “ Urvasi Urvasi ” (www 3 n.d. ) by AR Rahman, from the soundtrack of an Indian film. Although, it was alleged that will.i.am had plagiarised the song, it was later revealed (by both parties) as a collaborative effort.

One the other hand, sampling is simply using portions of one recording into another or clipping (removing) out portions, rearranging them to produce new music (Stav 2014 ). – Something similar to “patch-work” plagiarism. It would be often difficult to detect by common listeners. The latter is usually governed by agreements such as the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary (BCPL), or Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act (PPTI) (found within World intellectual property organisation (WIPO) Copyright treaty- www 4 n.d. ). These treaties provide creators the means to control how artists creations (including musicians) are used, by whom, and on what terms. According to these conventions any artists may obtain prior authorisation for sampling usually by paying an upfront fee and/or agreeing to share the royalties to the original artist (Keyes 2014 ; McDonagh and Luke 2012). A good example of such agreements is the Holly Valances “ Kiss Kiss ”, (www 5 n.d. - released in 2002) an English language rewrite of Tarkan’s (Turkish singer) “ Şımarık ” (www 6 n.d. - originally composed by Sezen Aksu in 1997). Likewise, there is exemption for reusing/copying similar rhythm (known as “chord progression”), the order in which the base, chords and beats are played in a song. In other words, the base beat and chords can be nearly identical, and this would not be an issue. This is especially true in Carnatic music as it is based on different “ Thalas ” (i.e. rhythmic beat or strike) (Nettl 2010 ; Behrens 2004 ). As can be seen above, like any other copyright regulations, there is room for collaborative, pre-arranged sampling in music industry.

However, the act of music plagiarism is committed, if a composer (or artist) copies the melody or carries out unauthorised sampling; especially when two or more songs are matching with melody. In fact, several world-famous names within English pop, such as George Harrison (The Beatles), and the Gallagher brothers (Oasis) have been accused of “borrowing” musical tone, and/or rhythms from others (Matt Melis and Michael Roffmanon, January 2018 – www 7 n.d. ). There were some, memorable lawsuits against many American pop stars (www 7 n.d. ). Unlike the Western countries, the music industry in the East, especially in India has different domains. Those based on traditional music rhythms that are believed to be originated in ancient times. These include Carnatic (Southern India), folk (culture-specific) and Hindustani (Northern India) music. On other hand, music that is inter-woven within cinematic industry. This second type is mostly a mix of traditional and Western music.

Film industry has been thriving in India better than the Hollywood industry (The Indywood report, September 2016 ). The industry has been well established in different cities based on the languages (such as Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada Malayalam etc.). Almost all the Indian films have at least 4 to 8 songs, may they be duet, or be the ones with philosophical message. Unlike the traditional music, the cinematic music is extremely popular amongst the people. The industry has become profitable and many new (so called) “music directors/composers” are being born almost every year. Since the expectations of the general public for songs that are enjoyable and/or would make everlasting impressions are high, many music directors are seeking elsewhere to “borrow” tunes. Whilst a vast majority of Indian cinemagoers may not have noticed these plagiarised tunes or “songs that were written inspired by another tune”, some journalists and vigilant music lovers have started noticing these activities and publicising these on main media including YouTube®. In fact, the accusations within the social media and YouTube® covers songs (and composers) of entire cinema industry (including Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Malayalam etc.) However, these types of small-scale publicising have not resulted in a mass propaganda against these rogue music directors. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the extent of plagiaristic activities within Indian cinematic music industry. Since this is an initial study, we focussed on songs within one language.

Methodology

This retrospective study was carried out using YouTube® searches for “comparative videos” made by the vigilante music lovers and published news articles about accused/detected music plagiarism. The YouTube® searches were conducted from February 2018 to January 2019. Some of the vigilantes, music lovers, and sources closed to some composers were also interviewed to understand their reflective conscious views on this. Personal opinions about music plagiarism (within South-Indian Tamil) of 15 vigilantes/music lovers and 3 individuals from the music industry itself are reported herein (as phenomenology inspired analysis). This, together with authors own research on the extent of this theft, forms the basis of this initial study. In addition, as an investigative journalist, the first author carried out research on the extent of this music theft (rip-offs and sampling) within cinematic industry of India.

Although this type of music plagiarism is widespread within Indian cinematic industry, due to time constraints, this initial paper has focussed on one specific industry (one language - Tamil). The study was conducted under UNESCO’s ‘Norms of Journalistic Conduct’ (Press Council of India - UNESCO 2010 ).

Results and Discussion

A collection of cases (songs) that have been plagiarised by different music composers within Tamil cinema are summarised in Tables  1 and 2 with YouTube® links to original songs for comparison. Table 1 contains a compendium of plagiarised (or heavily sampled) songs after 1990 (recent songs). Likewise, Table 2 contains plagiarised Tamil songs from before 1990. As mentioned in methodology, the data was collected via YouTube® searches. As all authors do not have music expertise, we concentrated on songs that are easily recognisable similarities (i.e. for blatantly obvious ripped off music) by the listeners. In other words, we are not claiming this is an exclusive list of all plagiarised songs. Instead, the data presented here are the results of an initial attempt to highlight the extent of this unethical practice with Tamil cinema. Interestingly, we managed to discover songs from the famous and well-respected music composers namely Harris Jayaraj (HJ), Ilayaraja (IR), AR Rahman (ARR), Deva (D), MS Viswanathan (MSV) who have been historically known as “ creators of music in Tamil cinema ”. In fact, IR and ARR received an honorific title of “Music maestro”. IR is recognised as the first Asian to compose a full symphony with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London (Symphony of Success – www 8 n.d. ). Yet, our research has shown similarities in their early melodies with other international songs. Equally, many upcoming music composers like Yuvan Sankar Raja (son of Ilayaraja), Anirudh Ravichander, and Iman have used other melodies (or samples) as the base for several of their compositions. Due to the fact this manuscript is intended to attract international audience and highlight the plagiaristic activities within Indian cinematic industry, we are discussing songs that are plagiarised (or sampled) from famous Western and other melodies and songs. This would aid the audience to understand the similarities between original and plagiarised versions. Readers are urged to compare the originals and plagiarised (sampled) version by listening to the links provided (in the online version of this manuscript).

Starting from the melody of a recent Tamil music video composed and released by HJ called ‘ Anange Sinungalama ’ (the first song highlighted in Table 1 ) on 14th of December 2018 (for a film called Dev), this resembles the 1983 hit ‘Billie Jean’ by Michael Jackson. In fact, different Indian stand-up comedians have ridiculed HJ’s copying of famous melodies to produce his own songs (www 8 n.d. ). The extent of his plagiaristic activities is so high that one stand-up comedian Alexander from Evam has joked that “ the music director is capable of being influenced by even the choir songs during Sunday mass ” (Indian Express, 2019 – www 9 n.d. ). HJ’s other hit song called “ June Ponal ” featured in Tamil film called “ Unnale unnale ” in 2007, which was simply copied from “ All Rise ” by Blue, a Western music group in 2001 (second song in Table 1 ). In addition, HJ is also famous for sampling; his sampling activities are so high that the beats of his own songs resemble each other. This was in fact ridiculed by another stand-up comedian called Jagan Krishnan, who went to the extent of sending his comedy video to the composer (www 10 n.d. ).

Our conversations with the whistle-blowers revealed that most of the mainstream media are turning a blind eye to his “ pathological plagiaristic behaviour ” (as put by one interviewee). We have also managed to study one of the videos in which HJ was interviewed (www 11 n.d. ), in which the interviewer questioning him about his high level of “sampling” within his own songs. His reply was “ that is my style, my trademark; people recognise me with that style……you can even call this as my own brand ”. Interestingly, the interviewer never questioned anything about the blatant plagiarised songs from several Western (and other) music artists. Main reason may be the fact that HJ has gained a reputation amongst general public. Many of his songs are hit records, not only due to the fact that the original melodies themselves were attractive but also many Indian cinema goers are prepared to overlook his plagiaristic activities and accept his music. Questioning a musician who is highly reputed and worshiped by millions of the cinemagoers would result in serious repercussions from his fans.

This is true for other famous music directors like IR, ARR and MSV. One music critic stated, “ our people are not that stupid, they all know these songs are copied from world famous melodies, yet they enjoy the satisfaction of listening them in their own language ” “ this is the reason they are ‘tolerating’ plagiarised music ”. One of HJ’s fans stated “ entertainment is different from scholarly activities ” he further warned us, “ cinema is an entertainment (so is the music), so treat them as they are; do not expect integrity; just enjoy the songs (or let us enjoy it) ”. Another HJ’s fans said, “ music is a global language, and there is always a possibility of similarities the melodies of two different songs, these are accidental – just enjoy the music ”. From these conversations it was clear that many of his fans are prepared to overlook plagiaristic activities. In fact, it was difficult for them to understand the integrity as well as copyright issues behind this theft.

Amongst the four famous Tamil music composers (namely HJ, IR, ARR and MSV), the latter two were careful when they mix or sample other music (their songs are listed in Tables 1 and 2 highlighted as blue and purple respectively). They either slightly changed the rhythm incorporating their own ideas or incorporated other tune in the middle of the song. The music maestro ARR has also copied from famous English and Arabic songs. The extent of his plagiaristic activities is limited, and he is clever enough to incorporate music “ripped off” from other songs. Therefore, it is difficult to prove with pinpoint accuracy. Yet our research has shown that some of his songs are created beyond sampling activity. On the other hand, Ilaiyaraja (IR), another music Maestro , has been in cinematic music industry since 1970’s. He has earned followers and fans from all over the world. In 2015, he has secured a court order against others using his works without his consent (www 12 n.d. ). Also, in 2017, IR went to such as extent of serving a legal notice (reminding copyright law) to one of his singers, Mr. SP Balasubramanian (SPB) for performing his (IR’s) compositions without his permission (Hindu 2017 ). Whilst IR is too careful about protecting his composition, he never bothered about copyrights of melodies that he copied from international artists. Our research has shown several of his early songs have been plagiarised from Western and other music videos and songs (highlighted in green in Tables 1 and 2 ).). One of our interviewees said, “ he was notorious in stealing two or more songs and mixing to avoid detection ”. He further added “ there are no internet those days, and the world were not as close as now ” “ This together with limited availability of international music to general public made it easier for these composers to get away with plagiarising ”. We also searched for plagiarised songs before 1990. In fact, we were able to detect plagiarised songs as far as 1954 onwards. Although the extent of plagiarised music was not found to be that widespread, which may be due to the fact that many of these songs were composed before the internet era, and we may not be able to detect them in the YouTube®.

Looking at the famous composers in previous era, we also managed to select some songs composed by the veteran music director late MSV (highlighted in purple in Table 2 ). He composed songs for over 700 Tamil films during his music career between 1960 and 2013.

As can be seen from the examples given in Table 2 , potentially plagiarised songs by MSV only contain a portion of the original melody; he then incorporates his own tune for the rest of his song, makes it difficult to prove. Apart from these, we have identified some plagiarised ancient songs by various composers when the Indian cinema was at its infancy. The oldest evidence of music plagiarism was detected in a film released in 1954 in a film called “ Rajee en Kanmani ” (the last song in Table 2 ). Its original song was originally composed in 1914 by a Spanish artist called José Padilla. It was interesting to note the melody is cleverly copied in the age when gramophone was the only source for music. Overall, within the duration of this study, we identified several different plagiarised (or heavily sampled) Tamil songs from different eras. We also checked to see whether any of these identified songs were either mere coincidence, reproduced with permission, or composed by obtaining exclusive rights or collaborations. Our searches have not produced any evidences for these. As stated in the introduction, some (but not all) of these composers have claimed that they have been influenced by the original tune. Indeed, we do accept the fact that the resemblances of two melodies are mainly because the combination of chords (or “ Thalas ” in Carnatic music) are limited (McDonagh 2012 ; Stav 2014 ). In fact, our analysis of notes and melodies shows that the songs listed herein resemble in substantial parts of the original music. It is also worth noting that in India, there are established laws on originality requirement and copyright within India (Nehaluddin and Chaturvedi 2013 ). However, it is not clear whether these laws are being abided by these composers. Therefore, we intend to bring public awareness by publishing this study, and indirectly show to those composers that the focus on music plagiarism is increasing.

As for “excuses” given by these composers, they varied from mere denial to blatant acceptances claiming, “ Nothing really comes from scratch ”. General public and investigative journalists have questioned these artists about some of these activities. Yet these incidences were either unreported or blacked out by the media. The most popular excuse is “ the director wanted me to use that melody, so I used it ”. Accused of blatant plagiarism, another artist tweeted “ I work with a lot of music producers worldwide and therefore I am influenced by their music ” (www 12 n.d. ). In fact, one interviewee noted many accused artists come with the excuse as “ I was inspired by the original song and it has affected my thoughts ”. Another contributing factor for this misconduct is the original Western artists, may never even know that their songs are being copied; making it easier to continue with these activities without any lawsuits.

None of the composers we contacted replied with any justification. It is understandable that their songs are popular amongst music lovers because they either do not know these songs being plagiarised (or sampled) or are happy to overlook this. Due to this fame, these composers are getting away with plagiarism.

Lastly but most importantly, we would like to point out, Dravidian culture has long standing esteem of producing original songs. Several cinema songs themselves were praised for their authenticity and obtained international awards. Quoting a Tamil cinema sources, the Wikipedia® has estimated over 5000 Tamil films were produced in the twentieth century alone (www 14 n.d. ; See also Velayutham 2008 ). Also, one of our interviewees estimated approximately 40 Tamil films per year are being released in the twenty-first century. Each film would usually have at least 4 to 5 songs. On the basis of this estimation, the proportion of plagiarised songs presented herein are negligible (roughly 0.6%). Therefore, these songs can only be considered as exception than norm. While authors agree that there may be other songs undetected for plagiarism, it is not fair to accuse all composers for plagiarism. We also wish to point out, that there are at least 20 different cinematic industries established in respective languages in India. Therefore, addressing the issue in all these industries would be a Herculean task. Therefore, this study only investigated the cinema music in one language. However, this does not mean there is no plagiarism in cinema music of other languages. As individuals who strongly believe in academic integrity and fair play, we felt, it is our duty to highlight these activities and we do believe this manuscript would enhance public awareness by highlighting the issue of “music plagiarism”.

Concluding Remarks

This preliminary investigation has identified an extensive list of plagiarised songs within one cinematic industry in India from 1954 until now. These songs have shown “beat-by-beat” similarities to the tones, and/or rhythms of the original songs. Whilst agreeing to the fact that some of these might be mere coincidences, or produced by inspirational impacts, the sheer similarities of these songs and their extent warrants further investigations. We have also highlighted the similarities of these music files (videos and/or audio recordings for comparison) and provided links (in the online version) for the readers/listeners to come to their own conclusions.

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Acknowledgements

Authors wish to thank all vigilantes who have directly or indirectly contributed to this article by highlighting the issues and taking part in the interviews.

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Paneerselvam Umamaheswaran

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Sharavan Ramachandran

School of Human Sciences, University of Derby, Derby, DE22 1GB, UK

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Umamaheswaran, P., Ramachandran, S. & Sivasubramaniam, S.D. Retrospective Analysis of Plagiaristic Practices within a Cinematic Industry in India – a Tip in the Ocean of Icebergs. J Acad Ethics 18 , 143–153 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-020-09360-7

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Ed Sheeran Wins ‘Shape of You’ Plagiarism Case

The singer “neither deliberately, nor subconsciously” stole from another songwriter when writing his 2017 hit, a British judge ruled.

By Alex Marshall

LONDON — Ed Sheeran did not steal from another songwriter when he wrote his 2017 megahit “ Shape of You ,” according to a highly anticipated court ruling here on Wednesday.

Justice Zacaroli, the judge overseeing the case, said “Mr. Sheeran neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied” the track “Oh Why,” by the British songwriter Sami Chokri, who records as Sami Switch.

There was “no more than speculative” evidence that Mr. Sheeran had even ever heard “Oh Why,” Justice Zacaroli added, dismissing Mr. Chokri’s claim of copyright infringement.

The plagiarism case was only the latest involving a prominent songwriter , but recording industry executives have been watching the case closely, because of its potential to bolster other claims. Mr. Sheeran still faces a pending trial in New York over another of his hits, “Thinking Out Loud,” which won song of the year at the 2016 Grammys; some of the owners of the rights to Marvin Gaye’s song “Let’s Get It On” accuse Mr. Sheeran of copying it.

At the heart of the case in London was a short passage in “Shape of You,” which topped charts worldwide and currently stands as the most streamed song on Spotify, with over three billion plays. In the track, Mr. Sheeran repeatedly sings the hook “Oh, I,” in a rising pentatonic melody, which Mr. Chokri claims was based on a section of his song “ Oh Why ,” which was released in 2015 but had comparatively little success.

Justice Zacaroli’s ruling came after an 11-day trial at the High Court in London in March, which was followed closely by the news media. Mr. Sheeran was in court throughout, and sang from the witness stand while giving evidence. At one point in the trial, Mr. Sheeran’s legal team accidentally played one of his unreleased songs, prompting Mr. Sheeran, shocked, to ask his lawyers, “How did you get that?” according to a BBC News report .

The case dates to May 2018, when Mr. Sheeran and his “Shape of You” co-authors, who include Johnny McDaid of the band Snow Patrol, asked the High Court in London to declare that they had not copied Mr. Chokri’s work. Their claim arose after Mr. Chokri and a co-author notified the Performing Rights Society, a British body that pays song royalties, that they should be credited as songwriters on “Shape of You.” The society then suspended all payments to Mr. Sheeran and his co-writers.

Soon after Mr. Sheeran took action, Mr. Chokri and his co-author introduced their own legal claim, accusing Mr. Sheeran of copyright infringement.

During the hearing, Mr. Chokri’s legal team tried to portray Mr. Sheeran as a habitual plagiarist. Andrew Sutcliffe, a lawyer for Mr. Chokri, said Mr. Sheeran was “undoubtedly very talented,” according to a report in The Times of London , but added: “He is also a magpie. He borrows ideas and throws them into his songs.” Mr. Sutcliffe claimed that Mr. Sheeran only sometimes credited the songwriters that he borrowed from.

After “Shape of You” was released, for example, the song’s credits were amended to add the three writers of TLC’s 1999 hit “No Scrubs,” whose melody, as fans noted at the time, bore a resemblance to parts of “Shape of You.”

A lawyer for Mr. Sheeran told the court that Mr. Chokri’s song had received only 12,914 plays on YouTube in the two years following its release, and had been played only twice on British radio, meaning few people had a chance to hear it.

But Mr. Chokri, during testimony, claimed that he knew Mr. Sheeran personally and that he had once met him at a branch of Nando’s, a chicken restaurant. Mr. Sheeran must have heard the song “through the many points of access that me and my team have shared,” Mr. Chokri said, according to The Times of London .

Mr. Sheeran, in his own evidence, denied having met Mr. Chokri or copying the song. At one point in the trial he sang parts of Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” to demonstrate that the disputed melody in “Shape of You” was common in pop music.

In his ruling, Justice Zacaroli wrote that while Mr. Chokri’s shock at hearing “Shape of You” was understandable, given the similarities between the two songs, such coincidences “are not uncommon.” Even if Mr. Sheeran had been looking for inspiration for the track, he added, Mr. Chokri’s track was “far from an obvious source.”

Shortly after the ruling, Mr. Sheeran posted a clip to his Instagram account saying that as much as he was “happy with the result,” he felt “claims like this are way too common now.”

“There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music,” Mr. Sheeran said, adding that, given that, “coincidences are bound to happen if 60,000 songs are released every day on Spotify.” The culture of lawsuits, Mr. Sheeran said, “really does have to end.”

Ben Sisario contributed reporting from New York.

Alex Marshall is a European culture reporter, based in London. More about Alex Marshall

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New research reveals the patterns of plagiarism in music.

21 Feb 2022

This article shows the trends in the most famous music plagiarism cases. This is a data supported study.

Key takeaways:

• Plagiarized songs get 211.3 times more YouTube views than the original work on average.
• 64% of artists settle for less than $150,000 when they accuse an artist of plagiarism.
• Plagiarism in the music industry has gone up since the digital media advancement.

In 2017, over 200 artists signed  an open letter  that stated, “The verdict, in this case, threatens to punish songwriters for creating new music that is inspired by prior works. All music shares inspiration from prior musical works, especially within a particular musical genre.”

This came after the  Blurred Lines  lawsuit of 2015, when Robin Thicke ended up paying $5.3 million for plagiarizing Marvin Gaye’s track,  Got to Give it Up .

Plagiarism in music has a lot of different opinions, and nobody can quite decide what should count as inspiration and what should be labeled a rip-off. We at FixGerald aim to help writers and creatives avoid these issues where writing is concerned because plagiarism seems to be a common problem in most creative fields.

To understand the implications of plagiarism, we decided to study the most well-known cases of plagiarism in the music industry and analyze their success, or in some cases, failure.

Methodology

We studied 237 cases of plagiarism in music and compared their YouTube view counts: originals versus plagiarized tracks. To avoid wrongful accusations, we have picked cases that were studied, settled, and proven to have been plagiarized.

We also studied public data about the settle price of these cases to find the most expensive ones.

All the numbers mentioned in the study were collected, validated and analyzed on Jan 28 2022.

Plagiarized Songs Tend Get More Popular than the Original Ones

Many of pop culture’s favorite tracks have elements plagiarized from influences that weren’t as popular—case in point, Bruno Mars and Mark Robinsons’  Uptown Funk . The track sounds too much like The Gap Band’s  Oops Upside Your Head . The original song has 7.1 million views on YouTube, while the plagiarized song has a staggering 4.4 billion views.

Here are some other famous examples of plagiarized songs in pop culture that have gone on to see more success than their original versions:

Based on the sample of 237 cases, it turns out that plagiarized songs get 211.3 times the views of their original counterparts on average.

If we consider the fact that every 1,000 views on YouTube equals at least $2 on average , settlements for a plagiarism lawsuit should be racking up millions.

Other times, they might get a credit, like in the case of Ed Sheeran’s  Shape of You , where writers of TLC’s  Scrubs  got a writing credit for Sheeran’s song or even royalty compensation to get a certain % of the profits from the plagiarized songs.

Plagiarism Lawsuits and Money

Many of the world’s favorite artists have faced the wrath of lawsuits. Led Zeppelin is no stranger to them, with 6 already under his belt for plagiarizing Whole Lotta Love,  Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You , and  I Can’t Quit You, Baby . Similarly, Lauryn Hill has faced a lawsuit for 13 songs, Will.I.Am has met 5, and Bruno Mars and Oasis have had 3 each.

Even though many artists have settled for less than they deserve, many have taken the case to court to receive the settlements they deserve. Perhaps the largest we have on record is Robin Thicke’s $5.3 million to Marvin Gaye, but there are other large settlements worth noting.

Failed Plagiarism Cases

During our research, we also found that plagiarism can happen twice. Like in the case of Radiohead’s  Creep , which was originally  The Air That I Breathe , and Lana Del Rey’s copy of  Creep  became  Get Free .

Interestingly,  Creep  received more views than the original  The Air That I Breathe  and the plagiarized  Get Free .

So it seems not all copied songs go on to see wild success, either because they aren’t good or haven’t had the right kind of marketing and exposure.

Some of the ‘failed’ plagiarism cases YouTube wise include:

Music Plagiarism Detection

It’s easier to spot plagiarism in written work; you can use a plagiarism checker online  to compare it and judge for yourself. However, with music, it gets tricky; several elements go into making a song, and it’s not possible to isolate them by simply listening to them.

There are two things artists need if they want to file a lawsuit against another artist for plagiarism:

• Accessibility.

This means checking whether or not the plagiarizer had heard the music before writing their own.

• Sustainable similarity.

This asks the question: “can the average listener tell?”. The more elements the two songs have in common, the greater the grounds for the lawsuit.

Music plagiarism lawsuits in the music industry have gone up, especially in the digital era. It has become easier to download tracks, strip them, and steal different elements to incorporate in another song.

A song comprises several instruments and goes through different processes, making it difficult for judges or jurors to spot any similarities. So, when a case like this is taken to court, a musicologist is called to strip the track down to make it easier to underscore the similarities between the two songs.

Recently, however, more and more plagiarism-checking software are cropping up that use A.I to detect similarities in music.

Final Chord

Maybe expecting all music to be 100% original is too much; any art form takes after the artist’s muses, inspirations, and influences. Therefore, it’s inevitable to find similarities between the two works of art.

However, it’s also essential we draw a line between inspiration and imitation. Contrary to popular belief, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery… it simply opens you up to a lawsuit.

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Title: fine-grained music plagiarism detection: revealing plagiarists through bipartite graph matching and a comprehensive large-scale dataset.

Abstract: Music plagiarism detection is gaining more and more attention due to the popularity of music production and society's emphasis on intellectual property. We aim to find fine-grained plagiarism in music pairs since conventional methods are coarse-grained and cannot match real-life scenarios. Considering that there is no sizeable dataset designed for the music plagiarism task, we establish a large-scale simulated dataset, named Music Plagiarism Detection Dataset (MPD-Set) under the guidance and expertise of renowned researchers from national-level professional institutions in the field of music. MPD-Set considers diverse music plagiarism cases found in real life from the melodic, rhythmic, and tonal levels respectively. Further, we establish a Real-life Dataset for evaluation, where all plagiarism pairs are real cases. To detect the fine-grained plagiarism pairs effectively, we propose a graph-based method called Bipatite Melody Matching Detector (BMM-Det), which formulates the problem as a max matching problem in the bipartite graph. Experimental results on both the simulated and Real-life Datasets demonstrate that BMM-Det outperforms the existing plagiarism detection methods, and is robust to common plagiarism cases like transpositions, pitch shifts, duration variance, and melody change. Datasets and source code are open-sourced at this https URL .

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From Shape of You to Blurred Lines: 8 of the biggest music plagiarism cases

With more music published than ever, songwriters live in fear of the dreaded plagiarism lawsuit. following ed sheeran’s win at high court over his hit single ‘shape of you’, lizzy cooney takes a look at eight other memorable cases, article bookmarked.

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I n recent years, the music industry has seen a growing trend of very public copyright lawsuits against popular artists.

Although Ed Sheeran just won his court battle over his hit 2017 single “Shape of You”, this is not the first time the singer-songwriter has been caught up in similar cases.

In a statement after a High Court judge ruled in favour of Sheeran, he issued a joint statement with songwriting partners Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac, in which he spoke of the toll the lawsuit had taken on his mental health.

“The stress this causes on all sides is immense,” the trio said. “It affects so many aspects of our everyday lives and the lives of our families and friends. We are not corporations. We are not entities. We are human beings. We are songwriters.

“We do not want to diminish the hurt and pain anyone has suffered through this, and at the same time, we feel it is important to acknowledge that we too have had our own hurts and life struggles throughout the course of this process.”

Sheeran is just one of many artists alleged to have infringed on other artists’ copyright. Here is a list of eight other time artists have faced legal disputes over accusations of plagiarism:

1. Queen and David Bowie vs Vanilla Ice (1990)

Released in 1989, “Ice Ice Baby” bears a striking resemblance to David Bowie and Queen’s 1981 song “Under Pressure”. The intros are so similar, it’s hard to tell which song you’re hearing.

It appears Bowie and Queen’s legal representatives felt the same way when they filed lawsuits against rapper Vanilla Ice (Robert Mathew Van Winkle) in 1990.

Vanilla Ice told an interviewer the plagiarism claim was false, because he added a note to the existing bass line melody. “I sampled it from them but it’s not the same bass line … [there is] that little bit of change. It is not the same.”

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In the end, the dispute was settled out of court. Vanilla Ice co-credited Queen and Bowie and paid them around £2.8 million. However, this case of unauthorised sampling leaves Bowie, Queen and “Under Pressure” forever linked to “Ice Ice Baby.”

Sam Smith’s ballad “Stay With Me” won Record of The Year at the 2015 Grammys, but the chorus drew comparisons to a track by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne from 1989. A representative of Smith’s said this was a “complete coincidence”.

Petty said of the incident : “All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam’s people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement".

The matter was settled in private, with Petty and Lynne listed as co-writers with 12.5 per cent writing credits each.

3. New Seekers vs Oasis (1994)

Perhaps the most unlikely pairing in this list: Oasis came under legal fire for allegedly ripping off New Seekers’ quaint 1971 tune, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”

Liam and Noel Gallagher’s 1994 song “Shakermaker” shares very similar opening lines with the original track by the New Seekers, which was made famous by a Coca-Cola advert.

The writer of “I’d Like To Teach the World to Sing” successfully sued Oasis for £300,000 for unlicensed use of the tune. Noel later joked: “Now we all drink Pepsi.”

4. Marvin Gaye vs Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams (2014)

The lines were apparently blurred between inspiration and imitation for Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, when they wrote their 2013 hit “Blurred Lines”. The track was accused of copying the “feel” of Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song, “Got to Give It Up”, in 2014.

Whilst the sheet music looks quite different, the walking bass line, voices in the song, and themes of transformation were cited as points of similarity by Gaye’s family.

After a lengthy legal dispute, Pharrell and Thicke were ordered to pay the Gaye’s estate $5m and award them 50 per cent of all future royalties.

This was one of the biggest payouts in music plagiarism history, with critics fearing the decision would set a dangerous precedent for the future of the industry.

5. The Gap Band vs Mark Ronson (2015-2018)

The retro sound of “Uptown Funk” helped it top the charts worldwide upon its release in 2014. But many artists have claimed that Mark Ronson’s hit single with Bruno Mars made a copyright infringement on their own work.

The Gap Band got their names added to the song’s credits due to its similarities to 1979 party classic “Oops! Upside Your Head.”

In  TED Talk, Ronson compared his writing style to riffing off blues progressions, stating: “If you… copy without making it a carbon copy… it is original.”

6. The Rolling Stones vs The Verve (1997)

The Verve’s 1997 “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is adored by critics and fans alike. However, the 1997 classic also sparked a 20-year legal debacle in one of the most infamous music plagiarism cases of all time.

The Verve sampled a melody from a Rolling Stones song released in 1965, “The Last Time.” The band were licensed to use a five note segment from the song in exchange for 50 per cent of the royalties. However, Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein claimed the agreement was void as the band used a larger chunk of the song than agreed.

The Verve ended up giving The Rolling Stones 100 per cent of the royalties.

In 2019 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards gave back royalties and publishing rights, and removed themselves from the writing credits. The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft responded to this win , saying: “Thank you so much … for acknowledging me as the writer of a f****** masterpiece – it’ll live forever.”

7. Spirit vs Led Zeppelin

Journalist Michael Skidmore, a trustee of the lead singer Randy Wolfe’s estate, filed a case against Led Zeppelin after noticing the similarities between the intros to “Stairway to Heaven” and Spirit’s song “Taurus”. The band were accused of lifting notes from Spirit’s song, however, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant insisted he had not heard the song until much later.

Plant allegedly heard “Taurus” at a 1970 show in Birmingham, but said he could not recall the performance due to his involvement in a serious car crash which occurred that night.

Professor of musicology Lawrence Ferrara testified for the defence that the chord sequence in the trial had “been around for 300 years.”

This was one of the most followed cases of music plagiarism in history. Led Zeppelin were cleared in 2016 .

8. Marvin Gaye vs Ed Sheeran (2016 & 2018)

Shortly after the final verdict on the “Blurred Lines” case, another high profile musical copyright case erupted. Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud”  spent a year in the UK Top 40, was the first song to be streamed over 500 million times on Spotify, and won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance and Song of the Year in 2016. However, the artist was accused of unlawfully lifting musical components from Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On.”

The family of Ed Townsend, who wrote the famous Gaye song, filed a lawsuit against Sheeran due to "the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic compositions” being similar. The case was dismissed in 2017, however another case arose when a relative of Gaye’s sued for $100 million in damages in 2018 .

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Guide on How to Write a Music Essay: Topics and Examples

Let's Understand What is Music Essay

You know how some school assignments are fun to write by default, right? When students see them on the course syllabus, they feel less like a burden and more like a guaranteed pleasure. They are about our interests and hobbies and therefore feel innate and intuitive to write. They are easy to navigate, and interesting topic ideas just pop into your head without much trouble.

Music essays belong to the category of fun essay writing. What is music essay? Anything from in-depth analysis to personal thoughts put into words and then to paper can fall into a music essay category. An essay about music can cover a wide range of topics, including music history, theory, social impact, significance, and musical review. It can be an analytical essay about any music genre, musical instruments, or today's music industry.

Don't get us wrong, you will still need to do extensive research to connect your opinions to a broader context, and you can't step out of academic writing standards, but the essay writing process will be fun.

In this article, our custom essay writing service is going to guide you through every step of writing an excellent music essay. You can draw inspiration from the list of music essay topics that our team prepared, and later on, you will learn what an outstanding essay on music is by an example of a music review essay.

What are Some Music Topics to Write About

There are so many exciting music topics to write about. We would have trouble choosing one. You can write about various music genres, be it country music or classical music; you can research music therapy or how music production happens.

Okay, forgive us for getting carried away; music makes us enthusiastic. Below you will find a list of various music essay topics prepared from our thesis writing service . Choose one and write a memorable essay about everyone's favorite art form.

Music Argumentative Essay Topics

Music essays can be written about an infinite number of themes. You can even write about performance or media comparison.

Here is a list of music argumentative essay topics. These edge-cutting topics will challenge your readers and get you an easy A+.

• Exploring the evolution of modern music styles of the 21st century
• Is it ethical to own and play rare musical instruments?
• Is music therapy an effective mental health treatment?
• Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Creativity in electronic music
• The Relevance of traditional music theory in modern music production
• The Role of musical pieces in the Transmission of cultural identity
• The value of historical analysis in understanding the significance of music in society
• How does exposing listeners to different genres of music break down barriers
• Exploring the cognitive effects of music on human brain development
• The therapeutic potential of music in treating mental disorders

Why is Music Important Essay Topics

Do you know which essay thrills our team the most? The importance of music in life essay. We put our minds together and came up with a list of topics about why music is so central to human life. Start writing why is music important essay, and we guarantee you that you will be surprised by how much fun you had crafting it.  

• Popular Music and its Role in shaping cultural trends
• Music as a metaphorical language for expressing emotions and thoughts
• How music changes and influences social and political movements
• How the music of different countries translates their history to outsiders
• The innate connection between music and human beings
• How music helps us understand feelings we have never experienced
• Does music affect our everyday life and the way we think?
• Examining the cross-cultural significance of music in society
• How rock music influenced 70's political ideologies
• How rap music closes gaps between different racial groups in the US

Consider delegating your ' write my essay ' request to our expert writers for crafting a perfect paper on any music topic!

Why I Love Music Essay Topics

We want to know what is music to you, and the best way to tell us is to write a why I love music essay. Below you will find a list of music essay topics that will help you express your love for music.

• I love how certain songs and artists evoke Memories and Emotions
• I love the diversity of music genres and how different styles enrich my love for music
• I love how music connects me with people of different backgrounds
• How the music of Linkin Park helped me through life's toughest challenges
• What does my love for popular music say about me?
• How the unique sounds of string instruments fuel my love for music
• How music provides a temporary Release from the stresses of daily life
• How music motivates me to chase my dreams
• How the raw energy of rock music gets me through my daily life
• Why my favorite song is more than just music to me

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Our expert team is quick to get you an A+ on all your assignments!

Music Therapy Essay Topics

One of the most interesting topics about music for an essay is music therapy. We are sure you have heard all the stories of how music cures not only mental but also physical pains. Below you can find a list of topics that will help you craft a compelling music therapy essay. And don't forget that you can always rely on our assistance for fulfilling your ' write my paper ' requests!

• The effectiveness of music therapy in reducing stress and pain for cancer patients
• Does pop music have the same effects on music therapy as classical music?
• Exploring the benefits of music therapy with other genres beyond classical music
• The potential of music therapy in aiding substance abuse treatment and recovery
• The Role of music therapy in Addressing PTSD and Trauma in military veterans
• The impact of music therapy on enhancing social interaction and emotional expression in individuals with developmental disabilities
• The use of music therapy in managing chronic pain
• Does musical therapy help depression?
• Does music reduce anxiety levels?
• Is music therapy better than traditional medicine?

History of Music Essay Topics

If you love analytical essays and prefer to see the bigger picture, you can always write a music description essay. Below you can find some of the most interesting topics for the history of music essay.

• The Significance of natural instruments in music production and performance
• Tracing the historical development of Western music theory
• How electronic music traces its roots back to classical music
• How the music industry evolved from sheet music to streaming services
• How modern producers relate to classical composers
• The Origins and Influence of Jazz Music
• How folk music saved the Stories of unnamed heroes
• Do we know what the music of ancient civilizations sounded like?
• Where does your favorite bandstand in the line of music evolve?
• The Influence of African American Music on modern pop culture

Benefits of Music Essay Topics

If you are someone who wonders what are some of the values that music brings to our daily life, you should write the benefits of music essay. The music essay titles below can inspire you to write a captivating essay:

• How music can be used to promote cultural awareness and understanding
• The benefits of music education in promoting creativity and innovation
• The social benefits of participating in music groups
• The Impact of Music on Memory and Learning
• The cognitive benefits of music education in early childhood development
• The effects of music on mood and behavior
• How learning to play an instrument improves cognitive functions.
• How music connects people distanced by thousands of miles
• The benefits of listening to music while exercising
• How music can express the feelings words fail to do so 

Music Analysis Essay Example

Reading other people's papers is a great way to scale yours. There are many music essay examples, but the one crafted by our expert writers stands out in every possible way. You can learn what a great thesis statement looks like, how to write an engaging introduction, and what comprehensive body paragraphs should look like. 

Click on the sample below to see the music analysis essay example. 

How to Write a Music Essay with Steps

Writing music essays is definitely not rocket science, so don't be afraid. It's just like writing any other paper, and a music essay outline looks like any other essay structure.

• Start by choosing a music essay topic. You can use our list above to get inspired. Choose a topic about music that feels more relevant and less researched so you can add brand-new insights. As we discussed, your music essay can be just about anything; it can be a concert report or an analytical paper about the evolution of music.
• Continue by researching the topic. Gather all the relevant materials and information for your essay on music and start taking notes. You can use these notes as building blocks for the paper. Be prepared; even for short essays, you may need to read books and long articles.
• Once you have all the necessary information, the ideas in your head will start to take shape. The next step is to develop a thesis statement out of all the ideas you have in your head. A thesis statement is a must as it informs readers what the entire music essay is about. Don't be afraid to be bold in your statement; new outlooks are always appreciated.
• Next, you'll need a music essay introduction. Here you introduce the readers to the context and background information about the research topic. It should be clear, brief, and engaging. You should set the tone of your essay from the very beginning. Don't forget the introduction is where the thesis statement goes.
• One of the most important parts of essay writing is crafting a central body paragraph about music. This is where you elaborate on your thesis, make main points, and support them with the evidence you gathered beforehand. Remember, your music essay should be well structured and depict a clear picture of your ideas.
• Next, you will need to come up with an ideal closing paragraph. Here you will need to once again revisit the main points in your music essay, restate them in a logical manner and give the readers your final thoughts.
• Don't forget to proofread your college essay. Whether you write a long or short essay on music, there will be grammatical and factual errors. Revise and look through your writing with a critical mind. You may find that some parts need rewriting.

Key Takeaways

Music essays are a pleasure to write and read. There are so many topics and themes to choose from, and if you follow our How to Write a Music Essay guide, you are guaranteed to craft a top-notch essay every time.

Be bold when selecting a subject even when unsure what is research essay topic on music, take the writing process easy, follow the academic standards, and you are good to go. Use our music essay sample to challenge yourself and write a professional paper. 

If you feel stuck and have no time our team of expert writers is always ready to give you help from all subject ( medical school personal statement school help ). Visit our website, submit your ' write my research paper ' request and a guaranteed A+ essay will be on your way in just one click.

Need Help in Writing an Impressive Paper?

Our expert writers are here to write a quality paper that will make you the star of your class!

FAQs on Writing a Music Essay

Though music essay writing is not the hardest job on the planet, there are still some questions that often pop up. Now that you have a writing guide and a list of essay topics about music, it's time to address the remaining inquiries. Keep reading to find the answers to the frequently asked questions. 

Should Artists' Music be Used in Advertising?

What type of music is best for writing an essay, why do people love music, related articles.

Plagiarism Examples and Music Plagiarism Laws

Music plagiarism is when copyrighted music, beats, chorus or lyrics without the consent of the legal copyright holder are used without permission. Plagiarism is the legal term for copying another person’s or an entity’s creative work and passing it off as original material. The central topic in the music industry is copyright law. I agree that copyright law is valuable because it sheds light on the difficult problem that artists are having when a copyright is infringed by plagiarism.

There have been several lawsuits from the past and present. Each lawsuit is similar with the nature of the infringement, why it is or is not plagiarism, and what the consequences were if it was plagiarized. Those unfamiliar with infringement cases may be interested to know that it basically shows that the defendant not only had access to the song, but also that the two songs are substantially similar.

The same is when you’re writing your academic paper. So, don’t forget to check if an essay is plagiarized!

One of the hardest parts of creating a hit single is laying down a catchy melody.

Some of the most popular bands in music history have recycled some of their melodies and used them in many songs. The melodies may be repeated, but the artist who owns the copyright to a song can alter it in any way they want. The problems is when bands sample another group’s music without their permission. It can be hard to determine if a song has been violated but, in other songs the rip off is clear.

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“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

 When it comes to the topic of musical plagiarism, most of us will agree that it is the theft of another person’s writings or ideas. According to Washington State University Publishing, “Composing a song that is substantially similar to another song you have heard and representing to others that it is your original work is considered plagiarism”. The essence of this quote argument is that when someone is taking a portion of one sound recording and reusing it while representing it as their own original work, that is considered musical plagiarism.

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Topicdisorders Topics

This essay about the intersection of art and health disorders explores how artistic expression serves as a valuable tool for understanding and communicating the complexities of various conditions. It discusses how visual arts, literature, drama, and music can vividly convey the emotional and psychological experiences associated with mental, neurological, and physiological disorders. Art transcends clinical descriptions, offering insights into the struggles and realities of those affected. For example, chaotic color patterns in a painting may represent the turmoil of bipolar disorder, while narratives in drama and literature provide deeper understanding of daily challenges faced by individuals with conditions like autism. Additionally, music therapy is highlighted as a beneficial approach for managing symptoms of psychological disorders. The essay also notes the growing incorporation of art therapy in medical settings, which supports healing and enhances mental health. Through these artistic avenues, the essay argues for a broader, more empathetic approach to health disorders, emphasizing art’s role in reducing stigma and fostering societal empathy.

How it works

The relationship between human health and the arts may not be obvious at first glance, yet art has proven to be a powerful tool in exploring and understanding the multifaceted world of health disorders. This discussion ventures into how art—be it painting, sculpture, music, or drama—offers unique perspectives and insights into the experience of various disorders, bridging gaps in understanding and fostering a compassionate societal approach.

Art transcends the limitations of clinical language, allowing individuals to express their experiences with disorders in a way that words often cannot.

Through visual art, artists can depict the emotional and psychological battles faced by those with mental health disorders, such as anxiety or depression. A canvas smeared in contrasting, chaotic colors might represent the tumultuous mind of someone with bipolar disorder, while a sculpture with disjointed limbs could symbolize the physical and neurological struggles of a person suffering from multiple sclerosis.

In literature and drama, narratives woven around characters dealing with disorders bring awareness and a deeper understanding of the daily challenges these conditions pose. Plays and novels that portray protagonists navigating life with conditions like autism or ADHD provide audiences and readers with a window into the often misunderstood realities of these disorders, promoting empathy and knowledge.

Moreover, music therapy has emerged as a therapeutic tool for many, particularly those facing psychological disorders. The rhythmic elements and harmonies can have calming effects, helping to regulate mood and even assist in coping with symptoms of disorders such as PTSD or anxiety. Musicians and composers often channel their struggles into their compositions, providing a solace not only for themselves but also for their listeners, creating a shared experience that underscores the universality of human vulnerability and resilience.

Supporting the intersection of art and health, many medical institutions now integrate art therapy programs into their treatment plans, recognizing the healing and communicative properties of creative expression. These programs encourage patients to explore their creativity, which in turn helps in alleviating symptoms, expressing feelings, and improving mental health.

In essence, while disorders of all kinds—be it mental, neurological, or physiological—continue to challenge medical science, art offers a parallel path for understanding and healing. It serves as a medium through which individuals and societies can better grasp the complexities of disorders, reducing stigma and enhancing the collective empathy. As we continue to explore the nexus between art and health, the potential for new discoveries and methods of care seem not only promising but vital.

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Breaking news, yale professor accuses columbia prez shafik of plagiarism, ‘intellectual theft’ in resurfaced 1994 research paper.

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Embattled Columbia University president Nemat “Minouche” Shafik screwed a former underling out of credit on a research paper published 30 years ago, a Yale University professor claims.

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak posted the bombshell allegations in a blistering thread on X early Friday, juxtaposing images of a 1992 report Shafik co-authored for World Bank with researcher Sushenjit Bandyopadhyay, along with a journal published in Oxford Economic Papers two years later in which Bandyopadhyay’s name was removed.

Mobarak, an economics and management professor at Yale, told The Post the findings and research cited in both papers are pretty much equal.

“It got rewritten, but fundamentally it’s the same paper,” he alleged.

“We can’t get in the room and [learn] what sentences did he write and what sentences she wrote, but what we do know is his contribution was sufficient to warrant co-authorship [in 1992],” he added. “What is not common is for someone to be a co-author and then suddenly their name is taken off.”

Instead, Bandyopadhyay is only “thanked” in an acknowledgement section in the back of the 1994 published journal — which screams of “power asymmetry” considering Shafik was then Bandyopadhyay’s boss, alleged Mobarak.

Bandyopadhyay declined comment when asked whether he felt slighted.

However, Mobarak, also a former World Bank consultant and University of Maryland graduate, said he spoke to Bandyopadhyay about the issue and that Bandyopadhyay believes he should have been credited as a co-author in the second paper. The professor conceded Bandyopadhyay never said anything “negative” about the Columbia president.

“This [1994] paper is lifted almost entirely from a 1992 report coauthored with consultant not credited in the publication,” wrote Mobarak on X. “This is wholesale intellectual theft, not subtle plagiarism.”

At the time both papers were written, Shafik was a vice president for World Bank and Bandyopadhyay, a consultant who also attended the University of Maryland.

Mobarak’s allegations echo plagiarism accusations leveled against former Harvard University president Claudine Gay, who eventually resigned in disgrace in January .

Columbia University spokesperson Ben Chang shot down the Yale professor’s claims, saying “this is an absurd attempt at running a well-known playbook, and it has no credibility.”

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